Next stop, wonderland: Trains on screens

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Editor’s note: Take a wonderful journey through the film history of trains—from the first Luniere Brothers’ screening to Hitchcock thrillers and Hindi film romances.

Written by: Aarthi Ramnath, Assistant News Editor 

The 19th century gave us two landmark inventions. In 1825, the Stockton and Darlington Railway opened for service—authorised to carry both passengers and goods. And in 1895, the Lumière brothers invented the Cinématographe—the stationary eye that captured the majesty of these thundering beasts. 

The screening of the very first film—‘Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat’—also marked the birth of the train as a powerful symbol. Since that time, trains have become an engine for storytelling—as scaffolding for a story (‘Before Sunrise’), a fateful plot device (‘Murder at the Oriental Express’) or as a gateway to another world (the Harry Potter franchise). As Lynne Kirby writes in her book ‘Camera Obscura’: 

Both [cinema and trains] are means of transporting a passenger to a totally different place, both are highly charged vehicles of narrative events, stories, intersections of strangers, both are based on a fundamental paradox: simultaneous motion and stillness. 

The history of cinema is also the symbolic history of the locomotive.

Trains on screen: The beginnings

On January 25, 1896, the Lumière Brothers held the very first public screening of a motion picture: ‘L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat’—better known as ‘Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat’. The 50-second grainy silent film—shown on a modest seven-foot wide screen in Paris:

Soon there were PR-invented stories of spectators screaming at the sight of a train hurtling down the screen. German film scholar Martin Loiperdinger says the stories were a way to convey the “emotional power” of moving pictures. The Lumiere brothers made more than 1,400 one-minute films—not all of them about trains. 

Cinema soon grew from mere footage to the narrative film—of which ‘The Great Train Robbery’ of 1903 is a pioneering example. Directed by Edwin S Porter, this 12-minute opened the door to using the train as a set or a location. The action-drama—loosely based on a play—replicated the theatre experience. Actors entered and exited the stage—on sets representing parts of the train system, from the controller room to the compartments. 

Skipping ahead two decades, behold comedy king Buster Keaton’s 1926 film ‘The General’ which raised the bar. Set during the Civil War, the 1 hour 20 minute film is filled with action-packed chase sequences—almost entirely set on a moving train—captured in this short clip:

FYI: Keaton was an inspiration for one of the greatest action stars in cinematic history: Jackie Chan—who in turn inspired Brad Pitt’s stunts in ‘Bullet Train’.

It was not only the Western filmmakers who were fascinated by trains. In the 1920s, a collective of like-minded filmmakers—called kinoks (cinema-eyes)—were tasked by the Kremlin to film everyday life in the Soviet Union. In 1929, Mikhail Kaufman and Dziga Vertov made the documentary ‘Man With A Movie Camera’—which heavily featured trains and trams. Here, the filmmakers were the true action heroes:

While working on the episodes of ‘Kino-Pravda’ (Dziga Vertov’s documentary series 1922-1925) Kaufman used to lay on the rails with the camera and film the train rushing forward above him. Once, the [carriage] was not properly attached and Kaufman escaped death by moving aside at the last moment…Another time [while filming for ‘Man with a Movie Camera’] he worked standing on top of a train.’  

You get a glimpse of that scene in the trailer for the restored film below (entire movie here):

In socialist India, the train were similarly used to stage fictional paeans to nation building, as film scholar MK Raghavendra notes:

The imagery of passing railway stations’ in films like Devdas (1955) and Jailor (1958) give it this identity. It is this symbolism that allows the wonderful song from Jagriti (1954), ‘Aao bachchon tumhe dikhaaye’, a salutation to the idea of India, to take place from within the train. Mehboob Khan’s ‘Son of India’ (1962) showcases the train with a slightly more advanced allegory. Here it is a signifier of India’s march towards progress and nation building, albeit in a fleeting moment, during the song, ‘Nanha munna raahi hoon.’

