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Stephen Poliakoff’s BAFTA-winning classic starring Peggy Ashcroft and Michael Kitchen
Year: 1980
Certificate: pg
Stephen Poliakoff is a prolific writer for stage and screen who is known for his fascination with memory and history in dramas that are nostalgic critiques of Europe’s recent past, from Shooting The Past and The Lost Prince to the more recent Dancing On The Edge and Summer Of Rockets.
This early example of one of his screenplays, from 1980, is a sharply focused BAFTA-winner that is well worth another look. We follow Michael Kitchen’s Peter on a train journey through Austria and Germany from Vienna to Linz. It mixes a very old-world romanticism of train travel with a subtle picture of 1980s Cold War Europe and a dash of Hitchcock’s Strangers On A Train, as Peter is joined in his compartment by Peggy Ashcroft’s abrupt Austrian, Frau Messner.
As the journey begins, Peter finds the imperious Frau an irritant. But as the hours tick by, we come to learn more about the abrasive Austrian and our sympathies shift. Ashcroft won a Best Actress BAFTA for her magnificent performance, while the role of Peter helped put Foyles War star Kitchen on the map. (80 minutes)
