Editing John Frankenheimer (section)

===''The Train'' (1964)===

In early 1964, Frankenheimer was reluctant to embark upon another film project due to fatigue: “''[[The Train (1964 film)|The Train]]'' is a film I had no intention of ever doing [and was] not a subject that I cared that much about...I'd just finished ''Seven Days in May'' (1964). I was quite tired.” <ref>Pratley, 1969 p. 123-125, p. 139: Composite quote.</ref>

Adapted from the novel ''Le Front de l’Art: Défense des collections françaises, 1939-1945'' by [[Rose Valland]], the documentary-styled picture examines the desperate struggle by the [[French Resistance]] to intercept a train loaded with priceless art treasures and sabotage it before [[Wehrmacht]] officers could escape with it to Nazi Germany. The film dramatizes a contest of wills between French railway inspector Labiche ([[Burt Lancaster]]) and German art connoisseur Colonel von Waldheim ([[Paul Scofield]]), tasked with seizing the art work.<ref>Baxter, 2002: The film is “dominated by Lancaster's athleticism and Paul Scofield's steely performance as his German adversary.”<br>Pratley, 1969 p. 115-116<br>Wood, 2004: “World War II action film tinged with a Cold War sensibility.”</ref> Shooting for ''The Train'' had commenced in France when filmmaker [[Arthur Penn]], originally enlisted to direct the adaption, was dismissed by actor-producer Lancaster, allegedly over personal incompatibility and irreconcilable interpretive differences.<ref>p. 47 Penn, Arthur ''Arthur Penn: Interviews'', [[University Press of Mississippi]], 2008<br>Pratley, 1969 p. 123: Frankenheimer: “...a conflict of personalities, a conflict over the type of film being made…”<br>Barson, 2021: “Lancaster and Frankenheimer combined forces for the fourth time on ''The Train'' (1965)—although not by original design; Arthur Penn had begun the picture but was fired soon after filming began.”<br>Wood, 2004 TCM: “Lancaster was concerned that Penn was neglecting the story's potential for action and suspense, and remedied the situation by calling in Frankenheimer.”</ref>

Frankenheimer, who had successfully directed Lancaster on three previous films, consented to replace Penn, but with grave reservations, considering the screenplay “almost appalling” and noting that “the damn train didn't leave the station until p. 140.”<ref>Prately, 1969 p. 123-125: See here for Frankenheimer's remarks.<br>Smith, 2010. TCM: “At the behest of star Burt Lancaster, Frankenheimer replaced Arthur Penn as the director of The Train (1965)”<br>Higham, 1973 p. 295: “The Train (1965), taken over from Arthur Penn, was a botch for which he cannot be held responsible.”<br>Palen, 2010: See here for same Frankenheimer passages quoted in Pratley, 1969.</ref> Frankenheimer postponed production of ''Seconds'' (1966) to accommodate Lancaster's production.<ref>Pratley, 1969 p. 140</ref>

Filming for ''The Train'' was temporarily shut down and the existing footage discarded. Frankenheimer, in collaboration with screenwriters [[Nedrick Young]] (uncredited), Franklin Coen, Frank Davis and [[Walter Bernstein]] framed an entirely new script that combined suspense, intrigue and action, reflecting Lancaster's prerequisites.<ref>Palen, 2010<br>Wood, 2004 TCM: “Frankenheimer in turn discarded Penn's footage, brought in his own writers to overhaul the script, and ultimately delivered the WWII thriller Lancaster had hoped for.”</ref>
{{quote box|width=30em|bgcolor=cornsilk|fontsize=100%|salign=center|quote=  “The point I wanted to make [in ''The Train''] was that no work of art is worth a human life. That's what the film is about. I feel that very deeply. But to say that the film is a statement of a theme like that is really being unfair to the film...the lives of people, what they do and how they think, feel and behave, is in itself important...Honesty and reality are reflected in people's attitudes-without individuals having to perform great deeds or being great heroes or villains proclaiming great messages about life...''The Train'' is this kind of movie.”—John Frankenheimer in Gerald Pratley's ''The Cinema of John Frankenheimer'' (1969).<ref>Pratley, 1969 p. 125</ref>}}

