A Travessia de Cassandra

I haven't seen this one in years and it's surprising how much actually stays in your memory. Luckily for me, a TV station that specialises in old movies and television dramas decided to show this flick. It was the star-studded cast that drew me to it, along with the storyline - I do like a good disaster film.

The first thing I have to do is praise the opening sequence as being one of the best I've ever seen. It's a flight across Geneva to the World Health Organisation. It's such a steady and beautiful shot that it really sticks in my mind.

We then find out why we're at the WHO. A terrorist group are about to break in and try to blow up the building. However, their attempt is foiled. Though, in the process, a couple of them are doused in a liquid that contains a fatally infectious disease. One of the two is shot on site, though the other makes it out of the building to escape into a nearby rail station and an awaiting train. Once onboard the audience is privileged to watch the spread of the infection as the escapee stumbles through the carriages.

What adds to the power of the film is the interconnecting stories of the travellers on the train. Some are hiding secrets, some are hiding from life, some are trying to make the best of the life they have, and some are falling in love. The diversity of characters and their realism only adds strength to the story and film. Though I will say that the strongest and best character, for me, was Herman Kaplan who is brilliantly portrayed by Lee Strasberg.

On the whole, the directing and story is pretty average, though there are a few good scenes, such as the helicopter pickup - this gets you on the edge of your seat. Then when we're coming to the climax the continual flashes to the dilapidated bridge do add an air of expectation and tension.

If there is one drawback it's the length of the film. It could have done with losing a few minutes, just to tighten up the pace a little. But that's it. The ending is superb and actually sent a shiver down my spine and left a sarcastic smile on my face.

This is a pretty good film to watch on a Sunday Afternoon when you're podged with Sunday Dinner. I would recommend this one to all the thriller and conspiracy lovers out there in the world, well worth a view or two.

Disaster epics like "The Poseidon Adventure" and "The Towering Inferno" from 20th Century Fox led almost everyone else to try their hand at it, since, for a time, disaster at the movies meant box office gold. This entry was Italy's answer to the genre and, though it is far-fetched and occasionally ridiculous, it is a thrilling and tense movie. Loren toplines as a divorcee and author who happens to be boarded on the same train as her ex-husband (twice!) Harris is the husband, a noted neurosurgeon. The two lob sarcastic and occasionally poignant barbs at each other and attempt a sort of 1970's, updated Nick & Nora Charles thing. (Ironically, their names are Jonathan and Jennifer, the monikers of the later Nick & Nora redux "Hart to Hart" and Stander, Max the conductor in this film, played their cohort---ALSO named Max!) Other passengers board in the typical genre fashion, each with their tics and traits and duties to the story. Gardner looks stunning. She ludicrously, but welcomely, appears in a new drop-dead Franka ensemble for almost every scene. Nothing about her character is realistic, but she adds great style and class to the film. Sheen plays her latest boy-toy and they share a rather kinky, Oedipal relationship. Simpson (in another subpar performance) is a mysterious priest. Strasberg is excruciating as a sort of male Estelle Getty from "The Golden Girls", omnipresently appearing everywhere trying to sell watches to the passengers. He gets better toward the end, but his appearance is mostly embarrassing. Turkel (doubtlessly on board due to her offscreen relationship with Harris) is a hippie singer who warbles a truly awful song which stops everything in its tracks (pun intended.) Also on board: an infected terrorist who is spreading a horrific plague everywhere he goes (which is hilariously punctuated by ominous sounds and scenes of him coughing in the train's food, etc...) Lancaster as a stern army colonel and Thulin (who exists as a verbal punching bag for Lancaster) as a doctor argue over the best course of action. She fights for the rights and lives of the passengers. He sees them as casualties of an unfortunate situation. Eventually, it is decided to direct the train to an old concentration camp in Poland, but first it must traverse the title bridge---The Cassandra Crossing! The film contains some really impressive aerial camera work (the film should be viewed in widescreen) and doesn't take long to begin it's feeling of dread and suspense. Though a lot of the drama is diffused by clumsy editing, inane dialogue, agonizing bit players, lax rear projection (but not often) and lazy acting, there is enough good in the film to overcome this. Immeasurably helpful is Goldsmith's Italian-flavored, chug-chug score which wrings every ounce of excitement it can out of the visuals. It's also fun to see Loren in a film of this type, pitching in and holding her own with Harris in the action scenes. There is a level of emotion in several instances that helps this rise above some other screen flops like "When Time Ran Out" and "Avalanche". A lot happens in this film. The plague would be enough, but then there's gunplay and the weakened bridge! The situation is the film is serious and threatening and isn't relieved until almost the fade out, so a few missteps along the way can be forgiven.

