Station to Station: Kazuo Ishiguro’s Top Ten Train Films

‘I wonder if film would have been invented without the train.’
– Walter Murch

I’ve always loved train movies. It seems I’m not alone. Since I began preparing this season, fiercely advocated suggestions kept pouring in, often from total strangers. Curiously, ‘train movie’ isn’t an acknowledged genre like, say, the Western or the musical. No director, actor, period or country is associated with it. And as this selection shows, the films themselves cross naturally with a wide range of other genres: thriller, whodunnit, romantic comedy, dystopian SF, prison breakout, etc.

But we all recognise and love the tropes and atmosphere created by the jolting wheels, the steam, the narrow corridors, the compartments concealing mini-dramas, the confrontations in the restaurant cars. To be clear: a ‘train movie’ isn’t one with just a memorable train sequence in the middle, still less one that happens to have ‘train’ or ‘express’ in its title. Unrequited love stories set on railway platforms aren’t train movies; neither are those in which protagonists fight on train roofs or dangle precariously off the side. What follows are real train movies. Some famous, others unjustly obscure. Each one wonderful.

Kazuo Ishiguro, season curator

Event

Season Introduction Station to Station: Kazuo Ishiguro’s Top Ten Train Films

Booker and Nobel prize-winning writer Kazuo Ishiguro discusses his favourite train films.

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Season programme

Shanghai Express

One of the greatest collaborations between Josef von Sternberg and star Marlene Dietrich unfolds aboard the plush environs of a trans-continental train.

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Shanghai Express + intro by writer and season curator Kazuo Ishiguro

One of the greatest collaborations between Josef von Sternberg and star Marlene Dietrich unfolds aboard the plush environs of a trans-continental train.

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Rome Express

An opportunity to catch a ride aboard this criminally underseen British thriller.

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Rome Express + intro with writer Jonathan Coe, hosted by writer and season curator Kazuo Ishiguro

An opportunity to catch a ride aboard this criminally underseen British thriller.

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The Lady Vanishes

Alfred Hitchcock’s finest British film is a witty comedy thriller set aboard a train travelling through a Europe on the cusp of war.

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Night Train

Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s richly cinematic gem is one of the creative highlights of an extraordinary era of Polish cinema.

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Night Train + intro with Professor Philip Horne, hosted by Kazuo Ishiguro

Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s richly cinematic gem is one of the creative highlights of an extraordinary era of Polish cinema.

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Murder on the Orient Express

The best Agatha Christie adaptation bar none was an atypical journey for director Sidney Lumet and features an incredible all-star cast.

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Murder on the Orient Express + intro with writer Sophie Hannah, hosted by writer and season curator Kazuo Ishiguro

The best Agatha Christie adaptation bar none was an atypical journey for director Sidney Lumet and features an incredible all-star cast.

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Runaway Train

The very definition of existential cinema, Andrei Konchalovsky’s action masterpiece finds two escaped prisoners aboard an out-of-control train.

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Tickets

Ken Loach, Abbas Kiarostami and Ermanno Olmi deliver a masterclass in storytelling in this rarely seen but richly rewarding portmanteau film.

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TransSiberian

Brad Anderson’s follow-up to The Machinist is an equally unsettling portrait of a couple caught up in the machinations of the Russian underworld.

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Snowpiercer

Bong Joon Ho’s first English language feature is a post-apocalyptic adventure set aboard an unstoppable train whose class-divided carriages stoke the fires of revolution.

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Compartment No. 6

This love story between two people who initially dislike each other is a tender and affecting tale from the director of The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki.

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