Trains

From the Lumière brothers’ legendary locomotive to today, trains have shaped the language and imagination of film. In this book, Genevieve Yue offers an original and evocative meditation on this enduring cinematic motif, charting how railways have served not only as engines of narrative momentum but as spaces of reflection and quiet transformation. Across a range of filmic genres and geographies, Yue traces the many ways trains structure cinematic experience. Rather than focusing solely on the spectacle and technological wonder traditionally associated with railways on screen, she considers departures and reunions, romances, reveries, and encounters with strangers. With a feminist politics in mind, Trains explores how movement through space becomes movement through memory, fantasy, and thought. Central to Yue’s exploration is the experience of being a woman on a train. In such instances, trains become places where desire, vulnerability, and possibility coincide. The book also reflects on broader questions of infrastructure, ecology, and state power, revealing how railways shape both collective histories and individual lives. Written with clarity and wit, Trains invites readers aboard a richly idiosyncratic itinerary through film history. At once critical and personal, it offers a fresh way of seeing the moving image – through the sensations and stories of travel by rail.

Genevieve Yue is Associate Professor of Culture and Media and Director of Screen Studies at Eugene Lang College, The New School. She is the author of Girl Head: Feminism and Film Materiality (2021). Her writing has appeared in October, Grey Room, Film Comment, MUBI, and the Times Literary Supplement. She is also an independent film programmer.

Introduction: Departures 1 1. How It Feels to Be a Woman on a Train 17 Itinerary: London to Venice 34 2. Ends of the Line 40 Itinerary: Los Angeles to Rhinecliff 62 3. Phantom Rides 71 Itinerary: Shanghai to Hong Kong 91 4. Strangers on Trains 97 Acknowledgments 111 Notes 113 List of Figures 119 Index 121