“The Train” (1964)
One of five movies made by Burt Lancaster and John Frankenheimer, had things gone differently, Arthur Penn’s name would’ve have been the one credited to “The Train.” But with Lancaster reeling professionally after the failure of Luchino Visconti’s “The Leopard” (which is now a bonafide classic), the actor fired Penn (who was going for a smaller, character-driven film) and brought in Frankenheimer. The result? A train movie, a chase flick, an espionage tale and contemplative look at the cost of life versus sustaining culture in a WWII movie that delivers all of the above in one rousing thriller. The premise is simple: Lancaster plays (suspension of disbelief alert) Paul Labiche, a French railway inspector, who coordinates his remaining team of resistance fighters to do everything they can to prevent Nazi Colonel Franz von Waldheim (Paul Scofield) from making his way to Germany with a bounty of classic French art from all the greats. Where Penn might have gone small, Frankenheimer goes big. Very big. Shot in black in white, the setpieces in the film — a spectacular rail yard explosion and a multiple train pileup among them — might as well be in Technicolor. These are big action sequences that are still breathlessly exciting today, not only because these were real trains and locations being destroyed, but also by Lancaster doing his own stunts (you practically flinch watching him jump on train that’s whipping by). And learning how Labiche and his team outsmart the Nazis, doing everything they can to keep the train from leaving France, is both constantly surprising and rewarding. But what elevates the film from just another wartime action movie to something more, are the thematic questions that arise, which Frankenheimer wisely knows never to give a clear answer to. Labiche and his team risk — and lose — lives to protect these artworks, the cultural history of France, but as the film winds to its close, and lingers in its chilling final moments over the men and women who died for it, the sacrifice lost versus what is ultimately gained comes into question. It’s a powerfully uneasy note to close off the film, but a brave one too.
“Seconds” (1966)
Utilizing a Saul Bass title sequence, a score by Jerry Goldsmith, elements of neo noir, drama, horror and even freaky psychedelia, Frankenheimer’s 1966 riff on identity (and lack thereof) and corporate paranoia is one of his most unnerving, claustrophobic and entertaining efforts that is often called a science-fiction thriller (and one that evidently messed with the head of a LSD-soaked Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson). Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph) is a disillusioned and spiritless Manhattan businessman who’s lost in his purpose in life. The convenient reemergence of a old friend thought dead, leads Hamilton to come in contact with The Company, a high-tech, science-fiction-like service that helps unhappy wealthy people disappear and create new lives. However, this new-found utopia quickly turns into a proto-“Total Recall”-like nightmare. Hamilton is essentially blackmailed, going through with a procedure that includes faking his death and extensive plastic surgery. Out the other end comes Hamilton transformed into a “Second,” Tony Wilson (now played by Rock Hudson). Reconstituted as a successful painter in California, and bent on enjoying his new life, Wilson hosts a dinner celebration, only to discover later in the evening that all his neighbors are reborn “Seconds” like himself. Struck by this revelation, Hamilton/Wilson struggles to get out and make contact with his former wife, but escaping the clutches of The Company proves to be its own hallucinatory ordeal. One also cannot mention the disquieting creepiness of “Seconds” without discussing the amazing chiaroscuro-filled, deep-focus cinematography of the great James Wong Howe. Nominated for ten Academy Awards (winning twice), “Seconds” was Howe’s penultimate nomination, and the film’s sense of dread, paranoia and insanity is arguably half the film it is without Howe, though Frankeheimer, as usual, makes the transitions from the phantasmic to the (seemingly) ordinary feel completely effortless.
– Rodrigo Perez, Kevin Jagernauth, Christopher Bell, Oliver Lyttelton