You get a taste of the patriotic optimism in this famous ‘Jagriti’ song:

The magic carpet to modernity

Trains as a stand-in for modernity would find resonance in films across the world in the 1950s—including Satyajit Ray’s ‘Pather Panchali’ (1955)—the first in the Apu trilogy. In its famous train scene, Apu and Durga see a train for the very first time:

As Apu and Durga run amid the tall, white kaash flowers outside their village, the train and its black and white smoke cut past the excited siblings like a massive, mysterious, metallic beast, making an awe-inspiring diversion through their pre-industrial lives. The child Apu glimpse the future, and Ray, the cinematic poet, captures the magical excitement as only he can.

Watch the scene below:

In recent years, ‘Dhadak Dhadak’ from ‘Bunty Aur Babli’ strikes a similar note—expressing the dreams of a small town hero taking the train to the big city. 

Trains also serve as a bridge to the future in the movies of early 20th century Japanese directors—symbolising “the break between the furusato (home town) or the place that one originates from and that often carries strong emotional overtones, and the modern city, where adults go to study and work. The railway therefore establishes a link between the two worlds of childhood innocence and the adult world full of promise, mystery and anxiety.” Although in Yasujiro Ozu’s ‘Tokyo Story’, it is the parents who travel on the train to visit their children in the big city. 

From modernity to inequality

French auteur Jean Renoir used the train to signify the class divide created by modern capitalism. ‘La bête humaine’ or ‘The Human Beast’ traces the tragic fate of a locomotive fireman crushed by social injustice. The train here is the setting for working class camaraderie—without the heavy-handed Marxism. The 1930s movie was also the precursor to the classic genre of film noir. 

In the 2013 film ‘Snowpiercer’—directed by the South Korean director Bong Joon-ho—the train mirrors the brutal class hierarchy of capitalism—laid bare in an post-apocalyptic world. A never-stopping locomotive circles the planet—literally fueled by the blood of the poor—while the affluent play in cocooned compartments of their own. Tilda Swinton’s now famous ‘Disorder’ speech perfectly illustrates the train as a metaphor of class oppression:

In the beginning, order was proscribed by your ticket: First Class, Economy, and freeloaders like you. Eternal order is prescribed by the sacred engine: all things flow from the sacred engine, all things in their place, all passengers in their section, all water flowing. all heat rising, pays homage to the sacred engine, in its own particular preordained position. So it is. Now, as in the beginning, I belong to the front. You belong to the tail. When the foot seeks the place of the head, the sacred line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.

You can watch the powerful moment below:

As a side note: Speaking of apocalyptic films, the most terrifying is surely ‘Train to Busan’—which has been proclaimed as the “best zombie movie ever.” Somehow, all bad situations only get worse when they involve moving trains.

Only murders in the building train

The passenger train has been the backdrop of a number of iconic murder mysteries. ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ is the most obvious. But no one owns the genre quite like Alfred Hitchcock. ‘North by Northwest’ (1959) may be the best known—but his 1938 film ‘The Lady Vanishes’ is far more compelling. 

In the British whodunit—based on the book ​​‘The Wheel Spins’ by Ethel Lina White—a young woman (Margaret Lockwood) on a train befriends an elderly woman—but soon finds that she has not only disappeared but no one in the train seems to remember her (Jodie Foster starred in the airline version of a similar plot in ‘Flightplan’). If you haven’t seen this Hitchcock gem, this lively short clip sums up all the reasons why you’re missing out:

Other than Hitchcock, the locomotive has inspired other thrillers by legendary directors—such as Costa Gavras’ ‘The Sleeping Car Murders’ and Joseph Sargent’s ‘The Taking of Pelham One Two Three’ (remade by Tony Scott)—which is more thriller than whodunit.

A popular iteration of the genre is the ‘girl who saw something’ plotline. Here the murder is not committed on the train—but glimpsed in an instant from it—by a mystery-obsessed heiress in ‘Lady on a Train’ (1945) or Miss Marple in ‘Murder, She Said’ (1961)—and most recently by Emily Blunt playing Rachel in ‘The Girl on the Train’ (trailer below).

