6.6 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
A Dutch company's owner bankrupts his own company, burns the incriminating ledgers and plans to run to Paris with the company payroll. But he is caught in the act by his accountant who challenges his actions, leading to a reversal of roles.
Starring: Claude Rains, Märta Torén, Marius Goring, Herbert Lom, Anouk AiméeFilm-Noir | 100% |
Crime | Insignificant |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.37:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Georges Joseph Christian Simenon may not be a name with the immediate cachet of, say, Agatha Christie, but, like Christie, Simenon is responsible for some of the most engaging “crime fiction” of his era. Ironically, Simenon was Belgian, the same nationality as one of Christie’s most inimitable creations, the natty, near obsessive compulsive Poirot, but perhaps Simenon’s most well remembered creation was a French detective named Maigret. While “officially” Belgian, Simenon’s family evidently had Dutch origins, and that may be one reason why Simenon’s 1938 novel The Man Who Watched Trains Go By features a Dutch location, though aside from the occasional windmill and canal, the locale of this story of incipient madness isn’t really “site specific”, so to speak. Kees Popinga (Claude Rains) is a clerk (i.e., bookkeeper) at a venerable firm run by Julius de Koster Jr. (Herbert Lom). Popinga seems to be one of the midlevel “shlubs” who has probably never really amounted to much, but who still is a decent enough sort, a trustworthy worker drone who also has a devoted wife and a couple of sweet kids. Popinga also has empathy, as evidenced by an early scene where he attempts to convince de Koster to hire a friend of his, a guy who has been put out of work by the sudden demise via bankruptcy of the company where he has spent most of his life toiling away, probably accomplishing nothing. De Koster won’t hear of it, though, since the man seeking employment was the managing director of the company and “should have known” that the company was in perilous financial straits, even though the problems were evidently caused by another employee. De Koster stresses the virtuousness of his own company and how reputation is everything. The fact that these lines are being read by the imperious Herbert Lom, an actor who can seem almost effortlessly devious even when spouting seeming inanities, perhaps provides a bit of a subliminal clue that all may not be entire well at Popinga’s place of employment, either. When a French detective named Lucas (Marius Goring) shows up to investigate a money laundering scheme that has seen Dutch monies flowing into Paris, for a moment it seems like perhaps there’s been a bit of misdirection and the honorable Popinga may indeed be a mastermind. In fact there has been a bit of misdirection, but not that particular kind, as soon becomes apparent.
The Man Who Watched Trains Go By is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of ClassicFlix with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.33:1. If I'm remembering correctly, this is the first color film ClassicFlix has released, and by and large the results are very satisfying for devotees of old school Technicolor. There are definitely variances in color temperature here, with some scenes looking cooler (typically with a blue undertone present) and others looking warmer (typically with reds emphasized), but on the whole things look nicely saturated. I've tried to provide a variety of screenshots showing some of the temperature differences, so I recommend parsing all of them for at least some idea of the variances on display. There is also occasional damage that pops up now and again, as in screenshot 4. (Speaking of screenshot 4, that's Anouk Aimee, who is billed as Aimee Anouk in the opening credits, and then just Anouk in the closing credits). Grain looks natural but can occasionally assume a slightly yellow quality, some of which is due to this film's almost nonstop use of optical dissolves. Clarity and detail levels are generally quite pleasing and even with some of the palette differences, I personally found the color looking nice as well.
The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By features a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono mix that can sound just a trifle brash in the higher registers (as in the fanfare accompanying the Eros Films masthead), but which is generally fine in terms of providing support for dialogue and effects (as may be expected, there are a lot of train sounds click-a-clacking through this film). Unless I have a defective disc, there's just a snippet of score missing at the very end. The score by Benjamin Frankel is really quite interesting and I found it extremely effective.
There are no supplements on this disc.
I was genuinely intrigued if not always outright surprised by some of the plot dynamics at play in The Man Who Watched Trains Go By, a lot of which has to do with Rains' nice portrayal of an everyday shmoe suddenly taken over by his raging Id. There are a few too many convenient contrivances for this to really work as a "mystery", but as a character study it's often quite compelling. ClassicFlix has delivered another niche film with very good to excellent technical merits, and The Man Who Watched Trains Go By comes Recommended.
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