Trans-Europ-Express

I had not heard of "Trans-Europ-Express" until a couple of months ago, and as soon as the film was available to me I eagerly got a hold of it, but put off watching it until today because I was under the impression that it was a 'difficult' movie and wanted to be in the mood for such a film. Much to my surprise, Alain Robbe-Grillet's "Trans-Europ-Express" is one of the most entertaining and involving films I've ever seen, managing to be cerebral and clever as can be while never giving into being impenetrable for the sake of being impenetrable.

Robert McKee classifies "Trans-Europ-Express" as a 'nonplot' film, and even though the film has two separate 'plots', I suppose it would be accurate enough to say that it doesn't really focus on telling a story set in stone. Classifying the film by genre is equally difficult, it is a somewhat comical film-within-a-film, a mystery, an erotic thriller, and even an espionage film for a bit. Let's just say the fourth wall has never been used so well in a film.

"Trans-Europ-Express" is a playful, adventurous film which seems to want nothing more than to toy with as many genre conventions as it can, and Robbe-Grillet does that so very well here. What's most amazing about the film is that it works on all the levels it's supposed to work on. Furthermore, the acting is superb, the cinematography gorgeous, and Robbe-Grillet's direction captivating and always interesting. I found the use of music here excellent, but the sound mixing even more interesting. The attention to detail is wonderful.

As many 'intimidating' films as I've seen, and as many of them that I have loved, I have to be in the right mood to see them. Perhaps the element of surprise with "Trans-Europ-Express" gave it an advantage, but this really is one of the greatest, most purely enjoyable films I've ever seen. Cerebral, clever, smart, and stylish, all without being too ambitious for its own good, "Trans-Europ-Express" is a movie for everyone and for all moods, a must-see inversion (and perversion) of genre conventions. All film buffs should enjoy this, but it might be of particular interest to one who likes the genres being toyed with here, and I love them.

10/10

The films of Alain Robbe-Grillet may be clever, intellectually stimulating and effective but they can also be over serious and difficult to watch. This one is almost a complete joy. Beautifully photographed in wonderfully crisp b/w it looks great throughout. The director and his wife appear as passengers on the famous train, travelling to Antwerp and decide to conjure up a spy story. The superb, Jean-Louis Trintignant is the main man here and would appear to be the puppet for their story. Certainly we see him carrying out the actions they dictate into their tape recording machine as he goes hither and thither around the great city, of which we see much. Indeed, Antwerp being a favourite city of mine is another reason for this being so pleasurable for me to watch. The biggest surprise for me here, was not the much heralded, though undeniably effective S&M sequences but the extent to which humour plays a part here. There is a Bond poster on the wall at one point, as well as a shot from a Goddard film and it would seem Mr Grillet is also having a bit of a go at the very genre itself. Marvellous.

Trans-Europ-Express (1966) was written and directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet.

The plot of the movie is that a producer, director, and assistant are traveling from Paris to Antwerp. On the train, they amuse themselves by inventing a movie that would start off on a train from Paris to Antwerp, and continue from that point.

The movie we see is the movie they are inventing as they travel. Jean-Louis Trintignant stars in this invented movie. As always, he has one expression--blank.

The incomparable Marie-France Pisier stars in the movie as well. Apparently, no one had to work very hard to convince Marie-France to appear topless or participate in B&D. (Of course, we are expected to accept this, because this wasn't a real movie. It was just a movie that was being invented on a train.)

The concept was interesting, but too much of it was actually about drug drops, keys to lockers in train stations, etc. Granted, it was interspersed with visually more interesting scenes, but it really wasn't a great movie.

Trans-Europ-Express has a decent IMDb rating of 7.1. I didn't think it was that good, and rated it 6.

This film is a beautifully done story within a story --- film within a film. The author and friends take a train ride and begin to work out a film; its plot, its characters and their actions. As the story evolves the characters take on their own existence, reality becomes inverted; they weave their own story as author becomes audience.

It is a taste of the 1960's thinking of the Michael Caine foreign intrigue films, The Orient Express not to mention the Manchurian Candidate. In a way it thumbs its nose at the genre.

I saw it when it ran almost forty years ago and enjoyed it immensely. If you can find it --- check it out.

Given that TRANS-EUROP-EXPRESS is the only movie directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet which the late conservative British film critic Leslie Halliwell reviewed in his celebrated “Film Guide”, one would think that it was more accessible than his usual reportedly impenetrable stuff and, in a way, it is – but still, the end result is hardly straightforward and almost as cerebral!

Jean-Louis Trintignant, in the first of four films he made with Robbe-Grillet, plays a novice drug courier tested by his future employers in carrying a stash of cocaine (which is actually sugar) by train and depositing it into a train station locker – but this simple task is fraught with any number of unexpected complications including police interrogation and night-time chases. Marie-France Pisier is a very beguiling presence here as a whore/double agent with whom Trintignant has several S&M encounters in a hotel room until her ‘double face’ drives him to murder…or does it? Although I was aware that the actress had played Colette in Francois Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel series and had the leading role in the trashy THE OTHER SIDE OF MIDNIGHT (1977), looking at her filmography just now I was surprised to learn that she was also in one of my favorite films, Luis Bunuel’s THE PHANTOM OF LIBERTY (1974), as well as Jacques Rivette’s ambitious fantasy CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING (1974; which I’ve just acquired via the BFI’s 2-Disc edition)!

What this film has that the other Robbe-Grillet titles I’ve watched (including THE IMMORTAL ONE [1963]) don’t, is a surprisingly substantial dose of humor: in fact, the writer-director himself appears as a train passenger who is contemplating a film about drug-trafficking which (given that he happens to be on the train himself) would be an ideal vehicle for Jean-Louis Trintignant!; similarly, when Trintignant and Pisier go to a café he tells her that the waiter who had just served them was not a waiter at all but an actor playing a waiter!; during one of the various meetings with his shady employers, Trintignant is asked to repeat where he is supposed to meet his contact – implying a very complicated route – he simply replies “Where” (at which his employer doesn’t even bat an eyelid!), etc. At one point, Robbe-Grillet’s fellow passengers complain that drug-trafficking is no longer hip and that diamond-smuggling is the current criminal fad; therefore, Trintignant & Co. exchange costumes and settings accordingly…before the director decides to stick to his original idea (whim?) after all! Incidentally, this ‘screenplay-in-the-making’ structure reminds one of the contemporaneous Hollywood comedy, Paris WHEN IT SIZZLES (1964), which was itself a remake of an earlier French original – Julien Duvivier’s LA FETE A' HENRIETTE (1952). In fact, the whole self-referential element in the film and its heady spoof on the thriller genre recalls the Jean-Luc Godard of BREATHLESS (1960), BAND OF OUTSIDERS (1964), ALPHAVILLE (1965) and PIERROT LE FOU (1965) more than anything else...

Unfortunately, what I said about the poor video quality of EDEN AND AFTER (1970) applies to an even greater extent here – since this one looked distinctly like a tenth-generation dupe (with actors’ features being quite blurred at times and especially, alas, during the S&M striptease act towards the end). That said, the film itself is let down somewhat by sluggish pacing – even if the version I watched ran for a mere 88 minutes, when all sources I know of give its running-time as 105! As it is, I’d welcome a legitimate DVD release of TRANS-EUROP-EXPRESS and one hopes that the recent passing of its creator will inspire adventurous labels to pursue its rights.