The movie was inspired by a non-fiction book by Rose Valland, The Art Front: Defence of the French Collections, 1939-1945. Valland was the wartime curator of the Musée du Jeu de Paume, whose character (called "Mademoiselle Villand") appears in the opening shots of the film, played by Suzanne Flon. The film's action, however, comes from the interaction of Lancaster and Frankenheimer. The original director, Arthur Penn, was working with a script that had the train still in the station after 90 pages. Lancaster was concerned that a second slow-moving intellectual film might be the same kind of box-office dud as The Leopard, and asked Frankenheimer to take over from Penn.
Frankenheimer's decision to use materiel that was going to be scrapped anyway, along with his addition of lots of action to Lancaster's role, gives the movie a thrillingly real quality. The initial railyard air raid was filmed at Gargenville yard, outside Paris—more than 50 people needed six weeks to plant and wire all the charges, which were blown up in less than a minute. A train crash was staged in the town of Acquigny. Only one take was possible, and seven cameras were used. The filmmakers hired a train to carry their equipment from one location to another, and this is the train we see as the art train in the film.
Lancaster performed his own stunts throughout the film, and even acted as stunt man for another character, without injury. Then he took a day off during shooting to play golf when the shooting was about half completed, stepped in a hole on the links, and aggravated an old knee injury. Frankenheimer had to change the script to have Labiche shot in the leg, to explain Lancaster's limp in the last half of the film.
Didont: With luck, no one will be hurt.This is a movie that also deserves a look. If you haven't seen it, don't expect the stereotypical jaw-gritting, over-the-top Lancaster. This is an allegory in steam, from a time when the French resisted evil.
Labiche: No one's ever hurt. Just dead.
Didont: Paul, uh, have you ever seen any of those paintings on that train? (Labiche shakes his head, no.) I haven't. You know, when it's over, I think maybe we should take a look, hmm?
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