Station to Station

Station to Station: Kazuo Ishiguro Top Ten Train Films sess the globally acclaimed writer curating a month-long season of ten films that celebrate ‘train movies’.

Describing his approach to the theme, Kazuo Ishiguro says: “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.”

The season opens with a conversation with Ishiguro, where the writer explains his vision for what makes a great ‘train movie’.

SHANGHAI EXPRESS (Josef von Sternberg, 1932) 
“‘It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily,’ Marlene Dietrich tells a naïve Englishman aboard an express crossing a China teetering on revolution and civil war. In this, the mother of all train movies, even the star power of Dietrich and Anna May Wong at their peak is almost upstaged by von Sternberg’s stunning chiaroscuro images.” 
THU 2 JUL 20:40 NFT1 / SAT 11 JUL 12:00 NFT1 / THU 16 JUL 18:30 NFT2

ROME EXPRESS (Walter Forde, 1932) 
“German star Conrad Veidt and ace Austrian cameraman Günther Krampf bring a near-expressionist Weimar sensibility to this riveting British thriller, set aboard a train filled with enjoyably stiff-upper-lipped stereotypes. Deplorably neglected today, this deserves to be remembered both as a classic and as a strangely serendipitous blending of two normally opposed cinematic styles.” 
WED 1 JUL 20:50 NFT2 / TUE 21 JUL 18:15 NFT1

 THE LADY VANISHES (Alfred Hitchcock, 1938) 
“On a train crossing Europe on the brink of the Second World War, Iris takes tea with the friendly English governess she met in her compartment. Minutes later, the governess has vanished and none of the train’s eccentric gallery of passengers will admit to having ever seen her. Propelled by a superb Launder and Gilliat script, Hitchcock’s finest British film is, by turns, hilarious, thrilling, romantic and scary.” 
SUN 5 JUL 12:00 NFT1 / FRI 17 JUL 20:30 NFT2

 NIGHT TRAIN (Jerzy Kawalerowicz, 1959) 
"This New Wave-ish Polish gem was internationally lauded on release, but is now largely forgotten. Suspicion spreads among the passengers of an overnight train to a seaside resort with the rumour that a murderer on the run is somewhere on board. Kawalerowicz compellingly captures the forced intimacies and claustrophobia on the train until the thrilling final act bursts onto a wider canvas with an unforgettable sequence that probes the atavistic depths of human crowd behaviour.” 
TUE 7 JUL 18:10 NFT2 / WED 15 JUL 17:50 NFT1

MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (Sidney Lumet, 1974) 
“You may know the ‘solution’ to this famous Agatha Christie mystery, but Lumet’s virtuoso filmmaking will quickly pull you under its macabre yet cosy spell. Finney’s mesmerising Poirot dominates at the centre of an ensemble of legendary stars, each of whom makes a memorable contribution. It’s one of the few Christie adaptations prepared to accommodate the darkness often lurking in her vision.” 
MON 6 JUL 20:25 NFT2 / SUN 26 JUL 14:20 NFT1

RUNAWAY TRAIN (Andrei Konchalovsky, 1985) 
“Two convicts break out of a hellish prison to find themselves trapped on a speeding train they can’t control. Is this Jon Voight’s finest moment? (He and Rebecca De Mournay both received Oscar nominations.) On the surface very American, this superb edge-of-the-seat existentialist parable was directed by Russian Konchalovsky and based on an unproduced Akira Kurosawa screenplay.” 
SAT 11 JUL 18:20 NFT2 / SAT 18 JUL 20:40 NFT1

 TICKETS (Ermanno Olmi, Abbas Kiarostami, Ken Loach, 2005) 
“Three Palme d’Or winners share the directing credit, but I’ve yet to find anyone who has seen this film. (Aside from the stranger in the Japanese restaurant who alerted me to its existence – my thanks to him.) This triptych film moves through a single pool of passengers on a crowded European train; among them an ageing professor, some boisterous Glasgow Rangers fans and a refugee family.  If the three directors’ styles mix too unevenly to make this a lost classic, Tickets is nevertheless extraordinarily fascinating.  And Kiarostami’s episode is a particular revelation.” 
THU 23 JUL 18:10 NFT1 / THU 30 JUL 20:40 NFT3

 TRANSSIBERIAN (Brad Anderson, 2008) 
“Starting like a well-made ‘strangers on a train’ thriller, this soon takes a Dostoevskian turn as Jessie (Emily Mortimer in a formidable central performance) is pushed to confront ever darker realms of her own nature. It may put you off talking to people on trains, but TransSiberian evokes powerfully the euphoria, chaos and horrors of Russia’s post-Soviet ‘mafias’ period. And Ben Kingsley’s narcotics officer is easily as scary as his East End gangster in Sexy Beast.” 
SAT 18 JUL 12:15 NFT3 / WED 22 JUL 18:20 NFT3 / FRI 31 JUL 20:40 NFT3

SNOWPIERCER (2013) 
“The Korean maestro moved effortlessly into the English language with this celebrated slice of post-apocalyptic lunatic mayhem. A man-made ice age has killed off all life on Earth, bar a remnant of humans surviving inside a sealed train that endlessly circles the globe. The ordinary folk occupy the rear carriages in terrible conditions; the privileged and powerful in more luxurious ones towards the front. Rebellion looms. Tilda Swinton is magnificently hateful as a head mistress-cum-enforcer.” 
FRI 10 JUL 20:30 NFT2 / FRI 24 JUL 18:10 NFT2 / MON 27 JUL 20:30 NFT1

COMPARTMENT NO. 6 (Juho Kuosmanen, 2021) 
“Her long-term relationship crumbling, a Finnish art student takes a train beyond the Arctic Circle to the north coast of Russia. She’s forced to share an austere compartment with a boorish young miner (Yura Borisov, as brilliant here as he was in Anora) who delights in making her feel uncomfortable. But as the landscape outside grows bleaker, these two lost souls begin tentatively to share empathy and friendship. Sublime and heart-warming, Kuosmanen’s Cannes Grand Prix winner has the gentle profundity of Chekhov’s best stories.” 
SAT 4 JUL 20:40 NFT3 / MON 20 JUL 18:20 NFT3 / WED 29 JUL 20:45 NFT1