There's a familiar sound to Daniel Radcliffe's new movie because, like the Harry Potter films, The Woman in Black, an adaptation of the ghost story, features a train – in this case, a train pulling into a railway station.
And you can't get more haunted than a railway station (it's all those people saying goodbye and leaving faint traces of themselves behind).
However, even if The Woman in Black is good, it'll never be up there among the greatest train movies. What are the greatest train movies? I'm glad you asked.
North by Northwest, 1959
Alfred Hitchcock proving trains are sexy, especially if you put Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint on them. It's the scene of them kissing as the train rounds a bend that sticks in the mind but there's also Hitchcock's final cheeky metaphor. "Come along Mrs Thornhill," says Grant pulling his wife on to the bed. Cue shot of train thundering into tunnel.
The Train, 1964
The exact opposite of North by Northwest – this isn't the train as a glamourous object, it's the train as a dirty, dangerous thing. The stars aren't the passengers either; this time the story is about the engineers and the railwaymen, the men who keep the engines going. And all the stunts, explosions and crashes are for real.
Strangers on a Train, 1951
Another Hitchcock, and a film that brilliantly uses the train's potential as a place where strangers can meet and part again. What if one of those strangers offered to kill your wife if you did the same for him? It would be the perfect crime, wouldn't it?
Shanghai Express, 1932
And finally, the train as a beautiful backdrop to Marlene Dietrich. "Every train carries its cargo of sin," she says. She's reclining in her seat at the time, listening to a gramophone and smoking a cigarette. Which is probably how all travel should be.
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