Sadism, Drugs and Rolling Stock

A film director, a producer and a script girl take a train to Antwerp and improvise a screenplay along the way.

Their unfolding vision of a drug runner making the same journey materialises as a separate film that runs in parallel. In other words, film one (about the production team) gives birth to film two (their drug runner story) and they are intersected into a single 105 minute film.

This is not so much a play within a play as two films within a film, and they occasionally collide and generate intrigue—particularly when characters and scenarios from both films occupy the same sequences; more so when the filmmakers select or sacrifice problematic ideas.

Of additional note is the relatively tame (by today’s standards) sexual sadism that resulted in a ban by the BBC.

A highly experimental film for 1966 to say the least, and one which is lent bags of gravity and credibility by the presence of Jean-Louis Trintignant.