Weekly Progress Report -- Duolingo Spanish -- September 30, 2023

 Locator: 45605MOVIES. 

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The Movie Page

In The WSJ this week:

The terrifically tense movie “The Train” (1964), directed by John Frankenheimer, needs no special pleading. Memorably shot in black-and-white and spanning several genres (war, heist, action), the film is a fictionalized recounting of real events—the looting of French art treasures (specifically Impressionist, Expressionist and Cubist paintings) by Germany during World War II. But beyond its abundant visual rewards lurks a thoughtful questioning of who art is for and what price is too high to pay for its preservation. So how apt, if perhaps coincidental, that the picture’s re-release on home video in a new 4K restoration from Kino Lorber (a UHD/Blu-ray combo pack) comes just when the subject of looted art is once more, sadly, in the news.

Media brim these days with stories of Russian looting and cultural destruction in Ukraine, revived calls for the British Museum to repatriate to Greece the Elgin (or Parthenon) Marbles, and museums and private collectors returning dubiously obtained Italian, Middle Eastern and African arts to their native lands. And earlier this month, it was reported that works by Egon Schiele once owned by the Austrian Jewish collector Fritz Grünbaum and later appropriated by the Nazis were confiscated from three U.S. museums, followed shortly after by stories that other institutions were finally returning different pieces by the artist to Grünbaum’s heirs.

By juxtaposing important philosophical issues alongside impressive cinematic flourishes, “The Train” has long ensured its enduring appeal. It was among the top 20 highest-grossing movies in North America in 1965—not bad for a picture shot in unglamorous monochrome with just one Hollywood star (Burt Lancaster) and an ending that remains one of the bleakest ever released by a major American studio (United Artists, in this case). According to Frankenheimer, who died in 2002, that final sequence was frequently eliminated when the movie was broadcast on network television, before cable and streaming were options. But as he sagely noted, the film’s central point is undermined absent that gut punch.

“The Train” starts with an eerie calm as a Wehrmacht officer views masterpieces by Gauguin, Picasso and Renoir amid a cache of similar works in Paris on the night of Aug. 2, 1944. That mood is quickly shattered, though, by his announcement to a diminutive female curator that the best of these paintings are to be hastily packed and shipped to Berlin in advance of the Allies’ imminent arrival in the French capital. And from that point till the end of this two hour and 13 minute film, the heart-pumping pace never flags, the intensity evenly divided between the visceral (explosions, executions, gun battles, racing locomotives, etc.) and the cerebral (intrigue, ruses, double-crosses, and the like).

 Available on Amazon Prime Video (probably not the latest release, but it will eventually be there, I assume) -- again, making Amazon Prime a great, great option.