TRANS-EUROP-EXPRESS (Alain Robbe-Grillet, 1966)

Cubism extended equality to figure and ground, eliminating the difference between them. Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author relatedly constructed a fluidity between actors and their characters, especially in a universe where the existence of an Author is in dispute.
     Written and directed by Alain Robbe-Grillet, Trans-Europ-Express addresses the materiality of imagination. Three characters discuss on a train a film that will partly take place on the train. (Robbe-Grillet plays the writer-director.) It involves cocaine smuggling. There’s a man with a suitcase and an interested girl. We hear as voiceover discussions of the film-within-the-film as the trio sound out the creation while creating it, making adjustments and bald changes. Eventually the shifts enter the narrative without the guidance for us of any signposting voiceover. Dust off your Keatsian negative capability, folks!
     Jean-Louis Trintignant plays both himself and the man in the film-within-the-film. At least two problems arise. Trintignant, even before he boards the train and is presumably as yet himself, already seems involved in the drug-smuggling operation. Moreover, the character he plays in the film-within-the-film, Elias (which sounds suspiciously like Alias), is a nickname, and his creator confesses not knowing Elias’s “real” name. Jean-Louis perhaps?
     The train is headed to Anvers (Antwerp)—the phonetic equivalent of envers: the seamy side. Elias passes through a bad looking-glass in a film dotted with mirrors and movie screens-within-the-movie screen, such as the wide train window.
     Informing of his character’s whereabouts, an actor warns, “Beware of false information.” Our selfconsciousness compounds our role-playing, casting the truth about ourselves and the world in which we move to winds of uncertainty. How autonomous are we? To what extent do our actions derive from principles or the pressures exerted on us by others—those more than helping to write our script?