Indian romance on the rails

In the 1950s and 1960s, the train—with its sense of freedom and possibility—became a natural backdrop for romance: 

For most of the 1950s and ’60s, the train serves as a place of romance and has a jolly, romantic vibe to it best showcased in songs like ‘Hai apna dil toh awara’ (Solva Saal, 1958), ‘Jiya ho’ (Jab Pyar Kisise Hota Hai, 1961) and ‘Main chali main chali’ (Professor, 1962). As late as 1969, Aradhana has ‘Mere sapnon ki rani’ play out the romance between its protagonists, indicating the train’s importance as a space away from home where courtship can happen. 

If you want to revisit the delightful ‘Mere Sapnon Ki Rani’, watch it here.  

Bollywood’s love for the train has not dimmed with time—be it the Sufi poetry of  ‘Chaiyya Chaiyya’ to the ode to urban romance—‘In Dino’ from ‘Life In A… Metro’. In the latter, the local train—a seemingly public place—becomes an intimate space shared by Shikha (Shilpa Shetty) and Akash (Shiney Ahuja):

More often, the train is the location for the fateful first encounter between lovers. In the 1972 film ‘Pakeezah’, Raj Kumar falls instantly and madly in love at the sight of a sleeping Meena Kumari—and leaves her this now immortal love letter:  

No loves a meet-cute on a train more than director Mani Ratnam—as you can see in this fan edit of the iconic sequences from his films:

More poignantly, this scene in Imtiaz Ali’s ‘Love Aaj Kal’ uses the sound of the train to mark the transformation of romance between generations—lovers who once met on trains now bid each goodbye at the airport: 

Fantastic trains & where to find them

My favourite kind of train is the kind that doesn’t exist. In Robert Zemeckis’s ‘The Polar Express’, a young boy boards a mysterious train to the North Pole—only to find that his entire adventure was maybe just a dream. Darker and more powerful is Barry Jenkins’s ‘The Underground Railroad’. The 2021 TV series follows a young Black girl named Cora—who flees a Georgia plantation on a magical underground railway—an imaginary mirror of the real underground railroad that rescued slaves in the 19th century. 

To wrap this journey through film history, here is a wonderful quote from ‘Inception’—is there any better symbol of the human imagination than a make-believe train?

You're waiting for a train. A train that will take you far away. You know where you hope this train will take you, but you can't know for sure. Yet it doesn't matter… Because you'll always be together.”

PS: Here’s a list of films mentioned in the article:

• ‘Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat’ (1896) by Lumière brothers
• ‘The Great Train Robbery’ (1930) by Edwin S Porter
• ‘The General’ (1926) by Buster Keaton
• ‘Man With A Movie Camera’ (1929) by Dziga Vertov 
• The song ‘Aao Bachchon Tumhe Dikhaaye’ from ‘Jagriti’ (1954) by Satyen Bose
• ‘Pather Panchali’ (1955) by Satyajit Ray’s
• The song ‘Dhadak Dhadak’ from ‘Bunty Aur Babli’ (2005)
• ‘Tokyo Story’ (1953) by Yasujiro Ozu
• ‘La bête humaine’ (1938) by Jean Renoir 
• ‘Snowpiercer’ (2013) by Bong Joon-ho
• ‘The Lady Vanishes’ (1938) by Alfred Hitchcock
• ‘The Girl on the Train’ (2016) by Tate Taylor
• The song ‘In Dino’ from ‘Life In A… Metro’ (2007)
• ‘Pakeezah’ (1972) by Kamal Amrohi
• Trains in Mani Ratnam films
• ‘Love Aaj Kal’ (2009) by Imtiaz Ali
• ‘The Polar Express’ (2004) by Robert Zemeckis
• ‘The Underground Railroad’ (2021) by Barry Jenkins 

Reading list 

Dr Omar Ahmed in Movie Mahal has published parts of his fascinating thesis on the significance of train iconography, ideology and genre. Film Companion pays an excellent ode to Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy. This 2015 essay on Scroll looks at the roles of trains in Hindi films. This Quint piece lists Hindi movies that have used trains as a plot device for romance. Empire has a good summary of trains in Hollywood films. Meanwhile, this website looks at trains in Japanese films. British Film Institute has a list of ten best thrillers set on a train.