Night Train

1959 [POLISH]

Action / Drama / Mystery / Thriller

5
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 93% · 3 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 93% · 250 ratings
IMDb Rating 7.7/10 10 4012 4K

police lover train murderer stranger

Plot summary

Two strangers, Jerzy and Marta, accidentally end up holding tickets for the same sleeping chamber on an overnight train to the Baltic Sea coast. Also on board is Marta's spurned lover, who will not leave her alone. When the police enter the train in search of a murderer on the lam, rumors fly and everything seems to point toward one of the main characters as the culprit.

Director

Jerzy Kawalerowicz Photo
Jerzy Kawalerowicz

Top cast

Leon Niemczyk Photo
Leon Niemczyk as Jerzy
Teresa Szmigielówna Photo
Teresa Szmigielówna as Lawyer's Wife
Józef Lodynski Photo
Józef Lodynski as Plain-Clothes Policeman
Czeslaw Piaskowski Photo
Czeslaw Piaskowski as Passenger
720p.BluRay
899.28 MB
944*720
Polish 2.0
NR
Subtitles pl  
24 fps
1 hr 37 min
Seeds 7

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by tomweberfilms 9 / 10

Moody Expressionist Thriller

Although it has superficial similarities with Hitchcock films (it's in black and white; it takes place on a train; it's a murder mystery; there are plenty of red herrings and misleading clues), I loved this moody Polish film because it is visually stunning and refreshingly free of Hollywood clichés. I saw a lot of Expressionist influence in the artfully planned staging and unusual camera angles, both inside the cramped railway corridors and outside the train in various stops along the route. The film is fairly demanding on the viewer: there are a lot of secondary characters with complicated stories of their own, and I found myself repeatedly pausing the DVD to catch details that I had missed. The final scenes were intricately choreographed and highly stylized, reminiscent of black-and-white-era Fellini. Not for everyone, but I found it delightful and plan to watch it again.
Reviewed by tim_dearing-1 9 / 10

Hauntingly captivating

Sadly, I can't agree with most people who find this film to be Hitchcockesque in its representation of a thriller.To say this would be to say that your Jaguar is just like a Mercedes. They might both be fine cars, but they are in no way alike.The really quite simplistic plot travels at a slow and in many ways, inexplicable pace. There is little tension built up, and, for the most part, little mystery to be found.However, don't take any of this to be a retrograde description.The various small character subplots and interactions are wonderful. The whole journey has a quite haunting feel to it, which I find I am at loss to explain, because if I analyse the film, there is no real reason to this feeling. And yet, there it is.The beautiful and mysterious Lucyna Winnicka is utterly mesmerising.In so many ways this film shouldn't work with anything like the power it achieves, but somehow it does. If it captures you in the way it has me, then it will stay with you long after the event, from the strange individual passengers right down to the oh so ethereal soundtrack.I am without explanation, but I truly hope it gives you the feeling of something wonderful it gave me.
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