Un Soir, Un Train, André Delvaux, 1968

Fabulous dreamlike movie. The drama of in-communicability as never before,and never after.A couple ,Montand and Aimée, feels that their love is becoming a thing of the past.He is a linguistics professor,he reigns over words and culture;she does not understand the language they speak in this part of Belgium. One night,both take a train;suddenly it stops.Anne (Aimée) has disappeared ,and Matthias (Montand) gets out of the train.With two unknown guys,he sees the train silently and slowly moving ,like in a dream.The dream has begun. Matthias and his two mates are left alone in the country.They arrive in a small village where,that crowns it,the university professor cannot understand a single world of the inhabitants' language.A very strange scene shows the three men coming into a tiny movie theater.On the screen,an odd,almost worrying film is projected:a parachutist floating in the air,sometimes shot in close-up,with an almost unbearable soundtrack.The audience seems to live in another world.Not only Matthias does not understand the language,but he does not understand their entertainment either .Then they go to a restaurant ,the staff of which seems to wait for them.Maybe.. When he returns to reality,Matthias will find out how selfish he has been with Anne.But it's a movie you can interpret in accordance with your sensitivity.Never a director has gone so far in intertwining dream with reality.The incommunicability of Matthias and the strange people of his dream is a metaphor of that of the two lovers.But ,because of the harrowing conclusion,which leaves the audience totally hopeless,perhaps this dream was an escape,or a way to delay what was ineluctable.André Delvaux gave us the best European movie of 1968.