#523: REED, Carol: Night Train To Munich (1940)
REED, Carol (United Kingdom)
Commentary
None.
Video conversation
Night Train To Munich [1940]
Spine #523
DVD
DVD
Carol Reed's Night Train to Munich is a twisting, turning, cloak-and-dagger delight, combining comedy, romance, and thrills with the greatest of ease. Paced like an out-of-control locomotive, Night Train takes viewers on a World War II-era journey from Prague to England to the Swiss Alps, as Nazis pursue a Czech scientist and his daughter (Margaret Lockwood), who are being aided by a debonair British undercover agent, played by Rex Harrison. This captivating, long-overlooked adventure — which features Paul Henreid and a clever screenplay by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat, best known for writing Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes — is a deftly concocted spy game that could give the master of suspense a run for his money.
90 minutes
Black & White
Black & White
Monaural
1:33:1 aspect ratio
Criterion Release 2010
Director/Writers
Based on an original story by Gordon Wellesley.
Screenplay by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder.
Carol Reed was 33 when he directed Night Train to Munich.
Other Reed films in the Collection:
#754: Odd Man Out (1947)
#357: The Fallen Idol (1948)
#64: The Third Man (1949)
The Film
Other Reed films in the Collection:
#754: Odd Man Out (1947)
#357: The Fallen Idol (1948)
#64: The Third Man (1949)
The Film
Listen!
Can you hear the rustling of the rumpled leaves of history fluttering in the wind? It is 1940 — after Germany has declared war against England and France, but before France has been occupied.
Hitler has already gobbled up Czechoslovakia, and our story concerns a Czech scientist and his daughter.
**
Though not really a sequel to The Lady Vanishes (1938 [Spine #3]), the films have much in common — especially the screenwriters, Gilliat and Launder. Also in common are the wisecracking delightful English cricket afficianados, Charters (Basil Radford) and Caldicott (Naunton Wayne) — here playing much larger roles than in the earlier Hitchcock film.
Hitch would have most likely been given this assignment had he not moved to America, where he made Rebecca (1940 [Spine #135]); as it is, we get Reed, whose direction is superb.
Margaret Lockwood returns from The Lady Vanishes as Anna Bomasch in her eighth and final film for Reed. She is really just a prop for the divided attentions of Karl Marsen (Paul Henreid) and Gus Bennett (Rex Harrison) — both men are electric here …
The conceit here is that — eventually — everyone is playing a role of one sort or another. The screenwriters leave it to the viewer to decode the dialogue:
ANNA
“After all, we should have our freedom.”
AXEL, her father (James Harcourt)
“I know, my dear. But, freedom is strangely interpreted in this country.”
GUS
“I do not agree with you, Herr Bomasch. Freedom in Germany is a great advance on freedom elsewhere. It’s properly organized and controlled by the state.”
Film Rating (0-60):
The Booklet
Sixteen-page booklet featuring an essay by film critic Philip Kemp.
54
The ExtrasThe Booklet
Sixteen-page booklet featuring an essay by film critic Philip Kemp.
“Night Train to Munich’s chief weakness is the blatantly bargain-basement model work, especially the cliff-hanging finale involving cable cars in the Swiss Alps. Reed himself was embarrassed by it: ‘I remember at the time thinking that the mountains looked like ice cream. But the war was on, Gainsborough had a very small stage — and it was a very bad model.’ Still, this perhaps adds to the film’s period charm, and certainly doesn’t detract from one’s enjoyment of Night Train to Munich as a pacy, lively comedy-thriller, as well as an intriguing glimpse into the British psyche in the opening months of World War II. Reed would next return to a wartime subject in The Way Ahead (1944) — not surprisingly, by this stage of the war, an altogether more serious view of the conflict — and to the thriller genre in two of his finest films, Odd Man Out (1947 [Spine #754]) and The Third Man (1949 [Spine #64]), for which Night Train to Munich can be seen as a lighthearted preparatory sketch.”
Commentary
None.
Video conversation
Between film scholars Peter Evans and Bruce Babington about director Reed, screenwriters Launder and Gilliat, and the social and political climate in which Night Train to Munich was made.
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