Train of Events
| Train of Events | |
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Original British quad format poster
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| Directed by |
Sidney Cole Charles Crichton Basil Dearden |
| Produced by |
Michael Balcon Michael Relph |
| Written by |
T.E.B. Clarke Basil Dearden Angus MacPhail Ronald Millar |
| Starring |
Jack Warner Peter Finch Valerie Hobson |
| Music by | Leslie Bridgewater |
| Cinematography | Lionel Banes Paul Beeson Gordon Dines |
| Edited by | Bernard Gribble |
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Production
company |
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| Distributed by | GFD (UK) |
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Release date
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Running time
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90 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
Train of Events is a 1949 British portmanteau film made by Ealing Studios and directed by Sidney Cole, Charles Crichton and Basil Dearden. It tells the story about a train that crashes into a stalled petrol tanker at a level (grade) crossing, and then flashes back and tells four different stories about some of the passengers before the crash.
The film opens with a long shot of a Liverpool-bound train waiting to depart from Euston station in London. The train leaves with various characters on board.
After dark, the train is still travelling north at speed when a light being waved by the trackside is seen by the driver. He applies the brakes, but a road tanker stalled across a level crossing is looming up just ahead. Plainly, there is not enough room to stop. Just as the collision is about to occur there is a fade out, which is succeeded by a general view of the railway locomotive sheds at Euston, three days earlier.
Several personal stories are then told in a series of flashbacks which make up the train of events referred to in the title.
The first story, "The actor", is about Philip (Peter Finch), an actor on board the train who has a dark secret. He has been visited by his estranged wife, and in a tense scene set in his lodgings we learn that she has been unfaithful while he was serving in the Army. She jeers at him, and he is roused to one supreme effort of revenge, strangling her while a gramophone plays These Foolish Things. The theatre party to which he belongs is travelling on the train, en route to a tour of Canada. Also on board is a costume hamper, which contains the body of his wife. He is hoping to "lose" it somehow on the transatlantic crossing, but two suspicious detectives have been tracking him, and are on board the train too.
The second story, ""The Prisoner-of-War", is about Richard (Laurence Payne) and Ella (Joan Dowling). He is a former prisoner of war on the run, who hates the idea of returning to Germany. They have endured a miserable life of subterfuge in a succession of seedy lodgings, and Ella is hoping that they can start again on the other side of the Atlantic. However, Ella has stolen money from her landlady's cashbox to pay for the journey, and there was only enough for one of them to emigrate. Selflessly, she intends that it will be him.
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Wikipedia