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DVD Description
BAFTA Winner: Best Single Play. Starring Dame Peggy Ashcroft and Michael Kitchen with Wendy Raebeck.
Inspired by a journey the writer made as a young man, this drama has been acclaimed as a television masterpiece. As a young businessman travels through Germany on a crowded night train he encounters a demanding elderly Viennese lady in the same carriage. Over the course of one equally nightmarish and moving overnight journey, she has a profound and unsettling influence on the young Englishman.
Special Features
- Commentary with Stephen Poliakoff and Kenith Trodd (Producer)
- Interviews with Stephen Poliakoff and cast
DVD Technical Information:
- Subtitles: English SDH
- Audio: Stereo
- Region Code: 2, 4
- PAL
- Aspect Ratio: 4:3
- Disc Format: DVD-5
- Running Time: 79 mins approx.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
34 of 37 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
This, apparently, dated journey on a grubby trans European train will contrast starkly with its modern equivalent. Unless of course you’re a British rail commuter when it will seem bang up to date.
Peter, an arrogant ex public schoolboy, is travelling to a Linz book fair when he meets an American girl and hopes his luck is in. However, things are complicated by the arrival in the same compartment of Frau Messener, an elderly, once upper class, Austrian who matches Peters arrogance and surpasses it with her spoilt demands.
Dame Peggy Ashcroft, whose eyes are far to young for her ageing frame, wonderfully portrays the matriarch of a fallen race. The part of Peter, played by Michael Kitchen, seems to have been written for him. Anyone who travelled in Europe in the 70’s, encountering armed border guards who seem to be in training for the next Reich, will appreciate the undertones of paranoia.
Gritty, atmospheric and delivering a sense of frustration right to the fractured end when we glimpse the potential of empathy between Peter and Frau Messener, but tantalisingly never quite make it. Not everyone’s cup of tea, hence four stars, but never the less a classic Poliakoff.
Peter, an arrogant ex public schoolboy, is travelling to a Linz book fair when he meets an American girl and hopes his luck is in. However, things are complicated by the arrival in the same compartment of Frau Messener, an elderly, once upper class, Austrian who matches Peters arrogance and surpasses it with her spoilt demands.
Dame Peggy Ashcroft, whose eyes are far to young for her ageing frame, wonderfully portrays the matriarch of a fallen race. The part of Peter, played by Michael Kitchen, seems to have been written for him. Anyone who travelled in Europe in the 70’s, encountering armed border guards who seem to be in training for the next Reich, will appreciate the undertones of paranoia.
Gritty, atmospheric and delivering a sense of frustration right to the fractured end when we glimpse the potential of empathy between Peter and Frau Messener, but tantalisingly never quite make it. Not everyone’s cup of tea, hence four stars, but never the less a classic Poliakoff.
25 of 28 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
This made a big impression on me when I first saw it in the 80s and it was great to find it again. Poliakoff and director Peter Duffel make a number of subtle references to "The Lady Vanishes" and other train-based classics but in this film the corridors are crowded with obnoxious passengers, the staff surly and the officials intimidating. The train and its passengers serve as a metaphor for a Europe still fighting the cold war and living with political extremists from left and right.
The whole contrast between the old order of glamorous travel for a privileged few and the new one of near anarchy is played out between Michael Kitchen and Peggy Ashcroft's characters. It is the character development rather than the twists of the plot that are the strong points of the movie. This would have been 5 stars but some people might be lulled by the background into expecting some kind of who-done-it. If you are willing simply enjoy the great acting and direction then this is a must-see.
The whole contrast between the old order of glamorous travel for a privileged few and the new one of near anarchy is played out between Michael Kitchen and Peggy Ashcroft's characters. It is the character development rather than the twists of the plot that are the strong points of the movie. This would have been 5 stars but some people might be lulled by the background into expecting some kind of who-done-it. If you are willing simply enjoy the great acting and direction then this is a must-see.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD|Amazon Verified Purchase
A strange romance between an old lady and a young man. A superb film - great character study, striking european-jazz soundtrack, very atmospheric. I hadn't seen it for years, then got back home after some long train journeys through Russia and dug it out of the dvd collection. Is this film dated? Yes, because who could write or film any kind of romance on a modern day train? And if the trains themselves don't destroy human relations then the passengers with their mobiles and music players do. Watch this film to remember what travel could be, when a journey had some excitement about it, even in the seedy down-at-heel glamour of the night train.
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