Trans-Europ-Express

As a big fan of Jean-Louis Trintignant, I couldn't really pass this up. Alain Robbe-Grillet is always bound to do something meta, so this could only be some sort of film about film, and it is. There is also a story, but the point seems to be to talk about the construction of stories. Definitely worth watching once.

I would like to see someone produce a spoiler on this garbage (and, incidentally, probably all that robbe-grillet filmed - i just picked this one as a representative of all). This is BS-artistry pure. Unfortunately there is Money in art and in film, if you can get away with it. You need some Beautiful women to take there cloths off, of course, and a good cinematographer helps a lot as well. The Pictures are well lit and what you see of the women isn't bad - but that's it. No original thought here, in fact no thought whatsoever. That's why BS-artists are BS-artists - they basically have nothing to say about anything. There heads are a black hole from which nothing of value can escape. Robbe-Grillet and others of his ilk give film a bad name. Trintignant could be good - he proved that in other films. Here, however, he was taken in by a con-man, which is the essence of a BS-artist.

Trans-Europ-Express (1966) was written and directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet.

The plot of the movie is that a producer, director, and assistant are traveling from Paris to Antwerp. On the train, they amuse themselves by inventing a movie that would start off on a train from Paris to Antwerp, and continue from that point.

The movie we see is the movie they are inventing as they travel. Jean-Louis Trintignant stars in this invented movie. As always, he has one expression--blank.

The incomparable Marie-France Pisier stars in the movie as well. Apparently, no one had to work very hard to convince Marie-France to appear topless or participate in B&D. (Of course, we are expected to accept this, because this wasn't a real movie. It was just a movie that was being invented on a train.)

The concept was interesting, but too much of it was actually about drug drops, keys to lockers in train stations, etc. Granted, it was interspersed with visually more interesting scenes, but it really wasn't a great movie.

Trans-Europ-Express has a decent IMDb rating of 7.1. I didn't think it was that good, and rated it 6.

On board the TEE is 'Elias' (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a paranoid drug dealer on his way from Paris to Antwerp. And in another compartment are his creators; film-makers having a script meeting from which Elias emerges. It's a typical Robbe-Grillet construct, honed from nouveau roman experiments. The purpose of which, as he puts it, is to "assist change by throwing out any techniques which try to impose order or a particular interpretation on events". The result in this case is a parallel universe, on one hand Elias trying to act like a drug dealer and on the other, proceeding according to the whims of his creators. In effect, it becomes a real-time replay of the writing and editing process,

There are those who might regard this as typical French pretension, full of intellectual conceit (it was banned in England for many years), but it's playful, witty and very accessible thanks to a droll script and the great Jean-Louis. And then there's the beautiful Marie-France Pisier with her large inquisitive eyes. She makes an unlikely hooker, but is she? The scriptwriter on the train is played by Robbe-Grillet himself and so establishing that he really is making it up as he goes along. It's beautifully shot in crisp b&w, perfectly capturing the zeitgeist. It would be another twelve years before Kraftwerk created their musical homage to the great train, but it says something about both forms that it would have made the perfect soundtrack.

Director Alain Robbe-Grillet certainly polarises opinion. Everything from 'genius' to 'BS-artist'! Many reviews I have read are just as pretentious as his films are accused of being. As a leading figure of the 'Nouveau Roman' school it was a natural progression to the medium of film where he could portray the 'natural disorder of things' and reach a far wider audience. His unconventional structure suits this film perfectly as the director, playing himself, is literally making it up as he goes along whilst sitting on a train. In this he also has the services of two charismatic leads, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Marie -France Pisier plus Willy Kurant's splendid camera work. Many found the erotic images discomforting and although the bondage scenes in this are more M&S than S&M they were considered shocking enough in the mid-1960's to keep the film off British screens for quite a few years. Robbe-Grillet's film is easily his most accessible and works wonderfully as Film Noir spoof. It is great fun and should not be taken too seriously.