In a rare failing, IMDB makes it very difficult to find this movie. Harder, in fact, than Rotten Tomatoes does. You see, what the box cover does not tell us is that this is, in fact, an episode of a show called BBC2 Playhouse, and IMDB doesn't automatically pull up episode titles when it searches.
This is the story
of a stuffy Englishman, a horrible old Viennese woman, and a wild American. The Englishman thinks he can hit it off with the American woman, but the old Viennese woman takes over everything, promptly making the overnight journey one of the most horrible nights the young Englishman has ever spent. I would have killed the woman, but I have self-control issues.
The train is also filled with Europunks listening to Blondie. These twerps make the journey that much more difficult, and what with one thing and another, Peter (the Englishman) never does really get to connect with Lorraine the American. It's all about Frau Messner.
I mean, this woman actually makes him repeat her last name to ensure that he can say it. Messner! I can think of a lot of German names that are actually kind of difficult for a native English-speaker, but Messner most assuredly isn't one of them.
I am manipulative, and I've admitted such. Not intentionally, but I don't think Frau Messner is doing it on purpose, either. She just assumes that the world will order itself to her requirements, and if that means that some nice young man will have to give up the seat he's requested and paid for, that's his problem, not hers. I would never be so blithe about it as she.
Frau Messner is from a different era. She should have had Peter's dream, the private railway car. She should have a personal maid following her around. She should certainly get out of everyone else's hair; she's not paying the world to obey her whims.
June 28, 2007
