TRAIN OF EVENTS (1949)

Compact omnibus film from Ealing Studios opens at the finish with a fiery train crash before stepping back three days to simultaneously shuffle thru four non-integrated storylines of passengers & crew prior to boarding the doomed train.  Who will survive?  The answers won’t surprise you, but getting there is worth the trip as a trio of directors take on the four separate narratives.  Basil Dearden has the two melodramas (The Actor; The P.O.W.); Sidney Cole tackles love & marriage in The Engine Driver; then Charles Crichton holds the reins for comic relief (the usual weak link) with The Composer, teasing out a probable affair with a glam piano soloist for our composer/conductor before he discovers that Missus Knows Best.  UNFAITHFULLY YOURS it ain’t, but thanks to Valerie Hobson as the missus, it goes down smoother than it might.  Home & hearth amongst railway families sees long time engineer Jack Warner hoping for a desk job while his daughter toys with her lineman fiancé.  Head & shoulders above these are the pair of Dearden helmed mellers.  Escaped German P.O.W overstaying his British pass while English ‘wife’ steals just enough money to buy passage-for-one to Canada.  Then a debuting Peter Finch, unrecognizably young & gaunt, is a rep actor in a mid-level Shakespeare touring outfit* whose estranged wife surprises him at his rented room with unreasonable demands.  With its shockingly unexpected murder of opportunity, this compressed film noir significantly raises the stakes.  Finch alarmingly good.  A bit more toughness over the outcomes at the crash site would have lifted this film up a notch or two.  But with its tasty cast and flavorsome low-end London location shooting, it’s still intensely watchable.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Europe seems far more enamored of portmanteaux films than here in the States.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Nice touch showing these mediocre traveling players rehearsing their road trip Shakespeare in an unheated theater while wearing hats, scarves & overcoats for warmth.