A Batalha dos Trilhos

THE BATTLE OF THE RAILS is a rare little title that I managed to catch on Talking Pictures TV here in the UK in the first showing since 1960. It's a black and white drama about the efforts of the French Resistance to sabotage Nazi-controlled trains during WW2. The film is made with a documentary realism in which the action is narrated throughout. The photography is excellent and the pacing is fast. The film abandons typical conceits of characterisation and dialogue in favour of a focus on physical action, such as the sabotaging of tracks and trains and the subsequent derailments that follow. It's surprisingly tense, even thrilling at times.

Based on real life events that occurred between the Normandy Landings and the liberation, La Bataille du Rail was commissioned by the Associations of the Resistance soon after the end of the Second World War. That a war film would be put into production so soon after the end of the war and that it would prove so successful with a public that lived through it suggests a desire to show the extent of the resistance's achievements and the pride of the French.

However, Clément carefully avoids making the film too didactic or sentimental. We can see how the ruthlessness of the occupying forces in rooting out the saboteurs and their anti-Semitism is not overplayed as their portrayal seems appropriate to a modern audience not directly scarred by the events shown. Another way in which he achieves this is through the way the camera stays relatively detached from the action, showing the events almost like a documentary rather than forcing us to identify with any of the characters. It has been said that the cast was made up of unprofessional actors and in some cases real railwaymen. This adds to the realism and creates an effect where no one film star stands out as an obvious "hero", enforcing a message of "ordinary men doing what they had to".

Although there have been more nuanced, psychologically penetrating filmic depictions of French resistance under Nazi occupation, none has matched the sheer immediacy of René Clément's feature film debut. It represents a natural progression from his pre-war documentaries and indeed the early part is filmed in a documentary style with no clear delineation of character but changes tack dramatically when news comes through of the Allied landings and the Maquis plan greater acts of sabotage to prevent the Germans from moving armoured trains to Normandy.

Based upon real events and featuring many of the courageous participants in the Battle of the Rails of 1944, Clément uses cinéma vérité techniques and Russian-style montage to build momentum and suspense, culminating in the unforgettable derailment of the train convey which is shot from three different angles. Suffice to say the film's most powerful scene is the execution by firing squad of six randomly chosen railway workers. This is a superlative combination of image and sound as their deaths are accompanied by trains whistling in defiance. The post-sync dubbing of the mainly non-professional cast is pretty good and this viewer at any rate is intrigued as to who supplied the German voices. Clément has also been sure to use the strongest, most characterful faces for the close-ups.

It seems that the French suffered from collective amnesia following the liberation and Clément made a brave call for his film might have come too soon and been too close to home but its triumphalism ensured its great critical and commercial success whilst arguably paving the way for Alexander Esway's hugely popular 'Le Bataillon du Ciel' the following year. One cannot help but wonder whether John Frankenheimer was aware of this film when making 'The Train' twenty years on.

As well as being a moving testament to the kind of bravery of which very few are capable it marks, on a purely filmic level, the emergence of a special directorial talent that was to go from strength to strength.

René Clément directed this exceptional film which captures an important but often ignored part of the Allied war effort in WWII. It chronicles the efforts by the French railway workers to hinder the German war machine. What makes the film work wonderfully is the non-professional actors--like the Neo-realist actors in post-war Italian films (such as by DeSica and Rossellini). This gives the movie a great sense of realism--almost like a documentary that was somehow filmed as events really took place--though it was made just after the war.

The film begins sometime after the German occupation began--it's never exactly certain. During this time, random acts of sabotage occur but they are mostly annoying and are seemingly unorganized. However, partway through the film, the Resistance receives word that the Normandy invasion has occurred. Suddenly, the full extent of the French Resistance is obvious, as the entire effort to use the rails to reinforce the German army are frustrated in many, many ways--ranging from sabotaging the tracks and equipment to even attacks on the trains themselves by partisans.

"La Bataille du Rail" ("The Battle of the Rails") works very well--mostly because in addition to the non-actors working in the film, the director and writers (one of which was the director himself) used a lot of tense little vignettes in the film to draw in the viewer. Perhaps some today might find it all a bit boring (after all, they are more interested, perhaps, in seeing the newest Brandon Frazier film), but as a history teacher, I think it's a must-see! Wonderful.

By the way, you can't blame the film makers for this, but the print I saw was pretty shabby. It had a lot of scratches and the white captions were poor--blending into the scenes at times and also, occasionally, mistranslated or using jargon that is too technical (full of railroad terms and jargon). I would LOVE to see this film restored and re-captioned!

Trains have been a perennial feature of film iconography since Melies filmed a train entering La Ciotat station in 1895, while the cattle trucks of 'Nuit et Broullard' has long been a defining image of the Holocaust.

The depiction of the mechanics of railways will delight most trainspotters although they will probably be more distressed by those that (SLIGHT SPOILER COMING:) get wrecked rather than the people who get killed.

We know what type of people we are dealing with from the opening image of a poster targeting Juden proceeding through the familiar sight of Germans marching hapless passengers on to the platform while a German begins a speech "Kameraden" in tones that are far from comradely.