Strangers on a Train (1951)
In a 1973 interview, when asked what was the thing that frightened him the most, Alfred Hitchcock replied he was "scared stiff of anything having to do with the law". The slightest idea of being accused of a crime he didn't commit and all the implications that would come of it, he said, were enough to send a chill down his spine. His fear was, he himself admitted, rooted in an episode of his childhood, in which he was locked in a prison cell by the local constable at his father's request, as a punishment for having been naughty. This "unjust incarceration" would come to play a big role in his life, whose entire filmography can be seen as a means of coming to terms with that experience: in virtually all his movies, innocent people are discredited and/or wrongly accused, being thus put in a position where they have to prove their innocence to authority figures too obtuse to track the real culprit themselves. Believing suspense to be not a genre, but a tool whose intensity is accentuated by tongue-and-cheek humor and whose key is the dispensation of information, Hitchcock was able to create movies that defy classification, and by centering them around ordinary people going through bizarre situations, he skilfully managed to imbue the audience with his personal dread of "this could happen to you".
Once a countryside boy and now a famous tennis player with political aspirations, Guy Haines (Farley Granger) is on his way to a match. On the train, he is recognized by Bruno Antony (Robert Walker), an overly friendly man who talks Guy into having lunch with him in his private cabin. Bruno knows everything about Guy from the newspapers, from his troubled marriage with Miriam (Kasey Rogers), a loose woman whom Guy is about to divorce, to his recent affair with Anne Morton (Ruth Roman), daughter of a US senator. During lunch, Bruno talks about how he hates his father and how he fantasizes about the perfect murder, casually associating those subjects with his knowledge of Guy's private life by suggesting to Guy that they "swap murders" if needed be: Bruno would kill Guy's wife, and Guy, in return, would then kill Bruno's father. "Each fellow does the other fellow's murder. Then there is nothing to connect them. The one who had the motive isn't there", says Bruno reassuringly. Guy jokingly accepts the bargain and then takes his leave, sure never to see his lunch companion again; Bruno, on the other hand, does not take Guy's reply so lightly. Upon discovering that Miriam had decided not to give Guy a divorce after all, hoping instead to go to Washington with him now that he has become a well-off man, Bruno springs into action: he murders Miriam and then starts pressuring Guy into fulfilling his part of the so-called deal. Having no intention of murdering Bruno's father and frightened by the possibility of being accused of accessory to murder if he went to the police, Guy tries his best to deal with the situation himself, but things don't go as he had hoped: Bruno, feeling betrayed, decides to frame him with Miriam's murder by planting Guy's custom-made lighter in the murder scene. Already being considered to be the main suspect in his wife's murder, Guy then sees himself forced to stop Bruno at any cost, or else the police will get the sole piece of evidence they need to connect him to the crime. Their final confrontation culminates in a fight on an out-of-control merry-go-round which ends up collapsing, killing Bruno. Upon dying, his tight grip finally loosens, revealing to the policemen there present that the small object he had been clutching all along is in fact Guy's lighter, hence corroborating Guy's version of the story.
Despite having been for years typecast as a by-the-books good-guy (or rather because of it), Robert Walker's Bruno Antony is the embodiment of the quintessential Hitchcockian villain: a charming, affable man, oddly appealing in his own way, to whom one cannot help but be drawn. He manages to completely overpower Guy psychologically when they first meet, successfully coaxing him to talk about subjects one would not dare discuss with a friend, let alone with a total stranger. As presented by Hitchcock, Bruno's hatred of his father, as well as his implied homosexuality, is clearly the result of an unresolved Oedipus Complex, a Freudian theory connecting those traits so widely acknowledged by post-WWII audiences that it alone sufficed as a justification for Bruno's psychotic behavior (remember that homosexuality was officially regarded as a mental illness until 1973). While Hitchcock himself may not have agreed with that trail of thought (he was known to have worked with several gay people during his lifetime, including the author of "Strangers on a Train", Patricia Highsmith), he exploited it wisely here to call attention to the trigger that made Bruno at long last spring into action: meeting Guy, in what plays more like a pickup than a chance encounter (as wittily remarked by Ebert in his review). Bruno, who reveals to Guy when they first meet that he had put himself to sleep countless times fantasizing about the perfect murder, is finally able to gather enough motivation to enact his homicidal impulses by feeding off his attraction to Guy, a man who "does things", a man who is the diametrical opposite of what he is and therefore fascinates him, a man Bruno would do anything to remain connected to, including murder. Besides, given the fact that Miriam's death noticeably deranges Bruno, making him hallucinate whenever he sees a woman wearing the same type of glasses she did, we can safely assume she was his first victim. It is important to remark, however, that, while this may have served as the catalyst for Bruno's actions, he as a character is not at all defined by his sexuality (something the Hays code would have never allowed, anyway); rather, after having his "perversion" hinted at the audience via e.g. some effeminate mannerisms early on in the movie, Bruno is then portrayed as a very strong, able-bodied man, far away from the flamboyant gay stereotype to which pre-code movie-goers had grown accustomed.
