Unstoppable + The Lonedale Operator

Director: Tony Scott, D. W. Griffith

2010 / 115min / 35mm

A snafu at a railway yard in Pennsylvania sends an unmanned freight engine, 39 cars, and a helluva lot of toxic, flammable phenol speeding full throttle towards possible catastrophe, and only veteran engineer Denzel Washington and untested conductor Chris Pine stand in the way of disaster in Scott’s kinetic white-knuckler. Screens with The Lonedale Operator, a Biograph one-reeler courtesy D.W. Griffith whose advanced intercutting did much to create the template for the modern suspense-thriller.

“Sometimes equipment breaks down, bosses suck, or security falters, but the demands of the rail never let up. Unstoppable and The Lonedale Operator, each on their own side of a century, imagine the worst possible day on the job. The irony for seasoned engineer Frank Barnes (Denzel Washington) and the station operator’s daughter (Blanche Sweet), is that neither is properly employed: Frank was recently fired, and Sweet’s character is only filling in for her sick dad. Luckily for a perennially imperfect American railroad system, these two heroes happened to be around!” —Series curator Genevieve Yue

Distributor: Walt Disney Studios/20th Century

35mm print of The Lonedale Operator courtesy of and preserved by the Museum of Modern Art, with funding from The Lillian Gish Trust for Film Preservation.

Introduction by series curator Genevieve Yue on Sunday, December 13th

Part of Trains: Long Distance Passages