Wednesday, June 24, 2020

Streamline Express (1935)

A long time before HS2, a fast new monorail with ocean liner levels of luxury (and indeed size) is to make the inaugural trip between New York and California. Aboard are a motley collection of passengers with various back stories including Broadway star Patricia Wallace (Evelyn Venable) who has fled the set to run off to get married. The producer Jimmy Hart (Victor Jory) wants her back to stows away on the train...

Also aboard is blackmailer Gilbert Landon (Sidney Blackmer), he is involved in a love triangle involving John Bradley (Clay Clement) who is caught between his wife Mary (Erin O'Brien-Moore) and apparent new love Elaine Vincent (Esther Ralston)...

A neat but limited little film. The kind of light drama that is usually set in the likes of a posh hotel, but this one was on rails. The comedy is a little hard to come by and mostly involves the drunken passenger. The actual train itself is a lovely bit of Art Deco. Another example of Utopian thinking early in the 1930s before the war drums grew too loud to ignore. Imagine the world which this train and the Transatlantic Tunnel could have existed in, a shame the dream was soon to be shattered.