ThiefHott Too much of everything

Titreenp SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Ella-May O'Brien Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

JoeKulik Alain Robbe-Grillet's Trans-Europ-Express (1967) is a film about making a film. As such, it is thematically related to Ingmar Bergman's Persona (1966),and Vilgot Sjoman's I Am Curious (Yellow)(1967) and I Am Curious (Blue)(1968). That these European films were made almost simultaneously seems more than a mere coincidence here, and suggests some cross fertilization of filmmaking ideas.In any case, all these films center upon the same theme: "Where does the movie end, and reality begin?" The idea, of course, is hardly new, for in 1599, it was Shakespeare who penned in his play As You Like It: "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players." The point is that stage plays and theatrical films are merely a refinement and an objectification of what everyday people do everyday. We all assume the roles that society assigns to us, and read the lines off the script appropriate to a specific role, all the while wearing the "theater mask" for that socially assigned role.But it is Bergman, in his Persona, who most clearly articulates the main issue here, that while we are wearing various social masks, assuming our various social selfs, we are, to some extent, cutting ourselves off from our true, inner self. This is where the "inauthenticity", the emptiness, and the lack of real meaning in life that the Existentialists love to talk about emanates.This is significant to the character of the protagonist Elias in Trans-Europ-Express, because he comes across as a man without a real self, a genuine self. In fact, the viewer never learns the protagonist's real name for Elias is an alias, thusly making our protagonist somewhat anonymous, somewhat lacking in a real self in the storyline itself. Add to that the fact that his "mission" in the film as a drug courier is a role that was recently assigned to him, a role then that his is just "rehearsing", and thus distant from his real self, and we have a perfect model of a seemingly "everyday man" who has donned a social mask and is merely playing a contrived social role . Elias' proclivity toward prostitutes and sado-masochism is particularly interesting in this regard too, because his brutal sado-masochistic persona, which emerges when he is alone with a prostitute seems alien to his personality in all other scenes in the film. So, the sado-masochistic Elias is prominently portrayed as an assumed social role, an assumed social mask as well, somehow divorced from his real, genuine,inner self.In short, Elias as a role in a contrived screenplay, is little more "real" than the actual Elias portrayed in the "reality" of the drug smuggling operation itself. Elias, as both portrayed in the film as a figment of a screenwriter's imagination, as a "real" person, using an alias, in a drug smuggling scheme, are equally unreal, equally "inauthentic", as the Existentialists like to say.As such, the character Elias is somewhat reminiscent of the Beatles song "Nowhere Man" which was, coincidentally or not, released in 1966. All the way around, Elias, in this film, is a "Nowhere Man", just as we all are, to a certain extent, as we offer ourselves as the willing pawns of the social institutions, and the social influences all around us in our everyday lives.

christopher-underwood 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.

ametaphysicalshark I had not heard of "Trans-Europ-Express" until a couple of months ago, and as soon as the film was available to me I eagerly got a hold of it, but put off watching it until today because I was under the impression that it was a 'difficult' movie and wanted to be in the mood for such a film. Much to my surprise, Alain Robbe-Grillet's "Trans-Europ-Express" is one of the most entertaining and involving films I've ever seen, managing to be cerebral and clever as can be while never giving into being impenetrable for the sake of being impenetrable.Robert McKee classifies "Trans-Europ-Express" as a 'nonplot' film, and even though the film has two separate 'plots', I suppose it would be accurate enough to say that it doesn't really focus on telling a story set in stone. Classifying the film by genre is equally difficult, it is a somewhat comical film-within-a-film, a mystery, an erotic thriller, and even an espionage film for a bit. Let's just say the fourth wall has never been used so well in a film."Trans-Europ-Express" is a playful, adventurous film which seems to want nothing more than to toy with as many genre conventions as it can, and Robbe-Grillet does that so very well here. What's most amazing about the film is that it works on all the levels it's supposed to work on. Furthermore, the acting is superb, the cinematography gorgeous, and Robbe-Grillet's direction captivating and always interesting. I found the use of music here excellent, but the sound mixing even more interesting. The attention to detail is wonderful.As many 'intimidating' films as I've seen, and as many of them that I have loved, I have to be in the right mood to see them. Perhaps the element of surprise with "Trans-Europ-Express" gave it an advantage, but this really is one of the greatest, most purely enjoyable films I've ever seen. Cerebral, clever, smart, and stylish, all without being too ambitious for its own good, "Trans-Europ-Express" is a movie for everyone and for all moods, a must-see inversion (and perversion) of genre conventions. All film buffs should enjoy this, but it might be of particular interest to one who likes the genres being toyed with here, and I love them.10/10

pstumpf Robbe-Grillet's most overtly playful movie, with a narrative that doubly doubles back on itself. A writer (played by Robbe-Grillet himself), his assistant (Catherine, his wife), and a producer board the Trans-Europ Express for Antwerp. The producer asks the writer to formulate a screenplay based on their present situation. Jean-Louis Trintignant, seen in a prologue buying L'Express, then stealing another magazine with pictures of women in bondage poses, enters their compartment, looks furtively at the trio, and leaves. They "recognize" him as the actor Trintignant, and the writer begins to compose his story, with Trintignant as the protagonist, of a smuggler running drugs into Belgium. The film we see is that story, with occasional interruptions by the assistant or the producer commenting on the story ("But that's absurd!" "Well, we'll cut that scene then"). The smuggler follows clues for a complicated drop-off, and dallies with a prostitute (the lovely Marie-France Pisier), in a typical Robbe-Grillet scene of consensual rape and bondage. Then the whole drug delivery set-up is revealed as a dry run for the novice smuggler, who must then re-embark on the same journey, with different results.Robbe-Grillet's fantasies of erotic violence and bondage culminate in this film with a night-club act, in which a young woman, kneeling with one leg extended behind her, on a revolving table, is stripped and chained, in slow close-ups, making voyeurs of the movie audience as well as the night-club patrons.The story ends as our trio arrives in Antwerp, with a surprise final freeze frame of "Trintignant" being greeted by "Pisier". An entertaining diversion on storytelling. Robbe-Grillet may just be the "anti-Godard"; his films (of which I've now seen four) are demonstrations of cinema as "un-truth" at 24 frames per second.