Train of Events (1949) User Reviews

Catch this train

[eddie-83 · 6/10 · 15 December 2002]

'Train of Events' was a critical and commercial failure in its time but if you like these British films as much as I do I think you'll find plenty to enjoy here.

'Compendium' films were popular in the late Forties, several were made from the short stories of Somerset Maugham and then there was the greatest of them all 'Dead of Night'. 'Train of Events ', hardly in that class, contains four stories which all culminate on a train which we saw crashing in the opening scenes. So, like 'Friday the Thirteenth' ( a great portmanteau movie made in 1933) the climax is a matter of virtue rewarded and villainy punished as not everyone survives.

Interestingly television is quite strongly featured for the time (1949), a wind-up gramophone looks much more appropriate!

Valerie Hobson is first actor credited though her role is no larger than several others, she plays the forgiving wife of a philandering husband. In real life Hobson was married to British cabinet minister John Profumo whose relationship with Christine Keeler brought down a government in the sixties. Once again Life Imitates Art. In another story Peter Finch murders his faithless wife. He spouts chunks of Shakespeare, looked gaunt and middle-aged to me.

The model-work at the climax is satisfyingly convincing, I recommend 'Train of Events'

"....I adore television, all those wiggly lines..."

[Brucey_D · 8/10 · 20 February 2019]

This is a not very widely known portmanteau film from 1949, in which four disparate stories are told, each culminating in the protagonists boarding a train to Liverpool, their stories becoming ever more enmeshed, only this train is headed for disaster.

I largely agree with Robert Temple's review (although there are spoilers and it is John Clements who plays the composer, not Gregson).

In contrast to many of the other reviews I found something rather good in all four stories, be it drama, witty dialogue, or humour. I thought it was all rather well done actually. For me, the standout performance was probably that of Peter Finch, who looked gaunt and utterly riven throughout.

In addition to the intriguing structure of the film -which has surely acted as an example to later directors- this film has interest today because it shows many street scenes in London and various scenes shot on the railways; who would have thought the age of steam would be over about fifteen years after this?

Anyway whilst some of the facets of this film will be lost on some folk, overall I thought it a pretty good effort, deserving to be better known and more widely appreciated than it is. Eight out of ten from me.

Atmospheric British film noir for railway enthusiasts

[chrischapman-47545 · 7/10 · 7 March 2019]

A novel piece of early post war British film noir with four concurrent plots - some better than others. A very young Leslie Phillips in a non comedy role and other strong actors including Peter Finch and Jack Warner. Fascinating for railway enthusiasts and a reminder of how dirty and run down the environment was in those days. Well shot and the special effects can be excused!

An entertaining ensemble of vignettes

[malcp · 7/10 · 24 November 2015]

Most Ealing films are worth watching, and this one I feel does deserve a bit of a wider audience. I'll start by saying it does have a major flaw, which I'm sure also provides the reason for the films original poor reception. A train crash is an extraordinary, life-changing event. Although the crash in this film does affect the outcome of one of the tales, in the main it simply provides a trite plot device to link together all our groups of disparate characters. Although trains do play a role in one of the tales, the crash in this film feels as artificial as one of those TV soap episodes when viewing figures have started to drop off and they want people to come back and see which major character is killed off. Still, that flaw aside, the whole thing is filled with some delicious cameos - Stella (Valerie Hobson) delivering a perfect raspberry to Irina Norozova (Irina Baronova) - a tempestuous Russian pianist driven to such heights of passion by the conducting of Stella's husband (John Clements), the climax of her performance is as vivid as the Cafe scene from When Harry met Sally. Peter Finch is noteworthy as the jilted actor, but his performance is overshadowed by Mary Morris as his floozy, shameless wife. Jack Warner's engine driver piece is perhaps more basic fare, but several flawless parries with Miles Malleson, particularly discussing whether a hen suffers from gapes, bumblefoot or pip serve to raise the game. Joan Dowling, as the selfless, piteous, adoring Ella also gives a wonderful performance, and it's very sad to read that her own life ended so tragically before it had really begun.

