Trans-Europ-Express (film)

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Movie
German title Trans-Europ-Express
Original title Trans-Europ-Express
Country of production France
Belgium
original language French
Publishing year 1966
length 94 minutes
Age rating FSK 18
Rod
Director Alain Robbe-Grillet
script Alain Robbe-Grillet
production Samy Halfon
music Michel Fano after Giuseppe Verdi
camera Willy Kurant
cut Bob Wade
occupation

Trans-Europ-Express is a surrealist Franco-Belgian fictional film in black and white by the French multi-talent Alain Robbe-Grillet from 1966. He also wrote the script. The leading roles are cast with himself as well as with Jean-Louis Trintignant , Marie-France Pisier , Christian Barbier and Charles Millot . The work was first shown in cinemas in German-speaking countries on June 29, 1967.

content

In one of the comfortable compartments of the Trans-Europ-Express , which is just leaving Paris, a film producer, a screenwriter and a script girl have settled down. “Good environment for a detective film,” says one, “murder, drug smuggling”. Another agrees. Before you get bored, you'd better spin a crime story. The screenwriter - Robbe-Grillet plays him - improvises a story that is presented synchronously: Shortly before the Trans-Europ-Express leaves the Paris-Nord train station , two suspicious bearded individuals exchange their suitcases. But even before leaving, the one bearded man is put in his compartment by the criminal police. He then drops a bomb, detonates, and the camera pans to the scrap heap of a railway cemetery.

While the team of authors is still discussing how to begin a finer story with more potential for continuation, a young man looks for a place and briefly looks into the compartment. Robbe-Grillet is electrified: Wasn't that Jean-Louis Trintignant, the ideal cast for the leading role? In the story he would be called Elias. So Elias walks through Paris, buys a suitcase, swaps suitcases with that of a “person” at the Paris-Nord train station and boarded the Trans-Europ-Express to Antwerp . According to the author's wishes, he is traveling on behalf of a drug smugglers' gang and is supposed to bring "material" from Antwerp to Paris.

Repeatedly interrupted by objections and arguments from his two fellow travelers, Robbe-Grillet spins his crime story. The improvised story is presented; Corrections are played back immediately. If the author gets caught in illogical dead ends, the last sequences are simply deleted. You start again somewhere and give the course of action a new direction. New people are introduced and immediately discarded as unusable.

criticism

The lexicon of international film comes to the conclusion that the film contains an intellectual game of thought and confusion that arranges literary and cinematic narrative fragments into complex structures.

The Protestant Film Observer draws the following conclusion: Filmmakers traveling on the Trans-Europ-Express improvise the story of a drug smuggling. Your ideas are immediately translated into feature film sequences, which, often interrupted and corrected, are juxtaposed to create a confusing picture. The pretty idea is given away under value. Too little wit and imagination have been invested. Still worth seeing as an attempt for interested adults.

Filmtipps.at judge: "Trans-Europ-Express" is a small, low-budget film [...]. And even if you look at the limited means of the film, this small, almost forgotten masterpiece is bursting with charm, fantasy and aesthetics. With his second film of his own, the scriptwriter [...] proves that with enough creativity you can conjure up a surreal erotic thriller comedy that is still trend-setting today from practically nothing. Rating: 9 out of 10 unexpected twists and turns.

Web link

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Source: Evangelischer Filmbeobachter , Evangelischer Presseverband München, Review No. 280/1967, pp. 367–368
  2. ↑ Lexikon des Internationale Films, rororo-Taschenbuch No. 6322 (1988), p. 3875
  3. ↑ http://www.filmtipps.at/kritiken/Trans_Europ_Express/