Synopsis
This engaging Kodachrome drama (formatted for television broadcast) from the Union Pacific ostensibly deals with safety at railroad grade crossings, but it's also about much more: youth's feeling of invulnerability; the highway patrolman as an authority figure; the look of the rural and urban West in the late 1950s; the urge to speed through a sparsely populated agricultural landscape; and the train's role as farmer's servant and potential killer. Is this overanalysis? Perhaps. But longer films aspire to higher goals, and one way to achieve these goals is to pack them with hints of meaning in many directions. This film was made just five years after The Days of Our Years but belongs to a different world. This is not the close environment of urban railroad workers, but the wide-open spaces of the agricultural West. The visual evidence of the film implies that it was shot in Idaho, and the highway patrolman who carries the film forward wears an Idaho State Patrol uniform. It's summertime and the kids are out of school. Although they are responsible for farm work, they are free to roam the countryside and do. Danger lurks in this mobile world, but not in dark, enclosed industrial spaces — it lurks in broad daylight along a sunny railroad track. The deaths that form the film's climax happen right after lunch on what looks like a Saturday afternoon, and death takes the young rather than the old. It's hard not to think that the Union Pacific is here again trying to pass the buck…
Uploader's description on archive.org
Details
- Running time
- 25 minutes
- Collection
- Prelinger Archives
- Internet Archive item
- 0845_Last_Clear_Chance_The_08_29_26_00
Reviews on the Internet Archive
★★★★ · WATCH OUT FOR THAT TRAIN · Spuzz · 2016-01-27
Excellently shot melodramatic doc about driving safely, and more specifically, across the railroad tracks. The story centers around a cop teaching a brand new driver about railway safety, while telling him (and us seeing) some results of "bad" driving. The young boy is convinced! Especially the stuff about the trains! (This film was done by yes, a railway company). Too bad his brother didn't hear that advice! OOPS! Spoiler, but the death is given away in the beginning anyways. The death is also featured in Rick Prelinger's great "Panorama Euphemera" dvd, and I've always wondered where that…
★★★ · Car and Stock Music Fun · Dodsworth the Cat · 2020-09-21
Frank Dixon, Jr. has a cool red Austin Healey but, alas, he ignores everything the local grits-his-teeth-when-he-talks cop told him and gets killed in the family Fairlane at a railway crossing. Fans of late '50s cars can check out the 1957 Dodge at the 6:39 mark, the 1956 Ford at 6:51 and the head-on crash with the 1958 Chevy at 7:02 . It looks like Mr. Sleepy Driver is behind the wheel of an Edsel. The film opens with L-92 DRAMATIC MECHANICAL by Spencer Moore, with the aptly named C-48 IMPORTANT MAIN TITLE by Bill Loose over the main titles. There are other Loose mechanical cues, including…