Train of Events review

[JoeytheBrit · 7/10 · 13 May 2020]

Although Jack Warner's domestic woes - or, more precisely, those of his daughter's boyfriend - keep getting in the way of far more meaty tales of murder, infidelity and post-war poverty this portmanteau movie from Ealing remains engaging throughout. A young Peter Finch receives his first screen credit as a murderer in the film's best story.

Still pretty strong

[Milk_Tray_Guy · 7/10 · 15 January 2022]

Ealing Studios portmanteau drama that starts with a train crash, then follows four separate stories, showing the backstories of some of the passengers, the events that led to them being on the train, and the aftermath of the crash. Some big names of the day (Jack Warner, Susan Shaw, Miles Malleson, John Gregson, Valerie Hobson, Michael Hordern, and 'introducing' a very young Peter Finch). Several directors and writers involved, including Basil Dearden (who had a hand in both). Made over 70 years ago, but it stands up well. 7/10.

Train of Events - Follows a Mixed trail

[krocheav · 7/10 · 19 February 2021]

This curiously little known film commands your attention from the very beginning - with what must be one of the best opening sequences ever committed to film - a startling ultra-serious train wreck looming forward - but we don't see the outcome till the finish of the story. The story, or actually stories, take the form of introducing us to four of the doomed train's passengers from 3 days before the incident. Four British directors each take a turn at 'telling' each passengers tale - up to the aftermath. For some, this technique might give the movie an episodic feel, as each presents in their own style but most won't even be aware of this. Generally, it's an interesting movie even if certain elements might now look somewhat dated but this of course will be personal to each viewer.

Two major award-winning Cinematographers Paul Beeson, and Gordon Dines, share the job of capturing the events as they unfold - all on nice b/w film stock. The film has been given a quite lavish re-mastering and the Ealing Studios DVD offers clean images and good sound. As might be expected from Ealing, there are scatterings of humor throughout the dramatic journey. Train enthusiasts will be enthralled at seeing the range of engines and rolling stock of the day being paraded - including LMS Royal Scott Class No. 46126. For any who enjoy British 40-50s movies, this could well suit you and Aussie Peter Finch appears in a major early role.

A truly magnificent Ealing drama with powerful performances

[robert-temple-1 · 10/10 · 18 October 2010]

