Trans-Europ-Express

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.

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.

The films of Alain Robbe-Grillet may be clever, intellectually stimulating and effective but they can also be over serious and difficult to watch. This one is almost a complete joy. Beautifully photographed in wonderfully crisp b/w it looks great throughout. The director and his wife appear as passengers on the famous train, travelling to Antwerp and decide to conjure up a spy story. The superb, Jean-Louis Trintignant is the main man here and would appear to be the puppet for their story. Certainly we see him carrying out the actions they dictate into their tape recording machine as he goes hither and thither around the great city, of which we see much. Indeed, Antwerp being a favourite city of mine is another reason for this being so pleasurable for me to watch. The biggest surprise for me here, was not the much heralded, though undeniably effective S&M sequences but the extent to which humour plays a part here. There is a Bond poster on the wall at one point, as well as a shot from a Goddard film and it would seem Mr Grillet is also having a bit of a go at the very genre itself. Marvellous.

Alain Robbe-Grillet (the writer-director of this movie) casts himself as a film-maker who, along with the script girl at his side, plot out a "thriller" involving a drug courier. I will emphasize putting 'thriller' in quotation marks, because I found nothing thrilling about "Trans-Europ-Express". They did hook me though, briefly, during the hilarious first 15 minutes. The plot of the movie-within-a-movie was taking shape while the filmmakers commented on it. Sample dialogue: "Is this really how a drug courier works?" "Well, yes, because this is how the character is doing it." A great setup with all sorts of opportunities. Unfortunately, I have to regard this movie as opportunities wasted.

The actual "movie" - about the drug courier - is flaccid, amateurish, and un-involving. But since the film is more about commenting on this type of movie than about the movie itself, its shortcomings could be forgiven. However, the running commentary isn't utilized enough to make that aspect interesting, and the actual "movie" was, for me, just not engaging.

This might have been a wonderful mystery/thriller/crime-drama but it didn't know how to be that. It might also have been a fantastic comedy, but the movie doesn't do enough with the premise after its wonderful and hilarious opening minutes.

I don't know what the first meta-film was - Had any movie before it attempted what this one was after? - so I will credit this for its originality. I can't recommend it otherwise. You should probably watch Truffaut's "Shoot the Piano Player" instead.

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.