Caught On a Train

Starring:Peggy Ashcroft, Michael Kitchen, Wendy Raebeck, Michael Sheard, Ingo Mogendorf, Louis Sheldon, Michael Kingsbury, John Dolan (II), Christopher Frederic, Ken Shaw, Terry Gurry, Baron Casanov, Martin Phillips, Richard Merson, Lex van Delden, Sean Barry-Weske
Director: Peter Duffell
Studio: Acorn Media
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Description
An overnight train trip through Europe becomes a profoundly unsettling odyssey for a young English businessman in this award-winning BBC drama. Peter (Michael Kitchen) boards the Ostend-Vienna express on his way to an important meeting and is delighted to meet a potential companion, a free-spirited young American (Wendy Raebeck) traveling alone. Already crowded, their compartment is overrun by the arrival of an imperious Viennese dowager, Frau Messner (Dame Peggy Ashcroft). This vestige of Old Europe becomes Peter's nemesis, by turns infuriating and fascinating him, while his relationship with the young American takes an unexpected course.

Description

An overnight train trip through Europe becomes a profoundly unsettling odyssey for a young English businessman in this award-winning BBC drama. Peter (Michael Kitchen) boards the Ostend-Vienna express on his way to an important meeting and is delighted to meet a potential companion, a free-spirited young American (Wendy Raebeck) traveling alone. Already crowded, their compartment is overrun by the arrival of an imperious Viennese dowager, Frau Messner (Dame Peggy Ashcroft). This vestige of Old Europe becomes Peter's nemesis, by turns infuriating and fascinating him, while his relationship with the young American takes an unexpected course.

Customer Reviews:

one word: STUPID.......2006-11-04

one of the worst screenplays ever seen. rude old woman, old man harassed the younger and kinder generation on the train. i just wish i could be that young gentleman and would like to teach a lesson to these old buggers. why i have to give my window seat to this old and rude woman? why i have to buy magazines for her? why, why, why? there're so many whys in this movie and they're all stupid scripted by a totally irrational, unreasonable stupid screenwriter. you bought a train ticket, got on a train, you didn't have to take the crap from other passengers. you didn't have to be a gentleman as long as you minded your own business.
if a screenplay is so unreasonable and illogic form the very beginning, how could you tolerate it for the whole 9 yards unless you're brain dead too?

A great little atmospheric film.......2005-11-30

I first saw this film when it was broadcast on the A&E cable channel in the U.S. in the early 1990's. I loved it then, but I remember that A&E's on-air promotional spot for it made it seem like a thriller and completely missed the whole point of the movie.

I won't simply re-hash the plot as you can read that above, but I will say that what I like about this movie is the rich, late-night atmosphere of overnight train travel in early 80's Europe. Add to that Stephen Poliakoff's script, the superb acting all around (especially by Kitchen and Ashcroft) and the truly wonderful jazz soundtrack by Mike Westbrook. One sees this and has to wonder why American television doesn't ever turn out tv movies of this calibre.

I was extremely pleased and surprised to find that this film is out on DVD and I bought it immediately. The DVD has a decent little featurette which includes lengthy comments by writer Stephen Poliakoff as well as some brief interview clips from Dame Peggy Ashcroft about, "Caught on a Train." There is also an interesting and insightful screen-specific commentary track with Poliakoff and producer Kenith Trodd.

Poliakoff and Trodd both ask a question which I too was wondering: what an earth has happened to actress Wendy Raebeck who plays Lorraine in this movie?

I very much enjoyed this DVD.

"On a long journey, it can get unpleasant.".......2005-08-22

Peter (Michael Kitchen), a public relations executive, needs to attend an important business meeting. He has fond childhood memories of romantic journeys taken by train, so he decides to take the Transcontinental Express to his destination. Boarding the train at Ostend, he immediately feels some misgivings thanks to the boisterous larks of several raucous young males, but Peter's journey starts looking up when an attractive American woman (Wendy Raebeck) shares his carriage. Unfortunately, as the train fills, so does Peter's carriage. Among Peter's fellow travelers is an imperious, fur clad, elderly German woman, Frau Messner (Peggy Ashcroft). Peter immediately dislikes Frau Messner. She doesn't take Peter's cues that he wants to be left alone, and she seems determined to annoy him.

As the journey continues, Peter and Frau Messner develop a testy, adversarial relationship. He's also trying to impress the American woman, so he's constrained by polite behaviour in a confined space. He can't simply move to another carriage--he's stuck.

"Caught on a Train" is a perfect, impeccably acted BBC drama written by Stephen Poliakoff. While the story is ostensibly about the odd relationships we sometimes are forced to forge with random traveling companions, it's also about the passing of Old Europe and its replacement--New Europe. Like Peter, I too had romantic notions of taking the Transcontinental Express. This is due in part to Nabokov's entrancing descriptions of taking the train across Europe. In "Caught on a Train", the journey is unpleasant, dirty, noisy, and with a total lack of privacy. This mode of transportation is no longer the realm of the wealthy. Frau Messner--as testy and "spoilt" as she is, is a "member of a nearly extinct species", and this realization is something that fascinates and frustrates Peter. She is a living relic of a past life, and by her sheer strength of character, she refuses to knuckle down to a new standard. Quite marvelous--displacedhuman

Makes Amtrak look posh.......2005-07-04

If you think European long-distance trains are the epitome of classy service, perhaps you should see CAUGHT ON A TRAIN, a British dark comedy that has similarities to 1985's AFTER HOURS in that it focuses upon the macabre, nighttime misadventures of the lead character otherwise out of his element.

