Un soir, un train (1968)

During the winter of 1967–68, Mathias is a linguistics professor at a Flemish university that may be the one in Leuven (the opening makes specific allusions to the Leuven Affair, when the professor is confronted with a student strike by students who have left to protest the presence of French speakers at the university). He lives with Anne, a French woman who feels ill at ease in a country whose culture she does not share, although she makes a good-faith effort to take part in it, working as a theater set designer for a Renaissance play, Elckerlijc, adapted by Mathias. Their life together, undermined by unspoken misunderstandings, is affected by this unease. One afternoon, Mathias takes the train (from Antwerp station) to give a lecture in another city. To his surprise, Anne joins him in his compartment, apparently hoping to make up with him. But the presence of other passengers keeps them from talking. Mathias dozes off, dreams of a train crash, and wakes to find the train stopped at dusk in the middle of the countryside. Anne has disappeared. Mathias walks along the track and finds two acquaintances. The train suddenly sets off again, abandoning the three men in a wholly incomprehensible world, where they try in vain to behave rationally. A DVD edition was released in [year unspecified]. The 2021 restored version, which declares itself faithful to the director’s wishes, alters the compartment sequence somewhat, focusing on Mathias’s memories. In particular, the prophetic dreamlike flash of the crash has been removed and replaced by a peaceful shot of Anne and Mathias lying together, alive, in the woods; Mathias’s walk through the train corridor in search of Anne now lingers on the sleeping passengers. Finally, in the strange outdoor dance hall, when the crowd of dancers hurriedly disperses at the sound of a train whistle, a shot of Moïra, Val, and Mathias, followed by one of Val and Mathias alone in a final exchange (absent from the 1968 version), leads into the dissolve shot of Moïra and Mathias and the scene of the rescue workers at the crash. The color variations mark the replacement shots.