Riding the Rails
Riding the Rails

Riding the Rails

6.0

1 hr 12 min

1997-01-01

11

Riding the Rails offers a visionary perspective on the presumed romanticism of the road and cautionary legacy of the Great Depression. The filmmakers relay the experiences and painful recollections of these now-elderly survivors of the rails. Forced to travel more by economic necessity than the spirit of adventure, the film's subjects dispel romantic myths of a hobo existence and its corresponding veneer of freedom. Riding the Rails recounts the hoboes' trade secrets for survival and accounts of dank miseries, loneliness, imprisonment, death, and dispossession. Sixty years later, the filmmakers transport their subjects back to the tracks, where the surging impact of sound and movement resuscitates memories of a shattered adolescence and devastating rite of passage.

Documentary

Trailers

Characters

Richard Thomas

Richard Thomas

Narrator

Similar Movies

The Living

2009-01-01

The Imperial Lullaby

2020-03-21

THE WHOLE SHEBANG

2019-09-15

1939: Hollywood's Greatest Year

2009-07-02

The Man Who Was There

2013-05-03

The American Hobo: History of the Railriding Worker

2003-01-01

The Mystery of Al Capone's Vaults

1986-04-21

The Massie Affair

2005-04-18

Les dames du 9e

1998-09-14

Atatürk, Father of Modern Turkey

2023-10-22

Popular Science J-8-1

1938-09-02

The Hand Behind the Mouse: The Ub Iwerks Story

1999-10-08

Elemental: Hydrogen vs. Hindenburg

2017-05-06

Le Baron et l'Empereur : Japon, la voie de la guerre

2023-10-29

Triumph of the Will

1935-03-28

Soul of a People: Writing America's Story

2009-09-06

Hitler's Games, Berlin 1936

2016-08-23

Poland 1939: When German Soldiers Became War Criminals

2019-08-31

Hollywood Ghost Stories

1998-10-30

Nanking

2007-02-10