Weekend of films set on trains at Smith Rafael Film Center

“English Patient” author Michael Ondaatje and film historian David Thomson have programmed a scintillating weekend of films set largely on trains, which they will present in person at Smith Rafael Film Center.

Opening with John Frankenheimer’s 1965 World War II actioner “The Train” (7 p.m. Friday, March 11) and closing with David Lean’s “Brief Encounter” (1946) and Tony Scott’s 2013 “Unstoppable” (beginning at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 13), the series reaches full steam with a triple feature beginning at 2 p.m. Saturday, March 12: “Shanghai Express,” Hitchcock’s “The Lady Vanishes” and “Runaway Train” (1986).

“Shanghai Express,” a 1932 view of female exoticism and eroticism, is blissfully Pre-Code, and director Josef von Sternberg’s usual obsession, Marlene Dietrich, is joined by an additional object of desire, Anna May Wong, the Los Angeles-born Chinese actress who battled stereotypes her entire career.