Review of The Last Train

Pierre Granier Deferre's adaptation of Simenon's Le Train is for the most part a competent version of a World War II story, but its slow building to a powerful ending makes one think more highly of it afterwards. Maroyeur (Trintignant) is a petit bourgeois repairman who even though he works on radios is oblivious to the full extent of the Nazi horror that is overtaking France and most of Europe in this early 1940 setting. When circumstances force him to share a train wagon for horses with a mysterious fellow refugee Anna (Schneider) while his own pregnant wife and child are allowed to travel more comfortably in a regular cabin, a delicate romance develops and we only learn gradually that the woman is German and later Jewish. Circumstances also bring it about that Maroyeur lets Anna use an identity card with his real wife's name. In the epilogue, after they have gone separate ways, Maroyeur is brought in for questioning by the police when they have caught up with Anna. He has the opportunity to pretend he doesn't know this woman (the character played by Trintignant in The Conformist would have) but at the last minute goes over to touch her, thus sacrificing himself and also possibly bringing harm to his family. I haven't found the original book but typically Simenon (who has shown elsewhere in the narrative the degrading conditions that people will descend to during war) wouldn't offer such a redeeming glimpse of the power of romantic love. Even the early 70s visual clichés such as a few zoom shots and a final frozen frame that the director falls back on do not spoil this sequence. The film also benefits from the authentic locations, most in the Ardennes area, as we see the train going through the countryside.I understand Granier Deferre specialized in Simenon adaptations during this period and I would like to see more of them.