Peter (Michael Kitchen, very young with lots of hair), a self-absorbed English businessman on his way to Linz, boards the Ostend to Vienna Trans European Express. Peter usually travels by air, but has decided this once to take to the rails just to see what it's like. Big mistake.

At first, the journey looks promising. Peter is to share his six-seat reserved compartment with a very attractive and sexy American girl, Lorraine (Wendy Raebeck). Perhaps they'll have the space to themselves? But that's not to be as other occupants crowd in, including Frau Messner (Peggy Ashcroft), an imperious, impatient, Viennese grand dame who's used to getting her way, and getting it now. She and Peter immediately lock horns as she demands, and he refuses to relinquish, his window seat. Then, Peter almost misses the train's departure as he reluctantly volunteers to make a dash to the station newsstand to get the old lady some magazines for the trip. Their relationship goes from bad to worse to bizarre such that, by the time Peter stumbles off the carriage at his destination, he's exhausted, unshaven, shirtless, mud-spattered, with a torn suit jacket, discomfited, and minus his ticket.

CAUGHT ON A TRAIN isn't a complete success. The potential provided by the Lorraine character goes nowhere for reasons that aren't immediately apparent. Indeed, her presence is such a plot dead end that I felt she should've been left out of the script entirely. The emphasis is, and rightfully should be, entirely on the manic relationship between Peter and Frau Messner, the latter both repelling and fascinating the former.

A further nice touch to the surrealism of the journey is the presence in the car of some violence-prone German rowdies who've apparently made it on board with "standing room only" tickets. (The presence of seatless passengers is still a phenomenon on main corridor European trains, and which results in the nearly impossible passageway overcrowding that I noticed with some irritation on a Frankfurt-Berlin run in 1999. It makes the much maligned U.S. Amtrak look positively luxurious by comparison.)

The reason I'm not awarding more than three stars is that the ending, by which time Peter and his nemesis seem to be he only passengers left on the train (trashed beyond belief - where's the staff?), is curiously unfulfilling. Peter wanders off, perhaps made a little wiser and a better person by the experience, but I wasn't convinced that he was either, or indeed cognizant of why he should be. For me, and for Peter, Frau Messner remained too much of an enigma.

Art film of the early 1980s.......2004-07-31

I'm sure CAUGHT ON A TRAIN is one of those arty films that I will have to watch several times to fully appreciate. I bought the DVD because I like Peggy Ashcroft (JEWEL IN THE CROWN) and Michael Kitchen (FOYLE'S WAR). Only thing is that Kitchen is very young in this film and not much like that wizened fellow called Foyle. The third actress listed in the DVD credits (Wendy Raebeck) is a relatively minor character, mostly a witness or observer of the action between Ashcroft and Kitchen. Kitchen's young man (Peter) is an employee of a book publising firm in England .Peter represents the face of modern Europe, extremely in need of success (at any cost?), and dispising the "old order" represented by Ascroft's Frau Messner. The interaction between the two characters is mesmerizing. Depending on your age and outlook on life you will find the story amusing, frustrating or sad. The setting is some time after WWII on the express train that runs from Ostend to Vienna. The train is the backdrop for the whole film, and the shots of the vintage express are woth the price of the DVD for those who love trains (me).

The scenes from the train of stations, rivers, industrial areas and farm land will probably never be seen again in quite the same way, as Europe has "modernized" it's old cities farms (progress from the perspective of those who value success as the reason for living, a disaster for those who cherish the past). If you appreciate an artistic exploration of the intense psychological exchange that can take place between two fellow passengers on a long trip, you will find this 80 minute film holds it's own with films of it's ilk.

BBC2 Playhouse {Caught on a Train (#7.1)} [Region 2]

Average customer rating:

one word: STUPID
A great little atmospheric film
"On a long journey, it can get unpleasant."
Makes Amtrak look posh
Art film of the early 1980s

BBC2 Playhouse {Caught on a Train (#7.1)} [Region 2]
Starring: Peggy Ashcroft , Michael Kitchen , Wendy Raebeck , Michael Sheard , and Ingo Mogendorf
Director: Peter Duffell
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video

( B ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video
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ASIN: B0000AISIZ

Customer Reviews:

one word: STUPID.......2006-11-04

A great little atmospheric film.......2005-11-30

"On a long journey, it can get unpleasant.".......2005-08-22

Makes Amtrak look posh.......2005-07-04

Art film of the early 1980s.......2004-07-31

DVD:

DVD

Die Waffen der Frauen