In the role of mild-mannered bookkeeper Kees Popinga, the endlessly talented Claude Rains transforms from vulnerable victim to crazed criminal in Harold French’s The Man Who Watched Trains Go By (US: The Paris Express). Based on a Georges Simenon novel with a similar premise as Simenon’s The Man From London (1943), the film begins with the sudden financial collapse of a 300-year-old Dutch trading company owned by Julius de Koster (Herbert Lom) who’s been embezzling in order to pamper his Parisian lover Michele Rozier (Märta Torén). When Kees discovers de Koster literally burning the books one night, de Koster alerts him that the company will be bankrupt in the morning, then hands him a suicide note and prepares to jump in the river; when Kees lunges to restrain him, de Koster’s briefcase bursts open, revealing piles of cash and a train ticket to Paris inside. Enraged by the betrayal, Kees pushes de Koster to his death and flees to Paris with the money to track down Michele. On his trail is police inspector Lucas (Marius Goring) who closes in on him in Paris, but not soon enough to prevent at least one murder. His life savings having been tied up in the firm, Kees’s slow descent into insanity and violence is understood as a kind of post-traumatic stress reaction even if the screenplay could have conveyed this more effectively. Cinematographer Otto Heller takes advantage of the extensive night scenes to paint claustrophobic shadows that devour Paris as madness devours Kees’s mind.