NFR Project: 'Strangers on a Train' (1951)

 

NFR Project: “Strangers on a Train”

Dir: Alfred Hitchcock

Scr: Raymond Chandler, Czenzi Ormonde

Pho: Robert Burks

Ed: William Ziegler

Premiere: June 30, 1951

101 min.

Director Alfred Hitchcock continued his run as the Master of Suspense with this film, one of his most efficient entries in the genre.

The movie is adapted from the great crime writer Patricia Highsmith’s first novel of the same name. The idea is perfect: what if two individuals “traded” murders?

Tennis star Guy Haines (Farley Granger) is on a train where he randomly meets an attentive stranger, Bruno Antony (Robert Walker). Bruno, who gradually reveals himself to be mentally disturbed, eventually gets around to theorizing that two people could get away with murder if they each kill the other’s intended victim – giving both an alibi and no link to the commission of the crimes.

As Guy wants to be rid of his promiscuous wife Miriam (Kasey Rogers) in order to be with his beloved, senator’s daughter Anne (Ruth Roman), and Bruno wants to kill his hated father, Bruno thinks they should do each other’s dirty work. “Your wife. My father. Criss-cross!” he exclaims.

Guy nervously turns him down, thinking he is joking. He meets Miriam, who reveals she is pregnant by someone else. Guy wants a divorce, but Miriam won’t cooperate. In fact, she intends to claim that the baby is Guy’s.

Bruno then stalks Miriam at an amusement park and kills her –strangling her in a scene reflected dimly in Miriam’s shattered glasses on the ground – a difficult and masterful shot.

Guy immediately comes under suspicion, as he cannot prove his whereabouts at the time of the murder. Bruno then tries to blackmail Guy into killing Bruno’s father, using his possession of a distinctive lighter of Guy’s as evidence.

Bruno stalks Guy, crashing Anne’s father’s party. While there, he chats gaily about the best way to murder someone. Catching sight of Anne’s sister Barbara (Patricia Hitchcock, the director’s daughter), who resembles Miriam, he gets carried away and squeezes the neck of one of the guests until she cries out.

Bruno sends Guy a map of his house, a key, and a gun. Guy goes along, hoping to alert Bruno’s father about his intentions. However, Bruno is in his father’s bed, waiting for him. Bruno vows that he will make Guy fulfill his part of their supposed bargain.

Guy is trapped. Anne suspects the truth, and gets Guy to confess it to her. She tries warning Bruno’s mother about his insanity, to no avail. Bruno catches up with Anne and tells her that he intends to plant Guy’s lighter at the scene of the crime.

Now the race is on. Guy must compete in a championship tennis match before he can go to the amusement park to stop Bruno. Meanwhile, Bruno is busy getting to the scene first. Guy’s match goes long; he struggles for point after point as the clock ticks on. At the same time, Bruno loses the lighter down a grating and hysterically struggles to reach through it and grasp the incriminating object.

Both men succeed. Bruno gets there first, and is recognized by a witness to the murder. He leaps aboard a carousel; Guy follows him. A policeman shoots at Bruno, but kills the carousel operator instead, who falls onto the controls. The ride whirligigs out of control; the passengers scream (save for one delighted boy) as Bruno and Guy fight it out.

The carousel smashes up; Guy is flung free, but Bruno is crushed. Guy tries to get Bruno to confess before he dies, but Bruno refuses. As he dies, his clenched fist relaxes – and there is Guy’s lighter. Guy is exonerated.

Hitchcock has a marvelous time making this film. Bruno is Guy’s doppelganger, his shadow self. Guy wants to kill his wife – at one point, he cries out, “I could strangle her!” – but his civilized impulses restrain him. Not so for Bruno, a spoiled rich kid with a mother fixation and a father complex. Guy talks; Bruno, darkly, acts.

Everything is doubled in the film – the main characters, the glasses, the party guests, the detectives trailing Guy. The director keeps things bright around Guy, while Bruno operates in darkness. Hitchcock works his accustomed magic – ratcheting up the suspense as Guy toils to finish off his court opponent in tense silence, while simultaneously Bruno gropes for the lighter which could hang him.

Hitchcock was shortly to begin making color feature films. Strangers on a Train shows off his marvelous black-and-white technique, aided here ably by cinematographer Robert Burks.

In the novel, Guy commits the reciprocal murder. Hitchcock changes that to make it yet another one of his stories, like The 39 Steps and Saboteur, about an innocent man dragged into a disoriented world where death and calamity reign. Once again, Hitchcock’s hero stares into the abyss.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Ace in the Hole.