The Cassandra Crossing
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| The Cassandra Crossing | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Directed by | George Pan Cosmatos |
| Produced by | Lew Grade |
| Written by | George Pan Cosmatos, Robert Katz |
| Starring | Ava Gardner Richard Harris Burt Lancaster Sophia Loren Martin Sheen O.J. Simpson Lee Strasberg |
| Music by | Jerry Goldsmith |
| Cinematography | Ennio Guarnieri |
| Editing by | Roberto Silvi, Françoise Bonnot |
| Distributed by | AVCO/Embassy Pictures |
| Release date(s) | 1976 |
| Running time | 129 Minutes |
| IMDb profile | |
The Cassandra Crossing is a 1976 British motion picture starring Richard Harris, Ava Gardner, Sophia Loren, Martin Sheen, Burt Lancaster, Lee Strasberg and O. J. Simpson.
[edit] Plot synopsis
This suspense film concerns a group of hapless passengers aboard a European transcontinental train bound from Geneva to Stockholm. They are infected with a viral plague from a Swedish terrorist, who is fleeing a botched attack on the U.S. mission at the fictional International Health Organization.
Burt Lancaster plays U.S. Colonel Stephen Mackenzie, who wants to send the train across an abandoned ex-Nazi railroad line to a quarantine camp in Janov, Poland. The twist, however, is that the line crosses a dangerously unsound steel arch bridge known as the Cassandra Crossing. Mackenzie understands that the bridge might collapse as the train passes over it. He reasons that, if the train does not make it across the bridge, he can lay the blame for the situation on the terrorists.
The main passengers include Dr. Jonathan Chamberlain (Harris) and his ex-wife Jennifer Rispoli Chamberlain (Loren), who are in charge of building up antibodies. Nicole Dressler (Gardner), who is the wife of a German arms dealer, is embroiled in an affair with a young narcotics trafficker named Robby Navarro (Sheen). Dr. Elena Stradner (Ingrid Thulin), is a WHO physician who wants to save the passengers and desperately tries to convince Mackenzie to stop the train.
The passengers remain unaware of their predicament until, while approaching Paris, they’re re-directed to Nuremberg, where the train is sealed with an enclosed oxygen system and a U.S. Army medical team is placed aboard for health and security concerns. While the train is being locked down, a passenger and Holocaust survivor, Herman Kaplan (Strasberg), discovers the Polish quarantine center is located at the site of an ex-concentration camp in Janov where he had been imprisoned by the Nazis during WWII. Determined not to relive such horrific memories, he panics and attempts to escape from the train, but is shot and wounded in the process.
While being treated by Dr. Chamberlain, Kaplan informs him about the Cassandra Crossing. Chamberlain is very concerned about the risk of crossing such a bridge and soon, infected passengers begin to recover from their sickness, owing to the pure oxygen being distributed throughout the length of the train. Chamberlain informs Mackenzie and Dr. Stradner of this development so that the train doesn’t need to continue into Poland. The latter agrees with Dr. Chamberlain, but the former, of course, refuses to allow the train to stop en route.
Chamberlain begins to realize Mackenzie has something evil up his sleeve and starts a race against the clock with other passengers to take control of the train from the Army security detail as they race towards an uncertain fate at the Cassandra Crossing. Failing to get anywhere close to the locomotive, they resolve to somehow separate at least some of the cars from the train before the other half pulled by the locomotive heads over the bridge and plunges into the river below. The locomotive however, gets caught on a support, and as soon as the last car falls off the bridge, it blows up, causing the arch section of the bridge to collapse. Luckily, a conductor on the other half of the train puts the brake on and the passenger cars stop a few hundred feet from the end of the track.
The remaining, presumably uninfected, passengers are seen disembarking from the train, and they escape. Colonel Mackenzie is seen leaving the IHO headquarters in Geneva.
Coda: a voice-over radio report mentions that both Mackenzie AND Stradner "are both under surveillance".
[edit] Trivia
The bridge depicted in the movie is actually the Garabit viaduct in southern France, built from 1880 to 1884 by Gustave Eiffel, who later constructed the famous Eiffel tower.
The beginning of the film shows the passengers arriving at Geneva train station to embark on the train. However, the scenes were shot at the Basel central train station. This can be seen in the scene were Dr. Jonathan Chamberlain enters the station. In the background the green coloured trams (beloning to the Basel public transport company BVG), and Basel's Central Station Square can be clearly recognised.
For a movie that revolves around a train, there are a lot of inaccuracies: The studio artwork shows a typical US diesel locomotive that doesn't resemble anything seen in the movie. It even features a pantograph for overhead electric wires.
Also during the movie, there are a lot of continuity errors with the train. Engines inexplicably change back and forth, and often are of the wrong country. In the helicopter scenes, the overhead wires disappear whenever they are in the way, only to reappear afterwards again, despite the electric locomotive on the train. In the "Nuremberg" scene where the windows of the train are plated over, an Italian class E646 electric locomotive appears, but with Swiss markings, and is exchanged with an Italian ex-US Army class D143 diesel shunter. And from immediately after this scene to the climax at the bridge scene, the train is pulled by a French class BB 66000 diesel locomotive.