Wow! Now here's a value for money film. You get an outbreak of plague on a train, heading for a rickety bridge, whose passengers include sundry thieves, arms dealers, terrorists, pretty girls and cute kids. We've got helicopters, shoot-outs, explosions, songs, heroic sacrifices, Martin Sheen as Ava Gardner's kept boyfriend, Lee Strasberg emoting nobly and Burt Lancaster as an Army General who is Not To Be Trusted. George Pan Cosmatos directs at a fair lick, the setpieces are staged with relish, there's some neat bits of dialogue (courtesy of Tom Manciewiez, one suspects) and a spectacular climax. By most definitions, this is a pretty bad, crass, melodramatic, ludicrous film, but it's more fun than many a Good Movie I can think of.

Independently made outside of the big Hollywood studios at the height of the 1970s disaster film cycle, this is actually one of the better efforts in the genre concerning a trainful of passengers dealing with both an outbreak of pneumonic plague thanks to a terrorist stowaway and a political conspiracy to cover it up by sending them all to their deaths via a condemned railway bridge.

Whilst not quite hitting the heights of The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno, both made a few years beforehand, a mixture of a good cast, good directing by George P Cosmatos (who made First Blood in the 1980s and Tombstone in the 1990s) and some really good editing helps to cover up most of the minor flaws in this film. Like the train that the film centres around, the film keeps its momentum going despite being fairly long.

Talky at times, yet it has enough well directed action in it to keep it interesting. Some decent performances by Ava Gardner, Richard Harris and Martin Sheen help too (although some of Burt Lancaster's lines seem a little convoluted) However these are all minor quibbles. Ok, the film may be showing its age now but it's still a good watch that people of most ages will enjoy.

Ah, the disaster films of the 1970s......every natural (and some man-made) disaster had its movie. Earthquakes, fires, tidal waves, floods (courtesy of a made-for-TV movie simply called Flood!), volcanoes, hurricanes, doomed airliners, ships, bombings, subway hijacks......the one hold out was tornadoes, but that was remedied two decades later in 1996. The disaster movies that remain somewhat relevant in the 21st century are actually the ones involving terrorists, hijacking, snipers, and bomb plots--movies like Rollercoaster, Black Sunday, Juggernaut, Two-Minute Warning, The Taking of Pelham 1, 2, 3, and The Cassandra Crossing. But as the case with other (more "escapist fare") disaster movies, the checklist applies. Ensemble, all-star (for the time) casts: Check. Generous running time, usually over two hours: Check. Multiple plot lines: Check. Impressive special effects (created the old-fashioned way, before CGI--models): Check. O. J. Simpson: Check. An actor from Hollywood's golden era (usually William Holden, Charlton Heston, or Burt Lancaster): Check.

In The Cassandra Crossing, the terrorists who kick off the plot are actually ecoterrorists, who attempt to to blow up a WHO-like organization in Geneva. They fail, but end up being exposed to a deadly virus, and one of them winds up on a trans-Europe train. The virus spreads and the military and other officials decide the best way to contain the outbreak is to re-route the train to a decrepit bridge in Poland, likely to collapse once the train passes over it, and the authorities can then blame the tragedy on the defective bridge. And this being a '70s disaster movie, expect multiple storylines based on the eccentrics on the train.

George P. Cosmatos, who would later direct Sly Stallone in two big hits (Rambo: First Blood Part II in 1985 and Cobra a year later), as well as the lesser-known underwater disaster film Leviathan, skillfully directs the proceedings and maintains tension throughout as we see the train hurtling toward its doom. Cosmatos also includes several effective images of the dangerous bridge taken from various angles - the audience realizes there is no way in hell the train could make it across this thing. The climax is graphic, slapping this movie with an R-rating; also somewhat unusual in that most '70s disaster movies got PGs (exceptions being the equally gritty Taking of Pelham 1,2,3, Two-Minute Warning, and Black Sunday).

You never turn to a disaster movie for heavy intellectualism, but this one is definitely one of the better and more timeless examples of the subgenre.