I quit watching Westerns to check out The Titfield Thunderbolt last evening. It's a 1953 Ealing Studio production. It's their first comedy filmed in Technicolor and one of the first in the country. It was written by T E B Clarke who had read of volunteers restoring the first heritage railway, the Talyllyn Railway in Wales. Clarke wrote other films for Ealing but I haven't seen most of them. I have seen The Lavender Hill Mob, Passport To Pimlico, and Who Done It? The movie was directed by Charles Crichton, who had previously directed The Lavender Hill Mob and would later direct A Fish Called Wanda. He would also direct episodes of Danger Man, Man In A Suitcase, The Avengers, Space: 1999 and Dick Turpin as well as other popular British TV programs.
The Titfield Thunderbolt is about problems that arise when the government decides to close the line and the locals volunteer to keep it going themselves. shares the type of plot that Westerns use a lot, baddies trying to sabotage the local attempt to save the railroad so that they can profit from their bus service. Stanley Holloway, George Relph, John Gregson, Sidney James, Hugh Griffith, Edie Martin, Jack MacGowran are among the cast.
The baddies enlist the local steam roller driver, played by one of my favorite character actors, the legendary Sid James. He attacks the train with his steam roller.
Sid loses. Later he helps the baddies pull the train out of the station and down a sabotaged side line. After that train has been wrecked, the local train buffs borrow the original Thunderbolt from the museum and use it to run the inspection test. They win the right to run a rail line.
That's the Liverpool and Manchester Railway locomotive LMR 57 Lion playing the Thunderbolt. It was built in 1838, 9 years after Stevenson's Rocket, and it ran well enough in 1953 to do all it's own scenes. It was slightly damaged during one scene in the film. If you go to the Museum of Liverpool you can see the damage to this day.
I found it a fun movie and one worth adding to my collection. There's a recently restored version on Blu-ray that might be worth getting. Unfortunately, it;s only available in the UK and you need an all region Blu-ray to watch here in the US. As you might imagine, getting one is on my list of things to do, I already have a Blu-Ray from the UK I can't play yet. It comes with a DVD so I'm atleast covered until an all region Blu-ray player comes here. It then opens the doors to even more films. Just what I need more stuff to watch..
Comments