Sur les rails (1912)
Directed by Léonce Perret

Film Review

Sur les rails begins in the manner of a Lumière brothers film, a banal slice of life depicting a group of railway workers happily enjoying a drink around a table in front of a café.  By the midpoint it has switched to something more akin to an episode in a Louis Feuillade serial, with a gruesome attempt at murder and a miraculous escape from almost certain death.  Director Léonce Perret was a master when it came to combining everyday incident with the fantastic, and doing so with an almost seamless transition between the two.  The first hint that the narrative is about to switch lanes comes two minutes into the 14 minute long film, with a dramatic cut from a shot outside a café showing the hero (Pierre) chatting intimately with his girlfriend (Augustine) to the reverse shot taken from within the café showing a third character (Pierre's rival Jacques) lurking menacingly in the background between these two characters.  Immediately, we sense there is trouble in store, and what is a more likely way to resolve a love triangle than murder?

Murder is a serious matter and it's as well that Perret takes the time to show us the motive for the grisly homicide attempt before he unleashes it on us. Around the eight minute mark, when Jacques hesitates over strangling the life out of his friend Pierre, we are treated to a rare (for this time) use of split screen.  On the right-hand side of the screen is superimposed the image of Pierre and Augustine kissing one another.  It's clearly the thought blazing in Jacques' head, and what better motive could he have for carrying through his desperate deed than thwarted desire?  Perret used the same technique, for a similar purpose (i.e. to show what is in the protagonist's head) in another film which he made the same year with Louis Feuillade, Le Coeur et l'argent (1912). 

Now that we have a motive for murder, Perret proceeds without delay to the gruesome act itself, and here is the film's first real shock.  Having been dumped on a rail by his homicidal friend, Pierre comes to his senses and has just enough time to drag himself snugly between the rails before a steam train comes hurtling over him.  There's no apparent sign of a cut or trick photography, so presumably what we see is what was actually filmed - a man lying on a railway track as a train passes directly over him.  As amazing as this sequence is, it is as nothing compared with the shock stunt that Perret holds back for the end of the film.  Watch it and you will be stunned.

Film Synopsis

Pierre, a young railway worker, is in love with Augustine, the owner of a café.  Neither knows that Jacques, a colleague and supposed friend of Pierre, also has amorous designs on Augustine.  When Pierre receives a letter from his sweetheart accepting his proposal of marriage he cannot resist breaking the good news to Jacques.  Consumed with jealousy, Jacques gets his friend blind drunk and attempts to murder him by dragging his insensible body onto the railway tracks in front of an in-coming train...