The Battle of the Rails (La Bataille du Rail) reviews
Review by on 21 Sep 2010
Frenchmen on bicycles wearing berets, swigging wine and sabotaging their transport system? Plus ça change, you might say. However, in THE BATTLE OF THE RAILS (LE BATTAILLE DU RAIL) it’s for a noble cause, as the film charts the resistance movement of the French railwaymen in the dying days of World War II, and their attempts to – quite literally – derail the German occupation. Perhaps not unexpectedly, the film won the 1946 Prix International du Jury at the Cannes Film Festival, a piece of post-war victory propaganda shot in a naturalistic style that contrasts with the symbolism and allegory of the films that came before it, made during the Occupation. Despite its initially slow pace, the tension of the film grows and draws you in, making absorbing viewing even for a modern audience used to more dramatic action and sophisticated special effects. The details of the film are by turns tragic then comic: a young railway lad clutching the hand of the man next to him as they are put against the wall to be shot; the cliché of an accordian tumbling down the embankment after the derailed train, still honking out its chords. Released only a year after the end of the war, the raw scars of the events depicted are still apparent; while the caricature of the German officer with his monocle and exaggerated hand-gestures could have come straight out of a wartime propaganda poster. However, while the film is undeniably a relic of its time, it is more than an interesting piece of social history and definitely worth watching in its own right.
Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough
Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough
Review by on 21 Sep 2010
This film has to be viewed (pun intended) in its immediate post-war context, arising out of the Allies' understandable desire to tell how they defeated Axis forces, liberating France in the process. In other words, although great fun, it is still propaganda, and should bear in mind that those who win have written history.
Three men talked afterwards, two at length (the third agreed with the above); one had even been present when the film opened, complete with anguish from that first Paris audience at the firing-squad [misleadingly, perhaps (I did not catch the French), those killed were described as 'hostages' when rounded up], boos for the Germans, and cheers for the saboteurs' successes.
(Such responses form what this film was about, rather than factual accuracy, and we had a consensus of wanting to learn more about how the film was made. I should also like to know how early and by whom the English title was given, as I am not convinced by how 'bataille' is rendered.)
One result of seeing this as such 'a drama with a message' is that one must doubt whether the Resistance would really have taken on (with such an outcome) an armoured convoy with no air support - members of the underground were already passing information to the Allies, so it would have been natural, as happened later, to line it up as 'a sitting duck', rather than going solo.
Yet that would have two consequences: it would not only have stolen thunder from the remaining action, and, unless we are supposed to imagine that there was some advantage to the Allies in overlooking any reports that were made (or that they had, indeed, been 'lost in the fog of war'), we would not have had the heroism of the resulting scenes.
The film focuses almost exclusively on the railwaymen, unrealistic though it may be to see them largely in isolation from the rest of 'the war effort', both in France and across the English Channel. That despite the fact that much of the film's action (in terms of time given over to it) is in the days after Normandy, and that it relies on caricaturing the Germans as both killers and, at the same time, gullible and capable of being (relatively) easily outwitted time and again. (I may be mistaken, but the pronunciation of the German officers and officials made them sound suspiciously (and plausibly) as though they were not speaking their own language.)
In that sense of resourcefulness lies much deliberate humour in this film, as well as in showing the bravery and risk-taking of those who worked, at clear risk to their lives, to hasten liberation and the end of the war. However, I just could not help sparing a thought for how those who collaborated (or, often enough, were thought to have done so) with the Nazi forces of occupation were treated, but that is the stuff of another film, and obviously outside the scope of this review.
Three men talked afterwards, two at length (the third agreed with the above); one had even been present when the film opened, complete with anguish from that first Paris audience at the firing-squad [misleadingly, perhaps (I did not catch the French), those killed were described as 'hostages' when rounded up], boos for the Germans, and cheers for the saboteurs' successes.
(Such responses form what this film was about, rather than factual accuracy, and we had a consensus of wanting to learn more about how the film was made. I should also like to know how early and by whom the English title was given, as I am not convinced by how 'bataille' is rendered.)
One result of seeing this as such 'a drama with a message' is that one must doubt whether the Resistance would really have taken on (with such an outcome) an armoured convoy with no air support - members of the underground were already passing information to the Allies, so it would have been natural, as happened later, to line it up as 'a sitting duck', rather than going solo.
Yet that would have two consequences: it would not only have stolen thunder from the remaining action, and, unless we are supposed to imagine that there was some advantage to the Allies in overlooking any reports that were made (or that they had, indeed, been 'lost in the fog of war'), we would not have had the heroism of the resulting scenes.
The film focuses almost exclusively on the railwaymen, unrealistic though it may be to see them largely in isolation from the rest of 'the war effort', both in France and across the English Channel. That despite the fact that much of the film's action (in terms of time given over to it) is in the days after Normandy, and that it relies on caricaturing the Germans as both killers and, at the same time, gullible and capable of being (relatively) easily outwitted time and again. (I may be mistaken, but the pronunciation of the German officers and officials made them sound suspiciously (and plausibly) as though they were not speaking their own language.)
In that sense of resourcefulness lies much deliberate humour in this film, as well as in showing the bravery and risk-taking of those who worked, at clear risk to their lives, to hasten liberation and the end of the war. However, I just could not help sparing a thought for how those who collaborated (or, often enough, were thought to have done so) with the Nazi forces of occupation were treated, but that is the stuff of another film, and obviously outside the scope of this review.
Film details
The Battle of the Rails (La Bataille du Rail)
REVIVALS
Director: Rene Clement
France, 1946.
85 mins. with English subtitles.
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