Most people think of the name "Georges Simenon" and can only recall Inspector Maigret. Even Agatha Christie has two detectives to her credit (Poirot and Miss Marple),and Conan Doyle did create the science fiction hero Professor Challenger besides Holmes. But Maigret is forever linked to the psychological/sociological thrillers concerning Maigret. Yet he did write other novels without his plump inspector. One is THE MAN WHO WATCHED THE TRAINS GO BY.

Claude Rains is a family man in a textile firm in Holland, and is a model husband, father, and employee/clerk. But he has a yearning to travel. He wants to see the world. His sense of responsibility prevents it.

Rains works for Herbert Lom. Lom inherited his company from a line of family owners through his father. It is several hundred years old. Lom appears to have great probity and honesty. He won't hire old Felix Aylmer because Aylmer's firm collapsed under questionable circumstances. So honest does Lom seem that Rains and the other employees were convinced to invest their savings in his firm.

But then, one day, a police inspector (Marius Goring) comes to the firm to talk to Lom about his relationship with Marta Toren, a questionable (if beautiful) French woman. Raines listens to part of the interrogation, which Lom barely goes through with dignity in tact. This makes Raines nervous. That night, he goes for a private walk after dinner, and finds himself back at the business. He sees Lom emptying out the firm's safe. Lom is confronted by Raines, and in their struggling Lom falls into a canal and drowns. Goring turns up (he was coming back to the business to look over the books again),and questions Raines about why Lom was at the business. Raines (who has hidden the satchel with the money) says that he couldn't answer, and suggests Lom may have been planning suicide.

Goring is thoroughly suspicious, and keeps tabs on Rains, who does not go home, but decides to take the money and see Paris. And in Paris he hunts up Toren - and suggests that they take up where the deceased Lom left off. Toren is not keen on this, and tries to strong-arm Rains out of the picture using her friends Ferdy Main and Eric Pohlmann. At that point I will leave the further details of the novel/movie. It is a study of a desperate middle aged man who takes a last opportunity to vary the drudgery of his existence with some sparkle and pleasure, even though it is doomed due to the source of the money it takes to achieve the sparkle and the pleasure. All the cast is good (Aylmer is used only in one scene, unfortunately),but Rains is terrific as a desperately unhappy man who is trying to grab his last possible chance at happiness.

Filmed in Europe, the story is about a meek little clerk working for a respectable Dutch company who, by happenstance, finds himself with a suitcase full of stolen funds on a train to Paris.

He abandons his wife and children (the latter laughing at him behind his conservative, respectable back) to indulge in a life of excitement and adventure such as he had never dared dream. Yet, beneath it all, once he gets to Paris, he is still a mouse in many ways ready to be laughed at and exploited by those of the underworld that he encounters. But, as these people will also find out, the mouse can turn.

The clerk who goes on a spree is played by Claude Rains in, shockingly, one of only six motion pictures in which he appeared during the '50s. A woman of questionable morals that he meets and with whom he becomes obsessed is played by Marta Toren, a dark haired beauty whose appearance always reminded me of the gorgeous Alida (The Third Man) Valli.

Also in the cast are Marius Goring as a police inspector who wants to catch up with Rains before he really gets himself into even more serious trouble, and Herbert Lom, as his employer of the company for whom the clerk has been the perfect accountant for 18 years. All four actors give solid interpretations of their roles. Watching Rains and Lom together made me think of a former Phantom of the Opera working with a future one.

But it's Rains who is the primary source of interest in this drama, and it's his performance that brings many of the small pleasures to be found in this film which, at times, is also noteworthy for its lovely Technicolor. Rains plays a man who, by circumstances, stumbles into crime after a life of total boring respectability, and there are unsettling scenes in which an inner demon suddenly springs upon the face of an otherwise docile little man. There's a wickedness, suppressed for years, that bubbles to the surface, only to suddenly disappear again.

The change in character might be a little too sudden for complete conviction, at times, but it's such a pleasure to watch a seasoned professional like Rains at work here that I'm ready to forgive this little film for its weaknesses.

In the final analysis, The Man Who Watched Trains Go By (the title is explained by the film's opening scene, which shows Rains on his bicycle day dreaming about the exotic destinations of a train passing by him) is a minor drama. However, it is distinguished by the strong work of its cast and, in particular, the performance of the silken haired, elegant Claude Rains.

One of the great character actors of the studio system days, Rains' best work was behind him after leaving Warner Brothers in 1947. Here, however, he is given an opportunity to bring his subtle art to the screen once again in this independently produced European production.

Chief clerk Kees Popinga (Claude Rains) realizes that the owner De Koster has been stealing money from their Dutch company. The police from France is investigating. Apparently, De Koster has been planning to take the money and escape to his Parisian girlfriend Michèle Rozier. Popinga catches De Koster burning the books at the office. He has had enough of De Koster's lies and ends up killing his boss. He runs away with the money and encounters police investigator Lucas on the train back home to Paris.

I'm not sure why he would run to De Koster's girlfriend unless he has fallen in love over a picture. There seems to be no plans. I appreciate that he's flustered and clueless in a way. I just don't understand what he's trying to do going to Rozier. It seems more likely that she would steal the money for herself. He could run away to anywhere else and whoever else. Otherwise, it's interesting to watch this crime drama happening in post-war Paris. It's very much more British than French. This is no New Wave.