Trans-Europ-Express

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.

This film is a beautifully done story within a story --- film within a film. The author and friends take a train ride and begin to work out a film; its plot, its characters and their actions. As the story evolves the characters take on their own existence, reality becomes inverted; they weave their own story as author becomes audience.

It is a taste of the 1960's thinking of the Michael Caine foreign intrigue films, The Orient Express not to mention the Manchurian Candidate. In a way it thumbs its nose at the genre.

I saw it when it ran almost forty years ago and enjoyed it immensely. If you can find it --- check it out.

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.

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.

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.