There is something undeniably cinematic about the locomotive which appeared in the first-ever celluloid in 1896. When it comes to train travel, you never know who might be on board … and therein lays both its mystery and its thrill.
Here we revisit two of the more successful WWII movie moments set on train tracks – The Train and Von Ryan’s Express.

The Train

The Train is a 1964 American war film directed by John Frankenheimer. The story documents the works of art placed in storage that had been looted by the Germans from French museums and private art collections during World War II.
The film stars Burt Lancaster, one of Hollywood’s all-time great tough guys, and the hero of The Train. Also starring Paul Scofield and Jeanne Moreau.
Set in August 1944, it sets French Resistance-member Paul Labiche (Lancaster) against German Colonel Franz von Waldheim (Scofield), who is attempting to move stolen art masterpieces by train to Germany.

What follows is a film full of speeding locomotives, strafing planes, explosions, crashes, machine-gun fights, dynamite, unsimulated leaps and dives (Lancaster’s career began as a circus acrobat) and Germans yelling, “Schnell!”

After the works chosen by Waldheim are removed from the Jeu de Paume Museum, curator Mademoiselle Villard seeks help from the French Resistance. Given the imminent liberation of Paris by the Allies, they need only delay the train for a few days, but it is a dangerous operation and must be done in a way that does not risk damaging the priceless cargo.

Resistance cell leader and SNCF (SNCF, “French National Railway Company”)

area inspector Paul Labiche initially rejects the plan, telling Mlle. Villard and senior Resistance leader Spinet, “I won’t waste lives on paintings”; but he has a change of heart after a cantankerous elderly engineer, Papa Boule, is executed for trying to sabotage the train on his own. After that sacrifice, Labiche joins his Resistance teammates Didont and Pesquet, who have been organizing their own plan to stop the train with the help of other SNCF Resistance members. They devise an elaborate ruse to reroute the train, temporarily changing railway station signage to make it appear to the German escort as if they are heading to Germany when they have actually turned back toward Paris. They then arrange a double collision in the small town of Rive-Reine that will block the train without risking the cargo. Labiche, although shot in the leg, escapes on foot with the help of the widowed owner of a Rive-Reine hotel, Christine, while other Resistance members involved in the plot are executed.
The night after the collision, Labiche and Didont meet Spinet again, along with young Robert and plan to paint the tops of three wagons white to warn off Allied aircraft from bombing the art train. Robert recruits railroad workers and friends of his Uncle Jacques from nearby Montmirail, but the marking attempt is discovered, and Robert and Didont are both killed.
Now working alone, Labiche continues to delay the train after the tracks are cleared, to the mounting rage of von Waldheim. Finally, Labiche manages to derail the train without endangering civilian hostages that the colonel has placed on the locomotive to prevent it being blown up.
Von Waldheim flags down a retreating army convoy and learns that a French armoured division is not far behind. The colonel orders the train unloaded and attempts to commandeer the trucks, but the officer in charge refuses to obey his orders. The train’s small German contingent kills the hostages and joins the retreating convoy.
Von Waldheim remains behind with the abandoned train. Crates are strewn everywhere between the track and the road, labelled with the names of famous artists. Labiche appears and the colonel castigates him for having no real interest in the art he has saved: “Does it please you, Labiche? You feel a sense of excitement at just being near them? A painting means as much to you as a string of pearls to an ape. You won by sheer luck. You stopped me without knowing what you were doing or why…. You are nothing Labiche, a lump of flesh. The paintings are mine. They always will be. Beauty belongs to the man who can appreciate it. They will always belong to me, or a man like me. Now, this minute, you couldn’t tell me why you did what you did.”
In response, Labiche turns and looks at the murdered hostages. Then, without a word, he turns back to von Waldheim and machine guns him down. Afterwards he limps away, leaving the corpses and the art treasures where they lie.
Lancaster mastered all the tasks connected with railroad engineering and performed most of his own demanding stunts. As a result, the movie became tougher, longer and far more expensive and more talkative. Released in the wake of the same studio’s The Great Escape, it was unfortunately overshadowed.
The Train is based on factual 1961 book Le front de l’art by Rose Valland, the art historian at the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume, who documented the works of art placed in storage there that had been looted by the Germans from museums and private art collections throughout France and were being sorted for shipment to Germany in World War II.
A story so good, Burt Lancaster told it 50 years ago. The Monuments Men is a 2014 film directed by George Clooney. The film stars an ensemble cast including Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban, Hugh Bonneville, and Cate Blanchett.
The film is loosely based on the non-fiction book The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History by Robert M. Edsel and Bret Witter. It follows an Allied group from the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program that is given the task of finding and saving pieces of art and other culturally important items before Nazis destroy or steal them, during World War II.

