A classic train thriller that never quite arrives - saved by Benjamin Frankel’s stylish score.

The other night I watched Sleeping Car to Trieste, (1948) a so-called comedy thriller. Espionage thrillers set on continental trains have long been a reliable cinematic device, thins of Night Train to Munich, The Lady Vanishes and Murder on the Orient Express.

The story turns on the theft of a Paris diplomat’s diary containing politically sensitive information; the thief is swiftly double‑crossed, and both men head for the Trieste express, where - conveniently for the narrative - a police chief is among the passengers. More would give the game away…

One contemporary reviewer considered that although the opening promises momentum, the film spends an inordinate amount of time sketching its mixed assortment of passengers, and the action stalls until well past the halfway mark. I enjoyed the interaction of the passengers.

Jean Kent and Albert Lieven make competent villains, Alan Wheatley neatly suggests the treacherous accomplice, with Finlay Currie and Paul Dupuis all adding interest. A highlight for me was David Tomlinson portraying the typical Englishman abroad. Bonar Colleano playing an American soldier on furlough provides a breath of fresh air.

Benjamin Frankel (1906–73) was a London‑born composer who moved fluently between jazz, film, and the concert hall. His more than a hundred feature and documentary film and scores show a sharp ear for character, while his later concert works - eight symphonies, five quartets, and the Holocaust‑memorial Violin Concerto - pursue a cool, disciplined tonal‑serial idiom that remains distinctive.

Frankel’s score for Sleeping Car to Trieste is a compact, stylish fragment of late‑1940s British film music: taut, economical, and quietly sophisticated. Only two cues have survived on record, although the entire film is available on YouTube. “Sleeping Car Train” and “Waltz,” both recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra under Muir Mathieson show Frankel’s early studio craft at its most disciplined.

The train cue is brisk, rhythmically alert, and lightly suspenseful, built from crisp orchestral gestures that propel the narrative without drawing attention to themselves. The Waltz, a brief and faintly ironic salon piece, is elegant and cool, harmonically lean, its transparency suggesting social poise stretched over underlying tension. It is very much in keeping with the film’s espionage atmosphere.

Within Frankel’s broader output, these miniatures sit squarely in his 1940s idiom: concise dramatic writing with a slightly noirish harmonic edge, professional and unsentimental. They are modest but classy demonstrations of his ability to create atmosphere with minimal means-the train cue’s clipped propulsion suiting the thriller setting, the waltz showing his knack for understated character music. Not essential Frankel, but a neat illustration of British studio discipline at its most controlled.

Listen to the Opening Credits, here, and the Waltz, here, from Sleeping Car to Trieste played by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Muir Mathieson. Both cues also appear on the British Film Music Vol. 3 compilation (Pearl GEM 0141).