FEATURE: Transported: The Art of the Train on Film

No form of transportation has been portrayed more romantically by the cinema than the train. In The General, an old locomotive is Buster Keaton’s great love and its engine literally drives the plot forwards, staging exciting stunts along the way. In Brief Encounter a train station is the setting for an illicit love affair, whilst   Casablanca sees Humphrey Bogart’s journey associated with sadness at the parting of ways. Trains represent a happier goodbye in this year’s Cemetery Junction, in which rail travel allowed a young couple to shake off a small town and embark on a life of adventure. In Hithcock, trains are frequently closed spaces that offer no escape. Watch any Western and the railroad comes to represent  something else entirely.

It is the cinema’s great fascination with the train, and all that it can represent, that has led Rebekah Polding and Nick Bradshaw to stage something of a celebration as part of this year’s Festival. TRANSPORTED is a collection of new and old films which relate in some way to the subject. Rebekah explained the origins of their unique programme: “We were talking with Festival Director Tony Jones about how much we all loved Geoffrey Jones’ masterpiece, Snow (screening as part of MOVIES BESIDE THE MUSEUM: THE RHYTHM OF THE TRACKS on Sunday 19 September), and that lead us to thinking about how great trains look on film.”

They have drawn inspiration from a broad range of sources here too, looking at all the different aspects of the filmic representation of trains: “we’ve got films of tracks, of steam, of wheels rushing round, films from London, New York and Hanoi (and East Anglia!), early silent footage to contemporary graphics. It’s all about the look and feel of
trains, the power and speed and mechanics on the one hand, the space of the journey on the other.“

It is on this attempt to combine the earliest films with the most contemporary that Nick emphasises most: “One film gave us the chance to take this history of trains on film forward – STATIONARY, by Brian McClave and Gavin Peacock, is an echo of the Lumiere brothers’ Arrival of A Train At La Ciotat, one of the very first movies  ever made, in that the technology (they are using 3D timelapse) is a marvel and will draw people in by itself.”

But whilst the promise of 3D timelapse photography is indeed intriguing, the most eagerly anticipated film shown as part of the event is undoubtedly Sarah Turner’s PERESTROIKA, which plays following a sell out run at the ICA this month, after earning rave reviews.

Better still, the screening (at the Arts Picturehouse on Tuesday 21 September) will be followed by a discussion with the filmmaker about her work and, of course, the subject of trains at the movies. It is a subject that Rebekah has clearly not yet had enough of just yet: “We would really love to do a whole festival devoted to trains… this programme is a good start though!”
One final thing Rebekah was keen to impart to me is that the TRANSPORTED programme is not restricted to serious, chin-stroking fare. In fact, there is stuff here for all the family, with a programme aimed at children running on Saturday.

ROBERT BEAMES

Transported: The Art of the Train on Film continues with Movies Besides the Museum at the Fitzwilliam Museum on Sunday 19 September