Von Ryan’s Express

Von Ryan’s Express is a 1965 World War II adventure film directed by Mark Robson and starring Frank Sinatra and Trevor Howard.
The screenplay concerns a group of Allied prisoners of war who conduct a daring escape by hijacking a freight train and fleeing through German-occupied Italy to Switzerland. Based on the novel by David Westheimer, the film changes several aspects of the novel, most notably the ending, which is considerably more upbeat in the book. Financially, it became one of Sinatra’s most successful films.
Colonel Joseph Ryan is a USAAF P-38 pilot who is shot down over Italy. He is taken to a POW camp, run by the cruel Major Basilio Battaglia. Ryan insists that Battaglia salute him as a superior officer, which is reluctantly translated by the sympathetic second-in-command, Captain Vittorio Oriani. British prisoners of the 9th Fusiliers mainly populate the camp. The previous Allied commanding officer, which was British, has recently died, due to being placed in the “sweat box” as punishment for hitting Battaglia with a stick. When Ryan arrives in camp, Major Eric Fincham is the senior British officer. Ryan, being senior, assumes command.
Ryan, aware that the Allies are close to liberating Italy, is in no mood to support Fincham’s escape attempts. There are a few Americans in the camp and when Fincham catches them trying to get medicines being hoarded in secret for escape attempts, Ryan orders Fincham to start distributing the medicines to some of the personnel who are suffering serious illness.
Ryan later reveals several of the prisoners’ escape attempts, infuriating Fincham and the British soldiers. When Battaglia refuses to improve camp conditions, Ryan orders the prisoners to strip and burn their filthy clothes, forcing Battaglia to issue new ones. Battaglia throws Ryan into the sweatbox as punishment.
After hearing of the Italian surrender, the guards flee. The British promptly put Battaglia on trial as a war criminal, and allow Oriani to defend him. Battaglia portrays himself as a broken man who has repudiated fascism. Ryan orders him to not be executed, but instead, to be put in the sweatbox.
A German fighter plane overflies the camp, forcing Ryan and the men to head out across the Italian countryside to freedom. After several days the escapees rest within a deserted fortress. Oriani moves forward in an attempt to contact Allied forces. In the morning, the Germans recapture the prisoners. Fincham thinks Oriani has betrayed them. When the POWs are put on a train, they find a severely battered Oriani in the prisoner carriage. They realize Battaglia betrayed them. The Germans shoot all the sick prisoners. Fincham blames Ryan for letting Battaglia live. The train travels to Rome, where a German officer, Major von Klemment, takes command.
Ryan uses a metal bar to pry up the floorboards of the car. That night, when the train stops, Ryan, Fincham, and Lieutenant Orde sneak out from underneath the train and kill several of the guards, then free a carload of POWs, who help them kill the remaining guards. Ryan and Fincham capture von Klemment and his mistress, Gabriella. As the train moves out, another train follows. Von Klemment reveals that the second train is carrying German troops and is on the same schedule. Further, von Klemment is to receive orders at each railway station. A German-speaking Allied chaplain, Captain Costanzo, is enlisted to impersonate the German commander to ensure their passage through the next station in Florence.

Through the documents received in Florence, they learn that both trains are headed towards Innsbruck, Austria. Through trickery, the prisoners switch their train onto a different line at Bologna. The troop train continues on toward Innsbruck. Von Klemment and Gabriella are kept bound and gagged, but Gabriella uses a shard of glass to sever their bonds. At a stop, von Klemment and Gabriella escape, killing Orde. Ryan shoots both.

Meanwhile, Waffen-SS troops, led by Colonel Gortz, have discovered the ruse. The prisoners put the train on a siding, but discover that it leads to a German facility, which is subsequently bombed by Allied aircraft. The train races through, bombs exploding everywhere. Several cars catch fire, and several men are wounded. After they leave, the Italian engineer and Oriani disable the signals at one signal box, disabling the station’s track displays and confusing the Germans. The prisoners then reroute the train to neutral Switzerland through manual switching.

Gortz and his troops pursue them. As the Alps appear, German aircraft attacks the prisoner train. Rocket fire causes boulders to fall and destroy a section of track. The POWs replace the damaged rail as the SS race up from behind. Ryan, Fincham, and others hold off the Germans, but many are killed in the battle including Bostick.
The prisoner train moves out as the men run for the rear platform with the Germans in pursuit. Fincham and Corporal Giannini and those who survived makes it and reaches back for Ryan’s outstretched hand, but Ryan is gunned down by Gortz just as the train crosses into Switzerland.
The novel was published in 1963. The novelist David Westheimer had been a POW during World War II. He witnessed the bombing of Bolzano in 1943 from a boxcar.
When “Von Ryan’s Express” was first published, critics generally remarked that it would make a rip roaring film. They could just see, they said, its vivid story of a prisoner-of-war escape in Italy during the last war roaring noisily across the wide screen.

Other notable WWII train films:

Schindler’s List (1993)

Closely Watched Trains (1966)

The Great Escape (1963)

Berlin Express (1948)

La Bastille Du Rail (1946)
Night train to Munich (1940)

Source: en.wikipedia.org, www.railserve.com and www.ew.com