Do you love traveling by train, particularly on Deutsche Bahn (DB)? Enjoying the landscape passing by in front of the window, the exciting question of who you will meet in the next seat, the microcosm of the train car? Then we have something for you: Five films that celebrate train travel. Some films presented in this post go way back in history but you will surely appreciate watching it over again.
“Girl on the Train” (2016) von Tate Taylor
What is hidden behind the facades of the houses that pass by the train window? Almost everyone has asked themselves this question while traveling by train. In the bestseller film “Girl on the Train” the alcoholic Rachel (Emily Blunt) wants to know exactly. Every day she takes the train from the suburbs to Manhattan, even though she has long since lost her job there. Instead, she observes her old house on the edge of the train tracks, where her ex lives with his new girlfriend – and imagines the perfect life of the couple Megan and Scott, who live a few doors down. When she learns that Megan has been reported missing, Rachel goes on a search for clues. The viewer can hardly bear how her life gets more and more out of control, and still watches her spellbound.
“Night Train to Lisbon” (2013) by Bille August
Night Train! The very word triggers longings. The jerking of the car, freshly made beds, the shadows of the landscapes that seem mysterious in their strangeness. Every station has a stage in the square of the train window, a journey like a slide show, somewhat nostalgic and sometimes melancholy. Just like the mood in the film “Night Train to Lisbon” based on Pascal Mercier’s bestseller, in which a red coat gets everything going. It belongs to a young woman whom the teacher Raimund Gregorius (played by Jeremy Irons) prevents from suicide. The woman disappears, leaving her coat with a book and a train ticket. For the teacher, who prefers to play chess against himself in his apartment, the encounter is a sign to break out. At the station, he hopes to see the woman again, but when she does not appear, he decides to use the ticket himself and escape from everyday life. In Lisbon, he traces the author of the book he has found – and in the process comes across the secret of the woman whose life he saved. With thoughtful tones, the film describes a man’s departure into a new life and elegantly touches on the great philosophical questions about the meaning of existence.
“Mystery Train” (1989) by Jim Jarmusch
The episode film by Jim Jarmusch is a good movie. In other words: Not much happens, but you can’t get enough of the individual scenes that cameraman Robby Müller, also known as “Master of Light”, has staged a painting by Edward Hopper. The story: A train travels to Memphis, Tennessee, with a couple of Japanese tourists on board. The two checked in at the shabby Arcade Hotel and meet an Italian woman who has to bring her husband’s body home, and a British woman, played by Joe Strummer from The Clash, who has lost his job and girlfriend and therefore wants to kill himself. The train only plays a minor role but serves as a symbol of how chance encounters can shape life.
“Some Like It Hot” (1959) by Billy Wilder
Everyone is talking at the same time, hardly anyone is sitting in their seat and something is always flying through the air. For those who appreciate the feeling of a school trip by train, this classic by Billy Wilder is just the thing. A ladies’ band is traveling here, but their energy is in no way inferior to that of a school class. On the run from a Chicago gang boss, musicians Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (Jack Lemmon) have to go into hiding, their only refuge: a female jazz band. Two things are strictly forbidden in this: alcohol and men. So the two dress up as women and join the band as Josephine and Daphne. On the train ride to a concert in Florida, they suddenly fall in love with the singer Sugar (Marilyn Monroe).
“Murder on the Orient Express” (1974) by Sidney Lumet
Who is the man with the twisted mustache on the foursome across the street? And the couple behind them who whispers all the time, aren’t they up to something? Do you sometimes feel like a commissioner analyzing your fellow passengers on train journeys? In 1934 Agatha Christie wrote the appropriate novel for this feeling. A train, the Orient Express, on the way from Istanbul to Calais, a murder and a group of people, one of whom must be the murderer. Also on board: the Belgian private detective Hercule Poirot, who wants to have the perpetrator unmasked by the destination station. Sidney Lumet turned the novel into an exciting and entertaining film. Whether his interpretation of the 1974 novel.
