“The true writer has nothing to say. What counts is the way he says it.”

In a moment of excitement, then disappointment, Alain Robbe-Grillet’s controversial surreal gangster film Trans-Europ-Express has become my latest “need to hunt it down” feature (if you’ve watched Last Year at Marienbad, which Robbe-Grillet wrote for Alain Resnais, you’ll be prepared for the element of improbability and departure from traditional narrative that characterizes his brand of cinema). The disappointment stems from discovering the locomotive-set film is not yet available domestically. Fortunately, one can enjoy an online transfer, thanks to Google Video, and see where modern memory deconstructionists like Christopher Nolan and Charlie Kaufman found inspiration.