Trains In Cinema

Another breathtaking montage (it’s part of a series). I get really excited when he posts a new installment. Just beautifully put together, I think.

I love the train sequence in Penny Serenade – right after Cary Grant and Irene Dunne get married he has to take a train to the West Coast to go on to his assignment in Japan – leaving her behind until he is ready to send for her – so there is no time for a honeymoon. She gets on the train with him just to say goodbye, and they sit in his cabin, not knowing how to speak to each other, sad that they must part. They embrace. Slowly, the train starts moving. She starts in alarm, “Roger! The train is moving!” He reaches out to close his cabin door, taking her in his arms, and he says what is perhaps the hottest line in the history of cinema, “We’ll get you off.”

It’s a snowy night, and the next thing we see is the train slowly pulling into another station – we can see out the window how much snow has accumulated, and I think the sign says something like: New York: 150 Miles … so as audience members we put it together. They got on the train in New York, they are now 150 miles away … time enough to, uhm, “get her off”, shall we say. I’m not dwelling on this to be prurient – it also becomes important later, because it is during that 150 mile journey on a train that she gets pregnant. So it’s an important plot point as well. The platform is empty, snowy, it must be 2 or 3 in the morning. Cary Grant and Irene Dunne step off the train – she’s going to wait to pick up another train back to New York – and he is going on on his journey. They don’t speak. They are now man and wife for real, and all of that silent stuff coursing between them is palpable. SUCH a moving scene. They stand on the platform and embrace.

Look at their shadow on the side of the train.

There are no lines in this scene, but it’s killer. Then, slowly, the train starts to pull away, and Cary Grant jumps back on – looking back at her … She stands there, waving, and a snowflake alights on her eyelashes – it looks like an accident, but what a happy accident – because it gives such a sense of reality to the scene. She’s devastated to watch that train pull away … but now, after months of dating this guy, of trying to play it cool, of not trying to put the pressure on … now she has him. He is her husband … and he’s on that train … pulling away from her … and who knows when she will see him again.

Lovely sequence – one of my favorite in cinema. Simple, effective, emotional.