Schnellzug Nr. 34

Interesting Soviet film which obviously try to 'mimic' the American catastrophe film of the same time (like the towering inferno) but fails to present any coherent scenario. The only good part of the film is the stewardess, played by Elena Mayorova. The plot line: a train is on fire because some (stowaway) passenger forgot to extinguish the (giant) cigarette he was smoking before leaving the train and let it burn around three glasses of vodka. Actually, this passenger is nothing but the 'hero' of the film, e.g. The main male character. As he leaves the station, he also prevents the stewardess (which was under criminal charges to have let stowaways on board) to go back to the train) kissing her violently while she is not that pleased with this sudden love and escape from him into a kamaz to go back to her beloved train. As the train continues, the cigarette of our 'hero' light the abundant vodka around and a fire starts... maybe the stewardess could have stopped the fire on time if she had not been prevented to do so by the 'hero'. The rest of the film is rather absurd but shows a good deal of chaos, incoherence where everybody runs everywhere without a real purpose. Somehow you feel some sort of complete disinterest for the fate of the passengers. Some scenes are realistic enough though. Mediocre film and that's the reward you get when you try to mimic films from the opposing side capitalistic countries.

A really weird scene in the film: one passenger realizing that there is a fire in one of wagon (just the start, when people realize that there is some problem) pushes, in anger, a stewardess outside the train and into a precipice , obviously sending her to her death, and do this quietly in front of his wife - who doesn't seem to care that much about it.