Impact0419

Films Put the Focus on
So many classic feature films
have been made involving
various modes of transport
as the theme. Just at random
they include Murder on the
Orient Express, On the Buses and
Those Magnificent Young Men in their
Flying Machines. The list goes on and
on. Films about racing cars, motorcycle
hoodlums and the aversion of disaster
in mid-air abound. There have also been
17 feature films about the sinking of
the Titanic plus 25 dramas on TV. The
viewing public is obviously gripped by
what happens when we travel.
There are also lots of film
documentaries which cover transport.
The most famous is Night Train. It is
75 years since the ground-breaking
documentary film about the mail train
from Euston to Scotland was first
screened. The 23-minute film covered
a routine subject, but succeeded in
capturing the public’s imagination with a
Benjamin Britten score and featuring a
now-famous WH Auden poem. It is often
shown on TV.
One of my favourite movies is Bicycle
Thieves. I first saw it when undertaking
a film studies course at the Showroom
Cinema around 20 years ago. Since then
I have watched it at the cinema and at
home on DVD. Bicycle Thieves is a 1948
Italian drama film directed by Vittorio De
Sica. The film follows the story of a poor
father searching post-Second World
War Rome for his stolen bicycle, without
which he will lose the job which was to
be the salvation of his young family. His
son also tries to help. A heart-warming
film, Bicycle Thieves is widely regarded
as a masterpiece of Italian
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neo-realism, a movement which began
with Rome, Open City in 1945 and which
attempted to give cinema a new degree
of realism.
An unusual film about a small boat is
All is Lost starring Robert Redford and
made in 2013. What is unusual about
this is that Redford is the only actor and
that there is very little dialogue in the
movie. In the middle of the Indian Ocean,
Redford, a lone sailor, wakes one
morning to find that a shipping container
has fallen into the sea and his boat has
collided with it causing a hole in the
hull. The film tells the story about how,
alone, he attempts a repair and then how
he tries to survive the elements with a
damaged vessel. Amazingly most of this
film what shot in a studio.
Films about cars with names feature
throughout movie history from Disney’s
Herbie through to Stephen King’s
Christine and the old British favourite
Genevieve which I saw in the cinema in
the 1950s. Road movies feature long-
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