S7.E1

Caught on a Train

Name: Caught on a Train
Genre: Drama
Released: 1980-10-31
Duration: 1 h 20 min
Rating: 7.8
Cast: Peggy Ashcroft, Michael Kitchen, Wendy Raebeck

Episode aired Oct 31, 1980
1h 20m

IMDb RATING

7.8/10

374

YOUR RATING

Peggy Ashcroft and Michael Kitchen in Caught on a Train (1980)

Drama

Peter boards a train to attend an important business meeting across Europe. His train trip is made more complicated by two women also assigned to his train compartment. One is an independent... Read allPeter boards a train to attend an important business meeting across Europe. His train trip is made more complicated by two women also assigned to his train compartment. One is an independent American whom Peter finds attractive. The other is Frau Messner - an extremely particular... Read allPeter boards a train to attend an important business meeting across Europe. His train trip is made more complicated by two women also assigned to his train compartment. One is an independent American whom Peter finds attractive. The other is Frau Messner - an extremely particular and demanding older European woman. Between the two of them, they try different aspects o... Read all

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

7.8/10

374

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

Trivia
To perfect her accent, Peggy Ashcroft got the BBC Archives Department to send her recordings of the Austrian singer Lotte Lehmann. She said: "I listened to them over and over...and tried to get the vowel sounds, which are always the key, exactly right".

Connections
Referenced in Stephen Poliakoff Remembers... She's Been Away (2023)

User reviews15

Review

Featured review

9/10

Superb - an old favorite which still holds up

I first saw this movie on television in the States in the early 1990's and loved it. Then I saw it again when the DVD was released around 2004. Finally, I've seen it yet again in 2023 and this film holds up. It remains just as good as I've remembered it on previous occasions.

The plot details can be read elsewhere, but a big part of the appeal of the film to me has to be the late night atmosphere it captures while traveling. Mike Westbrook's excellent jazzy (and at times, avant-garde) soundtrack certainly further adds to that. Indeed, I think that the atmosphere of this film is perhaps even more important than the plot itself.

Beyond any of that, the film does a fine job of capturing the international flavor of what it's like to travel in European train compartments while crossing borders in early 80's Europe.

I expect that I will continue to love this film when I see it again in the years to come.