Trans-Europ-Express (film)

Trans-Europ-Express is a 1966 experimental film written and directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet and starring Jean-Louis Trintignant and Marie-France Pisier. The title refers to the Trans Europ Express, at the time an international rail network in Europe. A frame story shows a creative team devising a film plot during a train journey to Antwerp, intercut with a film-within-the-film about a novice cocaine smuggler and a prostitute that enacts their outline imperfectly.

Trans-Europ-Express
French theatrical release poster
Directed byAlain Robbe-Grillet
Written byAlain Robbe-Grillet
Produced bySamy Halfon
Starring
CinematographyWilly Kurant
Edited byBob Wade
Music byMichel Fano
Production
company
Como Films
Distributed byLux CCF
Trans American Film
Release date
  • 1966 (1966)
Running time
105 minutes
Countries
  • France
  • Belgium
LanguageFrench

Plot

The film-within-the-film features a Frenchman named Elias who takes his first consignment of cocaine from Paris to Antwerp on the Trans Europ Express. There he is passed from one mysterious intermediary to another and, with some time to spare, enacts a rape fantasy with a prostitute called Eva. Eventually he reaches his top contact, who reveals that his cargo was powdered sugar and the whole exercise was a test of his loyalty. Told that his next assignment will be to take a shipment back to Paris, he looks up Eva for another session and discovers there that she has betrayed him to the police. Initiating a bondage fantasy, he strangles her and immediately goes into hiding. Slipping out to buy a newspaper he sees a report of the murder above an advertisement for a strip club where the star performer in a bondage fantasy looks very like Eva. On arriving there he is surrounded by police but, before they can arrest him, he is shot dead by his contact.

When the characters in the frame story return to Paris and buy a newspaper, behind them in the crowd one can see Elias and Eva embracing.

Cast

Reception

Screenwriter Robert McKee claims Trans-Europ-Express is a "nonplot" film—that is, a film that does not tell a story.[1]

The film was released on DVD in 2008 in Italy by Ripley's Home Video and on Blu-ray in 2014 in the US by Redemption Films.[2]

References
  1. McKee, Robert (1997). Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting. New York: ReganBooks. pp. 57. ISBN 0060391685.
  2. "Trans-Europ Express and Successive Slidings of Pleasure Detailed". Blu-ray.com. 14 January 2014. Retrieved 3 February 2014.

Further reading
  • Gardies, André, comp. (1972) Alain Robbe-Grillet. Paris: Seghers (includes: "documents" & "points de vue", pp. 126–32, 162)
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