VCI Entertainment has continued in recent months to issue British classics of the 1930s and '40s on DVD, among them worthwhile obscurities like Fanny By Gaslight (1944) and Caravan (1946). But the best new release is Rome Express (1933), a nifty, taut, very well made train thriller -- the English-language granddaddy of the type, in fact.

VCI has supplied an excellent transfer with a rich image and superb sound of a film that was greatly lauded in its day. Variety, at the time of its release, declared: "The first film from the new Gaumont British studios at Shepherd's Bush, London...is one of the best pictures made in England, and, all things considered, one of the best feature picture pictures ever made anywhere." That may be overstating it, but Rome Express is indeed far above many British films of its era in terms of its expert craftsmanship, fluidity and pacing. For one thing, we truly feel as if we are on a rapidly moving train throughout all the intrigue that takes place on board -- a deceptively simple achievement. For another, director Walter Forde -- an Englishman who had studied filmmaking techniques in Hollywood -- not only mixes in elaborate long takes, effective swish pans and striking montage sequences to build tension, but he directs a superb cast that delivers a coherent mix of comedy and crackling suspense.

Among the strong international cast members are Conrad Veidt in a deliciously villainous role, Cedric Hardwicke as a stingy millionaire tycoon, Finlay Currie in one of his earliest (and most unlikely) roles as an American talent agent, and gorgeous Hollywood actress Esther Ralston as a Hollywood movie star. They and several others in the ensemble cast enact a number of stories on the train from Paris to Rome, all of which eventually touch on the central plot of a stolen painting desired by Veidt -- a plot that leads to murder and an on-board investigation. If this sounds strongly reminiscent of the later, and better-known, The Lady Vanishes (1938), that's for good reason, as Hitchcock's classic was co-written by one of the writers of Rome Express, Sidney Gilliat. (Gilliat and Frank Laudner wrote not only The Lady Vanishes but also the famous 1940 train suspense drama Night Train to Munich.)

Rome Express was itself influenced by the Soviet silent film China Express (1929), and to some degree by Paramount's Shanghai Express (1932), but as film historian William Everson later wrote, Rome Express is notable for "placing ALL of its action on the train... And in the long run it was probably the most influential -- and definitive -- of such films."

British reviewers in 1932 called Rome Express "as good as anything that was ever done in Hollywood... as technically perfect as the finest American pictures, and polished till it seems as smooth as glass." American critics praised the picture especially for its technical merits, including its excellent-for-the-era sound quality, with The New York Times calling it "a marked improvement in British studio technique... It may not quite live up to the superlatives lavished on it in London, but it is a well-produced and generally compelling melodrama." The Times also described Veidt as "that excellent German actor who left Hollywood after talking pictures came into vogue."

In all, VCI's DVD of Rome Express is well worth seeking out. It is a delightful discovery of an otherwise little-remembered gem.

For more information about Rome Express, visit VCI Entertainment. To order Rome Express, go to TCM Shopping.

By Jeremy Arnold