Frankenheimer inserts an ethical question into the narrative: Is it justified to sacrifice a human life to save a work of art? His controversial answer was emphatically, no.<ref>Pratley, 1969 p. 122: “The director has been criticized, of course, for his ironic comments about the values of art and of human life.” And p 125: Frankenheimer: “The point I wanted to make was that no work of art is worth a human life.”</ref> Film critic Stephen Bowie observes ““Frankenheimer's thesis—that human life has more value than art—may seem simplistic, but it adds an essential moral component to what would otherwise be just an expensive live-action version of an electric train set.”<ref>Bowie, 2006: <br>Abele, 2018: Abele quoting [[Guillermo del Toro]] “...the movie clearly states two points of view...Lancaster is pro-human. Scofield cares about art but has no hint of the humanity of that art...an artistic piece about how much art is worth in human lives.”</ref>
''The Train'' is lauded for its documentary-like realism and Frankenheimer's masterful integration of the human narrative with its tour-de-force action scenes.<ref>Palen, 2010: “John Frankenheimer's 1964 masterly moving painting The Train.. grounded in the grimy documentary-like detail of the neo-realist style the director admired.”<br>Wood, 2004 TCM: “...a masterful achievement of heightened and prolonged suspense...one of the best action films of the 1960s.”<br>Abele, 2018: Abele's article highlights [[Guillermo del Toro]]'s fulsome praise for ''The Train'' as a superlative action film.<br>Wood, 2004 TCM: “No miniatures were used in ''The Train''...apparent when one views such sequences of carefully-orchestrated destruction that punctuate the film's tightly-wound narrative.”<br>Bowie, 2006: “The terrifically entertaining The Train (1965) best represents this synthesis.”</ref>
 
{{quote box|width=30em|bgcolor=cornsilk|fontsize=100%|salign=center|quote="Smashing up trains was easy to do. It's every boy's childhood fantasy. There isn't a child who ever owned an electric train, who didn't want to do a wreck with it, putting a car across the track and sending an engine into it. Well of course, we did just that.”—John Frankenheimer in Gerald Pratley's  ''The Cinema of John Frankenheimer'' (1969).<ref>Pratley, 1969 p. 126</ref>}} Biographer Gerald Pratley offers this appraisal of Frankenheimer's handling of the complex series of train sequences, discerning the influence of Soviet director [[Sergei Eisenstein]]:

{{blockquote | “Frankenheimer's expert sense of narrative carries the events along with ever mounting drama and excitement, and at times overwhelming tragedy as men are shot and killed...he can wreck trains and stage air raids, and yet he sustains his characters on a high level of interest...Frankenheimer's insistence on using natural backgrounds gives a tremendous feeling of reality to the film.  The stark, dramatic outlines of the camouflaged armored locomotive emerging from the sheds is worthy of Eisenstien; the chase into the tunnel showing the locomotive stopping inches from the opening, and the engineer pulling on the whistle chain, is masterly.”<ref>Pratley, 1969 p. 120-121 And p. 119</ref>}}
 
Film critic [[Tim Palen]] elaborates on Frankenheimer's technical expertise in ''The Train'':  “The director makes excellent use of wide angle lenses, long tracking shots, and extreme close-ups whilst maintaining depth of field...deliberately ensures that elaborate camera movement and cutting was planned so that ‘logistically you knew where each train was,’ in relation to the action.”<ref>Palen, 2010:</ref> ''The Train'' exemplifies the centrality of technical applications that began to characterize Frankenheimer's approach to film in the late 1960s “brandishing style for its own sake.”<ref>Georgaris, 2021 TSPDT: Georgaris quoting from The Film Encyclopedia, 2012</ref>

''The Train''’s original screenplay received an Academy Award nomination.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059825/awards?ref_=tt_awd|title = The Train - IMDb| website=[[IMDb]] }}</ref><ref name="tino">Balio 1987, p. 279.</ref> It had cost $6.7 million.<ref>Buford 2000, p. 240.</ref> and was one of the 13 most popular films in the UK in 1965.<ref>"Most Popular Film Star." ''The Times'', December 31, 1965, p. 13 via ''The Times Digital Archive'', September 16, 2013.</ref>