The Railroad Man

"The Railroad Man" (Il ferroviere, 1956) — watch it online on iFILM, a landmark Italian drama directed by and starring Pietro Germi. He plays Andrea Marcocci, a veteran train driver: the kind of man who holds his world together through discipline and never once asks whether it's working.

Then a desperate man throws himself in front of Andrea's train. The image stays with him. He starts making errors, a medical review flags a drinking problem, and a demotion follows. At home, a slower fracture has been building for years: adult children who don't live the way he raised them, a household shaped too long by his idea of how things must be.

Germi's performance carries the film — gruff, proud, and gradually worn through. A man better at controlling a locomotive than holding his family together. Sylva Koscina appears as his daughter. Watch "The Railroad Man" (1956) online on iFILM.