Strangers on a Train

“I have a theory you should do everything before you die. Have you ever driven at 150 miles per hour blindfolded?” Based on a popular novel by Patricia Highsmith, Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train contains many of the director’s most memorable and iconic sequences: the colliding shadows in the Tunnel of Love, the murder scene shot as a reflection in discarded eyeglasses, the heads of tennis spectators shifting back and forth, the desperate grasp for a lighter beneath a street grate, and, of course, the out-of-control merry-go-round that spins off its axis. One of Hitchcock’s handful of films that fairly perfectly conforms to the noir definition, the film stars Farley Granger as professional tennis player Guy Haines, who’s seeking to divorce his unfaithful wife Miriam (Kasey Rogers) in order to marry Anne Morton (Ruth Roman), the daughter of a United States senator (Leo G. Carroll). The real star, however, is Robert Walker, who practically steals the entire film as Bruno Antony, a fey, mischievous mama’s boy (and probable homosexual) who meets Guy on a train and proposes a “crisscross” scheme whereby Bruno will murder Guy’s wife and Guy will murder Bruno’s father whom he bitterly despises, each murderer getting away with it for lack of motive. Despite dismissing the idea as preposterous and saying goodbye, Guy soon learns he’s dealing with a psychopath when Bruno shows up at his home to inform him proudly that Miriam is dead. Of course, Guy is now expected to hold up his end of the “bargain.” Miriam’s nymphomaniac tendencies are wide out in the open leading up to the murder scene: enjoying the carnival with two different boys, she’s clearly turned on when she discovers Bruno following her, showing off for him with her ice cream cone, riding the carousel horse just in front of his, etc. Tiomkin’s score, heavy on strings, adds dramatic force, especially during the whirling climax, and Burks keeps us guessing with the camera (for example, note the extreme Dutch angles the moment Guy discovers Bruno by the front gate). Guy’s break-in to Bruno’s home in the middle of the night produces suspense in that quintessentially Hitchcock manner. Note that the director’s occasionally thespian daughter, Patricia Hitchcock, has her juiciest Hitchcock role in this film as plainspoken Barbara Morton.