La Bataille du Rail [Battle of the Rails] ***** – (1946, Tony Laurent, Jean Daurand, Jean Clarieux, Jacques Desagneaux) Classic Movie Review 12,671

René Clément’s 1946 French war drama film La Bataille du Rail [Battle of the Rails] is a half-documentary, half-fictional account of World War Two resistance among courageous Breton railway workers (cheminots) in the French Resistance. 

Director René Clément’s 1946 French war drama film La Bataille du Rail [Battle of the Rails] is a half-documentary, half-fictional account of World War Two resistance among courageous Breton railway workers (cheminots) in the French Resistance, working to sabotage German military transport trains around the time of the Allied Invasion of Normandy.

Stark realism through the use of non-professional actors, many of them actual railway workers, and real locations characterise Clément’s award-winning film, which took the International Jury Prize (Prix international du jury) and Best Director award at the 1946 Cannes Film Festival. The film also won the inaugural Prix Méliès for the best French film of the preceding year from the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics.

La Bataille du Rail is a sober Bressonian masterpiece of French cinema, crafted in the style of the documentaries Clément had worked on. It is a film with a mission, part financed by the former Resistance to set the record straight and show world audiences what the French had faced under the Nazis and their gritty, life or death involvement against them.

It features among the cast Tony Laurent, Jean Daurand, Jean Clarieux and Jacques Desagneaux. Charles Boyer is the Narrator.

Release date: 27 February 1946.

It was distributed in America by Arthur Mayer and Joseph Burstyn in 1949.

La Bataille du Rail runs 85 minutes, is made by Coopérative Générale du Cinéma Français, is distributed by Union Française de Production Cinématographique, is written by René Clément, Colette Audry and Jean Daurand, is shot by Henri Alekan, is produced by Pierre Lévy-Corti, and is scored by Yves Baudrier.

The cast are Jean Clarieux as Lampin, Jean Daurand as Cheminot, Jacques Desagneaux as Athos, François Joux as Cheminot (railway worker), Pierre Latour as Cheminot (railway worker), Tony Laurent as Camargue, Robert Le Ray as Chef de gare, Pierre Lozach as Cheminot (railway worker), Pierre Mindaist as Cheminot (railway worker), Léon Pauléon as Chef de gare St-André, Fernand Rauzéna as Cheminot (railway worker), Redon as Mecanicien, and Michel Salina as Allemand.

© Derek Winnert 2023 – Classic Movie Review 12,671

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