The train from LA to Chicago is the scene for murder, sex, and occasional slapstick in 1976's Silver Streak. Drawing some influence from Hitchcock, the film's an intelligently written suspense comedy and a nice showcase for Gene Wilder. Richard Pryor, as a thief, doesn't appear until late in the film but steals most of it.
Wilder plays George, a man in publishing, who explains to a blonde he picks up on the train, Hilly (Jill Clayburgh), that he's edited sex books but what he's really good at is editing gardening books. This leads to him murmuring advice on raising azaleas in their sex scene which was kind of funny and sexy but mainly made me feel like the two of them would be completely over each other in the morning.
Wilder is great, though, and nicely subtle. There's a moment I really liked when she asks him why he'd gotten a divorce. The quiet struggle you see him go through, trying to decide how to explain succinctly what must be a complicated and painful matter, that's brilliant.
Then George sees a dead man thrown off the train--but briefly and after he's had a lot drink. So Hilly can convince him it was his imagination. Of course it wasn't and there's a gang of thugs aboard which includes Ray Walston and Richard Kiel.
Kiel has metal teeth in this movie a year before he first appeared in a James Bond movie as Jaws. I wonder if he was cast in Bond because someone really thought he had metal teeth.
George gets kicked off the train a few times. He meets Pryor on one of these occasions. He's a thief named Grover who decides to help George for reasons that are never made clear in the screenplay. Fortunately, the affection Wilder and Pryor had for each other is so evident that you don't really need an explanation.
I got the feeling George and Grover will be together long after Hilly leaves the picture.
Silver Streak is available on The Criterion Channel until September 30.
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