The locomotive montage

Everything that happens has already happened; we’ve seen it at the movies.

The train picks up speed as it leaves the station. There’s an old man standing on the tracks, clutching a little dog named Flag. The man is a retired professor who has nothing left in the world but his hat and his dog. And his dignity, but it’s hard to hang on to that when you’re hungry. So Umberto is standing on the railroad tracks waiting to die. Flag must die with him because he cannot be left alone. As the train draws near, Flag yelps in terror and jumps out of Umberto’s grasp. The old man gives chase, abandoning his death.

Moraldo watches from a window on the train. For months he haunted the station, watching the trains arrive in their small town where everyone he knows and has ever known has lived all their lives. Then he watches the trains depart for places he only dreams about. No one ever leaves their small town, but this morning Moraldo got on the train and now he’s sick with fear and excitement.

A pretty woman in expensive clothes walks into the train car, holding a delicate hand out to keep from stumbling. She settles into the empty seat next to Moraldo and nods at him. She is the daughter of a fabulously wealthy man; she has just run away from home to go to the man she loves. Or thinks she does, until she meets the broke but dashing journalist who wants exclusive rights to her story. She will detest him at first, but that’s the way these romantic comedies go.

Across the aisle, his face concealed by a borrowed newspaper he’s pretending to read, sits the adman Roger Thornhill. Who is wanted for a murder he did not commit, framed by people he does not know. His life has taken a very strange turn: one minute he’s meeting people for drinks at The Plaza, the next minute he’s being chased down the highway by a crop dusting plane. He’s a little old for this, and for dangling off a rock face on Mount Rushmore, but charm is a more powerful weapon than his tormentors suspect. Thornhill scans the passenger’s faces for a certain cool blonde, then he sees something that causes his eyes to pop out of his head like a cartoon coyote’s.

Sugar Kane sashays through the train car, her hips describing figure eights, her bosoms a marvel of cantilevering. No, not that blonde, that one spells trouble. Sugar sings in an all-girl band and she likes the drink a little too much. Behind her, tottering on high heels, are two of the ugliest women Thornhill has ever seen. One of them drops her purse right on his foot; he retrieves it and hands it back to her. “Thanks, bub,” the woman says in a low, manly voice. “My pleasure,” says the startled Thornhill, and he notices the other woman repeat the words in his accent. These unprepossessing women are in fact men. They are also on the run, from the law and the mob, but their strategy for staying alive requires being in drag.

The not-quite all-girl band lurches through the coach and ends up in the wrong car. Much to the delight of its occupants, the Ale and Quail Club, a group of eccentric millionaires on a drinking and hunting vacation. Showgirls and rich old geezers, it’s the perfect combination: a party breaks out in the private car, the drinks flow, guns are produced and the windows shot out.

The steward flees this hilarity to summon the conductor, and runs past Rick, who is standing in the door of the moving train, reading a letter. Rick’s loyal sidekick Sam the piano player tugs at his sleeve saying, “Boss, we have to go inside.” Big drops of rain pelt Rick’s hat and roll off the brim onto the paper he’s holding, blotting out the words as he reads them. Ilsa has just dumped him.

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The movies referred to in this column are:

1) Umberto D, the neo-realist movie by Vittorio De Sica. Good but rather depressing movie, and particularly harrowing if you love your dog (or cat, or pet).

2) I Vitelloni by Federico Fellini, an early autobiographical work.

3) It Happened One Night by Frank Capra, starring Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable, who caused a stir by appearing in his undershirt.

4) North by Northwest by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Cary Grant, whom Hitch described as “the only man I’ve ever loved.”

5) Some Like It Hot by Billy Wilder, starring Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis doing an impression of Cary Grant, and Marilyn Monroe.

6) The Palm Beach Story by screwball comedy master Preston Sturges, starring Claudette Colbert and Joel McCrea.

7) Casablanca, directed by Michael Curtiz, starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Claude Rains as my favorite character, Louis the cynical police chief.

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