This film is one of the finest achievements of British cinema in the immediate post-War period, having been shot in March of 1948 (as a calendar in one shot shows) and released in 1949. The film is remarkable for the 'introducing' of Peter Finch, who is absolutely brilliant as a tormented young man who has been driven mad by six years in the Army and his faithless and tormenting wife, played with skin-crawling provocation by the relentless Mary Morris, one of the finer actresses of that period. Their story is a distinct film noir strand in the tapestry woven of separate stories of people over the three days prior to their boarding an ill-fated train from London's Euston Station to Liverpool, on the ominously-named Platform 13. Although this is a film of multiple story-lines all converging on a single journey, they are all compelling, and there is no sense of lack of unity. In other words, the bold project of making this film paid off and is a complete creative success. The film is compulsive viewing for anyone familiar with or interested in how certain places and things looked in the London of 1948, as the location shooting is very extensive indeed, and it is in that sense like a time-capsule travelogue. I sat watching this recently released DVD with my finger on the pause button for the entire time. I must have stopped it and rewound thirty or forty times, all agog at how clearly it showed the immediate post-War Kings Cross area (now being totally redeveloped), the old Euston Station, the Strand, Trafalgar Square, and other locations. Anyone interested in steam trains will find the many detailed shots of them irresistible, because the train driver (solidly played by Jack Warner) is a main character, and we see every aspect of servicing, turning round, and operating the trains, with a thoroughness and multiplicity of close-ups of the machinery approaching that of a documentary, and reminding one of the famous documentary film NIGHT MAIL (1936). The film is never dull for a moment, but is constantly fascinating to watch, and operates on many levels successfully. There are such witty lines in the script, and the dialogue is often priceless, especially when the train driver and his wife are speaking to one another in their pungent manner at home. I laughed out loud on numerous occasions, as the Ealing sensitivity to comedy is always hovering in the background and present in the dialogue, despite this film being very far from a comedy, and containing desperately tragic tales of overwhelming intensity. There are some spectacularly amusing and wonderful character parts, recording on film some types of people who have entirely vanished now from the face of the earth and will never come again. Watching this film is like entering a living museum of how things were in London in 1948. It really is a staggering experience if you have any interest in that at all, and in the old England as it really was, and shall be no more. Perhaps the most harrowing performance in the film is by the young actress Joan Dowling, who puts her all into the tragic role of a girl whose parents have been killed in the Blitz and she has no one and nothing left except her love for a former German soldier who refuses to return to Germany because ' he betrayed us and destroyed my country'. (The 'he' is Hitler, and it is very effective never mentioning him by name.) The sheer terror of this penniless couple as they run from the police, are thrown out of their cold and horrible flat by a heartless landlady, and sneak around London trying to avoid his being seized and deported is heart-breaking. When they take refuge in an even more depressing flat, with the wallpaper peeling off the damp walls, in Delancey Street in Camden Town, they have really reached rock-bottom. She steals the money to buy a fare from Liverpool to Canada for him to start a new life there, sacrificing herself because she knows she can never earn the money to get a fare for herself to join him. Her performance is enough to make the most hardened cynic cry. This amazing actress, then aged 20, committed suicide at the age of 26, thereby realizing her own personal tragedy to equal that which she experiences in this film. This couple too are on the fated train. Then there is the story of the orchestra conductor and composer, played by John Gregson, whose archly amusing upper-class wife (showing great skill with her silver tea service) is played by Valerie Hobson. Gregson is always having affairs and this time it is with a tempestuous young pianist played with tremendous flair by a real pianist, the Russian musician, prima ballerina, and actress Irina Baronova, who only appeared in four films, abandoning the cinema in 1951 after her marriage, which was a great loss to the screen. (She was the mother of the actress Victoria Tennant, who despite her wide range of work has, like her mother, been seriously under-appreciated. For instance, Tennant gave one of the finest performances in the TV series THE WINDS OF WAR in 1983 but was never praised properly for it. Why is it that these two amazing women have never been given their due of attention for their unique qualities?) This film had three directors, Sidney Cole and Charles Crichton, who did one segment each, and Basil Dearden, who did two, namely the two with the most powerful performances (Finch's and Dowling's). The different segments are blended seamlessly, but we are not told who was in overall creative charge in order to pull off so successfully the unifying of this multi-stranded film. Unlike anthology films of the period which show separate stories in succession, these stories are all contemporaneous, and converge. This film is an incredible creative triumph.

A Crash Waiting to Happen

[malcolmgsw · 5/10 · 5 February 2014]

Compenium films such as these were very popular in the late forties.Naturally their success rides and falls on the quality of the story.Alas in this case only one of the stories is worth telling.The Valerie Hobson/John Clements story is truly awful.Jack Warners domestic problems seem more like an episode of the Huggetts.The ex German POW story has some promise but becomes repetitive.The Peter Finch/Mary Morris story is quite good but is undermined by the somewhat ridiculous proposition that a murderer would cart the dead body of his wife around in a theatrical basket.The fact that there is a good cast,and a strong band of writers and directors make it all the more disappointing.The most interesting aspect of the film is the considerable location work,which includes a view of the late lamented Euston arch.

