The Great Train Heist (1979)

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Movie
German title The great train robbery ,
alternatively: the first great train robbery
Original title The First Great Train Robbery
Country of production United Kingdom
original language English
Publishing year 1979
length 110 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Michael Crichton
script Michael Crichton
production John Foreman
music Jerry Goldsmith
camera Geoffrey Unsworth
cut David Bretherton
occupation
synchronization

The great train robbery (alternative title: The (first) great train robbery and The first great train robbery ) is a British movie from 1979 in the style of a so-called heist or caper movie . The director Michael Crichton wrote the screenplay for the film based on his own novel .

action

1,855 are from the railways in the UK regularly 25,000 pounds in gold of London in the port of Folkestone than pay for the soldiers in the Crimean War transported.

The gentleman crook Edward Pierce is after this cargo of gold. His girlfriend Miriam, a failed actress, the pickpocket and key specialist Agar - the best key expert in England - and Edward's coachman Barlow are his accomplices. The coup is not that easy to carry out: Safes on a moving train have never been cracked before. In addition, Scotland Yard got wind of the plans after an unsuccessful attempt and tightened the security measures of the mail car.

Most of the film's plot consists of the tricky obtaining of the four different keys to the safe, all of which are kept in different places by different people. Theft asleep , trickery and a meticulously planned break- in into the station master's office lead to success. The goal is to duplicate the keys without being discovered.

In order to find out where the first key is stored, Edward must first infiltrate the snobbish family of a senior bank clerk as a candidate for marriage and penetrate his wine cellar unnoticed . In order to get the second key, which a banker always wears around his neck, Edward lures it into a brothel with the help of his girlfriend so that the crooks can first get the key long enough to carry out the wax print and then with a fake raid to drive the banker away again before intercourse. Obtaining the last two keys poses special challenges. For this, the masterful facade climber “Clean Willy” , who is currently incarcerated in Newgate prison , is motivated to break out so that he can help Agar break into the heavily guarded station office.

After "Clean Willy" was caught for an insignificant theft, however, he reveals the general interest of the crooks at the station in the police for fear of the notorious Newgate prison in London. At a nightly meeting between Edward and Willy at the Crystal Palace , the police try to arrest Edward. However, he is suspicious and leaves the scene. Clean Willy is later murdered by Barlow for this betrayal.

Since the police have again increased the security measures of the baggage car , the make-up agar is smuggled into a coffin as a supposed cholera corpse. An enclosed dead cat provides the right smell. Agar breaks the safe with the help of the counterfeit keys. However, the wagons were locked in London and will only be reopened in Folkestone. So the gold cannot be thrown out of the car. Edward gets on the train as a normal passenger , then walks over the roof of the train to the baggage car. He opens it from the outside, and the two men throw the gold outside, where it is picked up in a carriage by their faithful accomplices. Pierce closes the car door from the outside again and shimmy back to his compartment of the passenger car . Agar lies down in the coffin again.

After the coup was successful and no one noticed anything because the gold was exchanged for lead sticks , Edward is arrested in Folkestone anyway because one of the police officers from the "Clean Willy" affair recognizes him and he is conspicuous because of his torn coat. When put on trial, Edward is celebrated on the one hand by the citizens while he enrages bankers, railway officials and the judge with his daring and brazen honesty. In the final scene, however, Edward manages to escape in a captured prison carriage through his accomplices, right in front of the court.

backgrounds

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  • The film depicts the crooks as the popular characters, there are a number of comedic interludes, it is thus in the tradition of the caper movies .
  • In the last third of the film, Sean Connery had to run from the baggage car forward on the roof of the train. The train went about 90 km / h, 30 more than planned. Connery performed the stunt himself.
  • For the filming of the first major train robbery, a train was recreated in the style of the time. But the steam locomotive did not manage to bring the train to a reasonable speed. A diesel locomotive was therefore "disguised" as a baggage car and hung behind the steam locomotive. A fire in the train station occurred when diesel fuel got onto the rails during filming and was set on fire by the sparks from the steam locomotive.
  • The great train robbery tries to depict the Victorian era as accurately as possible. It was filmed in Ireland , however , and the final scene shows Parliament Square at Trinity College in Dublin . The budget of the film was at six million US dollars even then for an opulent equipment film quite low.
  • The story is based on a real train robbery in 1855, but the details have been changed: the stolen sum was only 12,000 pounds, the keys were housed in the station offices of London and Folkestone, there was no escape from anyone involved.
  • The film was released in the UK under the title The First Great Train Robbery , because the Great Train Robbery is the name given to the robbery of a mail train in 1963.
  • Was the subtitle of the movie poster "Never have so few taken so much from so many" ( Never have so taken a few so much by so many ) - a parody of a speech by Winston Churchill titled Never was so much owed by so many to so few (“Never had so many owed so much to so few”) that he had held during World War II .

synchronization

The German synchronic processing originated in 1979.

role actor Voice actor
Edward Pierce Sean Connery Gert Günther Hoffmann
Robert Agar Donald Sutherland Charles Brewer
Miriam Lesley-Anne Down Helga Trümper
Henry Fowler Malcolm Terris Hans Korte
Judge André Morell Walter Reichelt
Prosecutor Donald Churchill Holger Hagen
Prison chaplain Cecil Nash Gunnar Möller
Burgess Michael Elphick Gernot Duda
Baggage car conductors Joe Cahill Gernot Duda

Reviews

  • Lexicon of the international film : "Crook comedy in the guise of a costume film, filmed delicately, but staged a bit lengthy except for the furious final part."
  • Vincent Canby reviews the film in the New York Times on February 2, 1979. The director, script and performance are characterized by intelligence, the film evokes a detailed picture of the Victorian era and is characterized by fantastic action scenes and comedy.
  • Even Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times praised especially the authentic representation of Victorian living conditions in all the details. The film critic found the scene in which Donald Sutherland is smuggled onto the train as a corpse, the action scene on the roof of the train and the bed scene of Sean Connery with Lesley-Anne Down particularly noteworthy.
  • The British Time Out London Magazine takes a more critical view of the film: Although there are some remarkable sequences to be seen, Crichton could never decide whether the film should be a comedy or a thriller, and so he was unable to achieve both goals.

Awards

The film won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Picture in 1980 . Cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth , who died shortly after filming, was nominated in 1979 for the Best Cinematography Award from the British Society of Cinematographers .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thomas Bräutigam : Stars and their German voices. Lexicon of voice actors . Schüren, Marburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-89472-627-0 , p. 322
  2. ↑ The Great Railway Robbery in the German synchronous file ; Retrieved November 3, 2009
  3. ↑ The great train robbery . In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  4. ↑ Peter Andrews: The Great Train Robbery . In: The New York Times . June 22, 1975 ( Online at nytimes.com ).
  5. ↑ Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times
  6. ↑ Time Out London Magazine on The Great Train Robbery