Emperor of the North

A film set on an American railway line. The year is 1933. The Depression is on and thousands ride the trains without paying. There is one line. Number 19. A conductor runs that train. Shack takes no hoboes. He has never let one ride. His method is plain. A hammer, a chain, an iron bar; whoever he catches goes onto the track. There is a legend. Nobody rides that man's train. One man tries. A No. 1 is an old hobo. He has been on the road for years and is known. He leaves a mark. He writes it on a water tower: he will ride that train and ride it to the end. From there the film is a duel. The train moves. A No. 1 gets under it, climbs the cars, and hides. Shack looks for him. Car by car, roof to roof. There is a third man. Cigaret is a young hobo. He thinks a great deal of himself and attaches himself to A No. 1. He is inept. He ruins something every time. What the narrative is interested in is not a journey but a title: its idea is that neither man has any reason beyond proving something, and that they risk death for it. The hoboes have a world of their own. Camps, rules, signs and a hierarchy. The narrative shows it in detail. The violence is hard and realistic. The narrative stylises it nowhere. The last section is on the roof of a car. Long, bloody and almost without speech. A No. 1 says something at the end and that line closes the film's idea. Robert Aldrich made this as a work of his hard period. It was shot in Oregon on a real historic railway. Lee Marvin and Ernest Borgnine face each other. Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Keith Carradine and Charles Tyner are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes 1970s American cinema and hard stories about men. Who it is not for: anyone looking for a reason; the narrative explains no character and the violence goes on a long time.