Anatomy of human destinies in relation with a train accident

[clanciai · 10/10 · 27 October 2020]

This is so much better than all the mass of train thrilers, all excellent and outstanding in suspense, while this one is no thriller but all perfectly natural, telling the stories of very ordinary people om board a train heading for disaster. The character you will remember best and forever is probably Peter Finch in his first film role as a Shakespeare actor in a truly tragic part, having lost his life and soul in six years of war and being constantly betrayed by his wife. His story is a drama in itself, while the other three destinies that are being followed are easier to digest, the story of the train driver, the story of a conceited conductor, his piano soloist and his wife, and the story of a German refugee, still suffering from the traumas of his past. Above all, the story is ingeniously conceived, weaving together four very different destinies, totally different from each other, none knowing anything about the others, and there are som police investigators as well, headed by Michael Hordern. There are so many dimensions to this film, the concert hall, the Shakespeare theatre, the domestic circumstances of the train driver and his family and friends, and the desperate circumstances of the refugee and his self-sacrficing girl getting their hardship exacerbated by a ruthless callous landlady. It's a pearl of cinematic invention, and the music adds to genuine quality as well. This is a film to enjoy and admire - and to have your compassion boosted with.

Training The Coach

[writers_reign · 5/10 · 22 March 2016]

Pitch for a movie: A London bus travelling in heavy rain crashes into a crane that falls from a building site; we then use flashbacks to explore the lives/personal problems of the passengers involved. Not a bad premise for the time, 1933, so not bad in fact that Gainsborough bought into it and shot it as Friday The Thirteenth and released it that year. Ealing liked it so much that they re-made it with a train in 1948 and renamed it Train Of Events which gave Jack Warner and Gladys Henson a rehearsal for their second husband-and-wife pairing in The Blue Lamp two years later. There are four sets of passengers equating to four stories and none of them inspire the pulse to reach double figures. We knew of course that John Gregson was as wooden as Pinnochio but to find Peter Finch on his debut giving us his impression of a giant Redwood was a discovery. The then-ubiquitous Susan Shaw is also on hand as is Michael Horden and Lesley Phillips and nostalgia buffs will enjoy a good wallow.

Train of non-events

[AAdaSC · 4/10 · 30 May 2013]

The film starts with a train crash and then spends its bulk describing 4 separate situations that leads to various characters being on board the doomed train. We then return to the crash and see its aftermath.

Sounds better than it is. The film starts impressively with the force and speed of the train filmed very dramatically. This is far and away the best part of the film and provides a very powerful opening. As we meet the characters, the film gets boring and sadly, that awful unfunny British humour rears its ugly head in a couple of scenes. Trying to endear the audience to old guys by getting them to imitate a chicken or a goldfish just isn't funny to me.

Aside from the naff comedy, the cast aren't very good. This is because either the characters are weak, such as Joan Dowling (Ella), to the point where we don't care about her fate, or else they are just difficult to like. A case in point is pretty much everyone else apart from Valerie Hobson (Stella).

Pianist Irina Baronova (Irina) and composer John Clements (Raymond) are painfully embarrassing and it's all a bit of an anti-climax when so many of this dull ensemble actually survive what looks like a crash that should have resulted in many more fatalities. Oh well, better luck next time! The film scores for the excellent beginning and a confrontational scene between husband and wife Peter Finch (Philip) and Mary Morris (Louise). If the film had concentrated on developing this story in a dramatic fashion, I would be talking about a much better film. But even this little vignette is ruined by absurdity as demonstrated by what Peter Finch decides to pack in his luggage. In his LUGGAGE! To take with him! Dumb film.

A mixed bag, final results none too good.

[alexanderdavies-99382 · 5/10 · 1 January 2020]

I can't say that I was expecting a masterpiece in the form of "Train of Events." After all, I believe the film is attempting to cash in on the success of "Ealing's" "Dead of Night." The story lacks much in the way of momentum and narrative. Scenes are merely thrown together, even with a film which consists of different scenarios. Tedium had set in, long before the end. There are some good camera shots of London and a good cast. Jack Warner was his usual watchable self and Valerie Hobson did quite well. Too much emphasis is placed upon the previous 2 days before the crash in the film. The plot should have focused more upon events after the train tragedy, a bit of drama might have resulted but who knows? Not vintage "Ealing" by a long way.

