Charles Starrett

(On Cable TV, December 2022) In the large tasting menu of film history, there’s nothing quite like the deliciousness of a techno-thriller from earlier decades, as whiz-bang technology is presented breathlessly to a modern audience that has often seen better. In The Silver Streak, for instance, we have a luscious description of the construction and inaugural use of a high-speed train crossing the country. Our protagonist is an engineer with big plans: a train able to race across the continental United States at a hair-raising speed of one hundred miles an hour. This is all before the popularization of air cargo freight or even the interstate highway network, but don’t laugh too much considering that American freight trains can’t even go that fast ninety years later. The first half of the film sets up the construction of the train against all odds, while the second sets up a race against time, as air lungs must be delivered from Chicago to Boulder City in twenty hours to resolve a polio outbreak. (Polio!)  Much of the last act of the film is all about a train going really, really fast and everything the screenwriters can think of coming up as obstacles. It’s a bit silly to us twenty-first century folks, but these silly elements end up being fascinating. If you’re curious to see footage of the Chicago World Fair, or the construction of the Hoover dam, or have an idea of the limitations of the world of 1934, then The Silver Streak makes for absorbing viewing. Director Tommy Atkins seems to have more fun in the action-driven last act of the film, while Charles Starrett delivers a nice portrayal of an engineer as a two-fisted hero. I’m becoming less and less willing to laugh at outdated portraits of technology—these days, I’m more liable to appreciate them as essential time capsules of an earlier era to help us better understand ours.