"Beginning with a beautiful black samba dancer's breathless dash through a Paris train station, the film introduces us in very short order to a couple of train conductors who discover you can't always live by the rules, a feisty woman attorney with a passion for semiotics, an unforgettable sailor (Yves Afonso playing Michel Simon playing Popeye) with an hilariously impenetrable Breton accent, and an incredibly tempermental Mexican impresario (Pedro Armendariz). Displaying the improvisatory brio of the early New Wave, Maine-Ocean Express shows an insatiable curiosity about what happens when people of different languages and cultures are thrown together. Admirers of the 'democratic' comedy of Jacques Tati's late films will also find much to admire in this unique work, which resembles an express train ripping through the Tower of Babel. Jacques Rozier's Adieu Philippine was a 1960 classic, and he's made only two features since then. Maine-Ocean Express was a deserved winner of the Prix Jean Vigo in 1986." Peter Scarlet