Lesser Ealing anthology

[Leofwine_draca · 5/10 · 27 November 2018]

TRAIN OF EVENTS is one of the lesser-known Ealing anthologies that were popular in the 1940s; my favourite of the bunch is DEAD OF NIGHT, but the quality of this one doesn't come close. The film tells four intertwined narratives following passengers who end up on a train that's about to crash via some nifty miniature special effects work. The stories range from so-so to disappointing, and none of them particularly stand out. The Valerie Hobson music-based story is entirely dull, while Jack Warner seems to be going through the motions in a Huggetts-style family drama. Peter Finch's murderer has the most interesting story, but not much happens to him. As usual, a worthwhile cast help to elevate the material and make it consistently interesting (even a young Leslie Phillips shows up) but this is undoubtedly a lesser Ealing film.

Disappointing

[Colin_Sibthorpe_II · 4/10 · 16 March 2019]

I love Ealing, comedies and serious dramas, love seeing the old actors, love looking back across time. I came very well-disposed to this movie.

But oh dear! The railway family story was by the numbers stuff, inoffensive but that's the best you can say for it. I agree with most others here that the musical story was ridiculous. Where I disagree with others is on the story about the murderer and his faithless wife - it's hard to say whose acting was more atrocious, Peter Finch or his on-screen wife. The wife was a downright cartoonish villainess; and Finch was mugging away as if nobody ever told him that the silent era had passed 20 years ago.

The only story with a germ of interest was the plain girl and her German boyfriend. Why was he so desperate not to return to Germany? Was he utterly disgusted with what his country had done - or had he taken part in a way that might lead to a prison cell, perhaps in the SS? Whatever he had or hadn't done, her all-consuming love was nicely handled.

I enjoyed being transported back to a dreary, grimy post-war London, and loved the railway stations full of steam trains; but apart from the setting there's not a lot to commend this. I'm glad not to have paid for a DVD.

Don't Bother About a Ticket!

[spookyrat1 · 4/10 · 2 December 2018]

Like a mixed box of chocolates, you never can be quite sure of what flavour you're going to end up enjoying, with portmanteau films, especially with some of the British examples such as this from the 1940's.

Of the 4 stories here, all indirectly related through a train crash, the only one I found of any real interest was the darkest; The Actor which involved the murder of an estranged spouse and boasted clear Hitchcock influences. Peter Finch gave an intense performance as the eponymous character, but seriously, a corpse hidden in a theatre hamper with which you are travelling, seeing you are part of a company? I know it's a short story, but as we saw in Frenzy or The Trouble With Harry, Hitch would have had more fun with this thread.

The Prisoner of War was just plain dull, though the plot line intersected with that of The Actor, briefly on the train.

The Composer was a good example of a degree of style trumping not a lot of substance. I think it was supposed to be funny, but the laughs were few and far between.

The longest story, The Engine Driver also served as the ostensible framing tale for the anthology. Ho- hum family dramedy, but I don't think it spoils anything in saying this episode had the happiest ending.

The interest for me in these compendium films is seeing the genesis of a cinematic sub-genre. Later directors such as Quentin Tarantino have taken the device and used it to arguably produce related short stories of a far more consistently high standard, such as seen in Kill Bill Volumes 1 and 2.

Train of Events

[henry8-3 · 4/10 · 8 September 2019]

As a train crashes, the story of a number of its passengers is told in flashback. A ex German POW on the run, a conductor having an affair, an actor who's murdered his wife and the train driving seeking promotion.

This is very British film and often rather theatrical and over egged. Warner does his Huggett bit, the conductor and his wife take add the only humour such that it is, first timer Finch as the killer add the semi Hitchcockian thrills and the Dowling / Payne piece is deadly serious and frankly rather stilted and dull.

Some ok bits then, but despite some prestigious directors, the stories are not engrossing enough and so finding out who survives the crash and it's aftermath doesn't hold as much interest as it could have done.