Much like the main character in Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2005, with excellent movie adaptations by both Niels Arden Oplev, in 2009, and David Fincher, in 2011), when confronted with the choice of doing either the polite thing or the reasonable one, Farley Granger's passive Guy will, against all common sense, embrace the former. However, while Larsson's character does so only once, at a pivotal moment in the story, Guy will choose politeness over sensibility for nearly the entire first half of the movie: he will accept Bruno's sitting uncomfortably close to him on the train, he will endure Bruno's progressively nosy remarks about his personal life, he will consent to being pressed into having a private lunch with Bruno, he will respond to the calls of a stranger hidden in the shadows, in the middle of the night. Yet, against all odds, with his dopey eyes and overall fish-out-of-water attitude toward the world, Farley Granger manages the feat of making the audience sympathize with Guy rather than want to punch him out of his complaisance. With his gullible, near-childlike credulity, he makes us believe he is just a small-town boy who got used to pleasing everyone around him so as to be accepted in a higher stratum of society. Not even once we grow suspicious of his relationship with Anne (Ruth Roman), daughter of a US senator, even though his marriage with her will surely boost his career as a politician. He is able to convince us his newly found fame and high society friends are all a result of his own efforts, thanks mainly to his (newly found?) dexterity at tennis, a sport normally associated with the elite. That is why, I think, he is not only the perfect counterpart to Walker's Bruno, but also one of the key elements in making the film credible.
As for the supporting cast, Marion Lorne is delightful as Mrs. Antony, Bruno's nearly simpleminded mother, and Patricia Hitchcock's wisecracking Barbara Morton provides plenty of pertinent comic relief. Hitchcock was convinced his public, as well as his main characters, had to have relieved some of the tension resulting from suspense in order to make his movies more entertaining, as well as to intensify by juxtaposition the drama to occur in the scene to follow. Believing that an audience wandering is not an audience emoting, Hitchcock's greatest concern was to make everything very clear to his public, which is why he took extensive care when composing his shots, regularly choosing clothing (as in Bruno's necktie with strangling lobster claws), pieces of jewelry (much like the rope-like necklace Miriam is wearing when strangled) and even food to characterize his actors: for instance, Miriam, Guy's sleazy wife, is insinuatingly licking an ice cream cone while gazing at Bruno, right before asking for a hot dog, the "only thing that can satisfy her cravings".
Making extensive use of the Chekhov's gun principle, Hitchcock often used the background of his shots to quietly introduce elements that would come to play some role ulteriorly in the story. Such attention to detail makes his movies ideal for repeated viewings, making for some nice "Aha!" moments whenever you spot any small detail he had concealed in plain sight. Take for instance Guy's loud telephone, which ultimately denounces his absence to the police officer following him since he never picks up the phone, as well as Bruno's dog, always present in the background scenes at his house and whose foreground introduction during a key moment serves to heighten the tension in an already edgy scene.
Having his roots in silent pictures, Hitchcock tended to resort to words only when strictly necessary, in order to avoid what he used to call "photographs of people talking, which bear no relation to the art of the cinema". Accordingly, he would often turn to his actor's eyes to reveal what they think or need, frequently employing a three-shot structure that would become one of his many trademarks: first, he would center in the frame an actor staring at something we, the viewers, cannot see; we are then presented to a point-of-view shot of what that actor is looking at; finally, we get a countershot of his/her reaction. As anticipated by Hitchcock, the resulting Kuleshov effect strongly induces the audience to empathize with that character, extrapolating meaning from that sequence of shots to infer what he/she is feeling. Extensively used in Strangers on a Train during Ruth Roman's scenes, a beautiful example of how such technique can be used to convey a wide range of emotions without the need of a single spoken word can be seen at a party at her house, when she, looking over her guests, happens to see Guy interacting with her sister and then with Bruno.
Once a countryside boy and now a famous tennis player with political aspirations, Guy Haines (Farley Granger) is on his way to a match. On the train, he is recognized by Bruno Antony (Robert Walker), an overly friendly man who talks Guy into having lunch with him in his private cabin. Bruno knows everything about Guy from the newspapers, from his troubled marriage with Miriam (Kasey Rogers), a loose woman whom Guy is about to divorce, to his recent affair with Anne Morton (Ruth Roman), daughter of a US senator. During lunch, Bruno talks about how he hates his father and how he fantasizes about the perfect murder, casually associating those subjects with his knowledge of Guy's private life by suggesting to Guy that they "swap murders" if needed be: Bruno would kill Guy's wife, and Guy, in return, would then kill Bruno's father. "Each fellow does the other fellow's murder. Then there is nothing to connect them. The one who had the motive isn't there", says Bruno reassuringly. Guy jokingly accepts the bargain and then takes his leave, sure never to see his lunch companion again; Bruno, on the other hand, does not take Guy's reply so lightly. Upon discovering that Miriam had decided not to give Guy a divorce after all, hoping instead to go to Washington with him now that he has become a well-off man, Bruno springs into action: he murders Miriam and then starts pressuring Guy into fulfilling his part of the so-called deal. Having no intention of murdering Bruno's father and frightened by the possibility of being accused of accessory to murder if he went to the police, Guy tries his best to deal with the situation himself, but things don't go as he had hoped: Bruno, feeling betrayed, decides to frame him with Miriam's murder by planting Guy's custom-made lighter in the murder scene. Already being considered to be the main suspect in his wife's murder, Guy then sees himself forced to stop Bruno at any cost, or else the police will get the sole piece of evidence they need to connect him to the crime. Their final confrontation culminates in a fight on an out-of-control merry-go-round which ends up collapsing, killing Bruno. Upon dying, his tight grip finally loosens, revealing to the policemen there present that the small object he had been clutching all along is in fact Guy's lighter, hence corroborating Guy's version of the story.
