Many forum members have seen the action packed 1965 motion picture, The Train. Perhaps fewer are aware of the ACTUAL event that was the inspiration for the movie. There was a woman curator at the Louvre who alerted the French Second Armored Division after they had just liberated Paris about the train containing the stolen art treasures headed for Germany. A young Lieutenant, Alexandre Rosenberg, took six armed volunteers to the tracks just outside of Paris and using explosive charges, blew up the tracks ahead of and behind the train. They then seized the train without firing a shot, capturing some older German soldiers assigned as guards in the process. They held their fire when they checked each boxcar for fear of hostages. As a wonderful irony, Mr. Rosenberg's family had operated a well known art gallery in Paris and several of the paintings on the train actually belonged to his family!
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What was the story with VanRyan's Express? Was it totally made up, or was there some grain of truth in it also?
The excellent and action packed motion picture starring Burt Lancaster as the resistance hero makes for a more exciting story than the actual event and that is understandable. The movie is well done with Lancaster pitted against the arch-Nazi villain, superbly portrayed by famed British Shakespearian actor, Paul Scofield. There are well done train sequences on the SNCF railway in France with actual historical equipment. The brilliant changing of the station signs and the surrepticious rerouting of the train back to Paris by the French Resistance is very clever, if fictional! The train wreck sequence is well done, as are all the train portrayals. Of course, Lancaster's character's obligatory romantic involvement with the widowed hotel owner played by French actress, Jeanne Moreau, is part of the plot. His character finally shoots the Nazi colonel, after viewing the executed hostages, and he leaves the unloaded crates of artwork where they lay. The unspoken implication was whether the art works were really worth the many deaths that resulted from the efforts to retrieve them!
Although I was thoroughly entertained by the fictional version of events, I really appreciate the TRUE story!
TNCENTRR: Von Ryan's Express was based on a fictional novel, and not any actual events.