Hello friends,
I don't want to drive this train too far off topic, and I agree with most of the top picks such as "The Train" and "Breakheart Pass," but since we have also cited such movies as " Le Bête Humaine" and the "Polar Express," I would like to mention three of the many movies featuring trains that are particularly high on my list. I first saw these movies years ago, and I believe they actually influenced the direction taken by my interest in toy trains. These films were:
Bad Day at Black Rock
Toccata for Toy Trains
Pacific 231
Gil has already mentioned "Bad Day at Black Rock" above. It is a great movie with a stellar cast, but the streamliners that open and close the movie have stuck with me since first seeing the film on the recommendation of my Dad who grew up in SP country (Oregon) and who himself was a veteran of WW2. I have since learned, of course, that FT locos did not pull Daylight streamlined cars, that the paint scheme of the A and B units had not yet been used by the SP in late 1945 when the movie is set and that the horn blast and hand signals used during the sequences were all wrong, but seeing that relatively short, streamlined passenger train pull up to a tiny station in a tiny town, looked like a scene right out of my various floor layouts that I imagined it to be as a kid.
Not long after getting out my old toy trains and taking my first tentative steps to becoming a "toy train collector," I came across a VHS video of "Toccata for Toy Trains" (This was well before the advent of the internet and YouTube!) This well known, short 1957 film by Charles and Ray Eames makes creative use of antique toy trains and other trains set to a wonderful score by the incomparable Elmer Bernstein. Again, I found myself drawn into the world of toy trains as they relate to the larger world, not always as accurate scale miniatures, but also as representing a world seen through the eyes of a child and toys of our youth. All this set to a great score.
On the same VHS tape as the Eames film was the even shorter French film "Pacific 231." Like the train scenes from the 1938 movie "Le Bête Humaine" previously mentioned on this topic, the film "Pacific 231" shows big steam railroading in France in 1949 set to the music of a 1923 composition by Arthur Honegger of the same name. The filmmaker used innovative camera work along with expert editing to create a piece that not only documents the operation of a powerful steam locomotive, but also seamlessly follows the music to the point that one could believe that the music was actually written to score the film.
Any time I can combine good filmmaking, great music and trains, both real and toy, is a win, win, win for me.
Cheers!
Alan