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| Bruno (Robert Walker) gazing at Guy (off camera), during a tennis match |
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| Guy (Farley Granger), spotting Bruno staring at him in the distance |
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| Hitchcock believed preferences in food characterize people. In here, Miriam (Kasey Rogers) suggestively licks an ice cream cone as she stares at Bruno |
Making extensive use of the Chekhov's gun principle, Hitchcock often used the background of his shots to quietly introduce elements that would come to play some role ulteriorly in the story. Such attention to detail makes his movies ideal for repeated viewings, making for some nice "Aha!" moments whenever you spot any small detail he had concealed in plain sight. Take for instance Guy's loud telephone, which ultimately denounces his absence to the police officer following him since he never picks up the phone, as well as Bruno's dog, always present in the background scenes at his house and whose foreground introduction during a key moment serves to heighten the tension in an already edgy scene.
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| An example of Hitchcock's three-shot structure exploiting the Kuleshov effect to induce the audience to extrapolate meaning of their juxtaposition | ||||||||
Having his roots in silent pictures, Hitchcock tended to resort to words only when strictly necessary, in order to avoid what he used to call "photographs of people talking, which bear no relation to the art of the cinema". Accordingly, he would often turn to his actor's eyes to reveal what they think or need, frequently employing a three-shot structure that would become one of his many trademarks: first, he would center in the frame an actor staring at something we, the viewers, cannot see; we are then presented to a point-of-view shot of what that actor is looking at; finally, we get a countershot of his/her reaction. As anticipated by Hitchcock, the resulting Kuleshov effect strongly induces the audience to empathize with that character, extrapolating meaning from that sequence of shots to infer what he/she is feeling. Extensively used in Strangers on a Train during Ruth Roman's scenes, a beautiful example of how such technique can be used to convey a wide range of emotions without the need of a single spoken word can be seen at a party at her house, when she, looking over her guests, happens to see Guy interacting with her sister and then with Bruno.
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| Guy's lighter, the "McGuffin" of Strangers on a Train |
Much like Max Ophüls, Hitchcock tended to reuse ideas from his previous films throughout his career, from simple shots (as in the shot-countershot takes of Guy punching Bruno in Strangers on a Train and Vandamm striking Leonard in North by Northwest - 1959), to whole movie premises (much like the interplay between main characters with diametrically opposite personalities, seen here and in Rope - 1948 - both with Farley Granger). While the theme of the wrongfully accused protagonist is present in a great deal of his movies (including this one), his most employed plot device is what he used to call the McGuffin, whose definition was elegantly summarized by Gillermo del Toro as "the reason to be of the movie that has no real reason to exist", that is, something irrelevant to the audience's comprehension of the story that is used to move the plot forward (e.g. the secret tune in The Lady Vanishes - 1938 -, clause 27 in Foreign Correspondent - 1940 -, a cache of uranium in Notorious - 1964). In here, the coveted McGuffin is Guy's lighter, forgotten in Bruno's train compartment at the beginning of the movie, which Bruno would then try and use to frame Guy for Miriam's murder. In fact, the final act of the movie is one of the rare occasions in which Hitchcock employs cross-cutting (despite being openly averse to it for "leaving too little to the imagination") to emphasize Guy's tension as he is forced to play a long tennis match while Bruno is getting closer and closer to the crime scene.
It is no secret that Hitchcock had several problems with screenwriter Raymond Chandler during the writing of Strangers on a Train, leading to his script being almost completely discarded and hastily re-written prior to shooting. That is reflected in the final product, unfortunately, where plot holes and implausible situations abound. Just to describe a few, Bruno strangles a socialite almost to unconsciousness in a room filled with important people with no consequence whatsoever, and then, in another scene, manages to somehow put his whole arm through a sewer grate to retrieve Guy's lighter after having struggled to pass his open hand though it. Nevertheless, what bothered me the most was the way his final confrontation with Guy was handled, starting by the innocent, elderly carnival worker shot dead by the police when they opened fire at an awfully designed merry-go-round full of children. No suspension of disbelief can be stretched that far...
Summarizing it:
| Liked | Didn't like |
|---|---|
| Hitchcock's audience manipulation techniques abound | Interesting premise, flawed script |
| Robert Walker's Bruno Antony |
A remarkably original murder scene, by Alfred Hitchcock:
Great Movie review by Roger Ebert here.
If you liked this movie, then maybe try watching Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and Rebecca (1940)
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