Strangers on a Train (1951)

Along with Rebecca, Strangers on a Train is perhaps the greatest film in the career of director Alfred Hitchcock. An extraordinarily tense film, the suspense is slowly ratcheted up from the innocuous beginnings of a chance meeting and conversation, to the climactic confrontation on a recklessly spinning merry-go-round.

Known as 'the master of suspense', Hitchcock lives up to his billing. The tension is painfully extended in many scenes: Bruno's stalking of Miriam at the carnival, Bruno groping for the all-important cigarette lighter in the sewer drain, Guy making his way up the dark mansion to confront Bruno's father, encountering a menacing dog along the way.

Strangers on a Train was based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith, who returned to the limelight a few years ago with the screen adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley. Highsmith apparently invented the genre of the serial killer homosexual, with Bruno's fascination for Guy seemingly not limited to conscripting him to murder his father.

Hitchcock attained the film rights to the novel for a mere $7,500, purchasing it anonymously to keep down the price. Famed potboiler mystery writer Raymond Chandler received first screen credit, but his first draft was considerably re-written by Czenzi Ormonde.

Alfred Hitchcock was such a prolific director of suspense thrillers that it is easy to find parallels between his films. Strangers on a Train is often compared to Psycho, and for good reason. They both feature a memorable psychotic murderer, they're both filmed in black and white, and both have Hitchcock's daughter Patricia in a supporting role. Both films have been described as black comedies, and both have dull protagonists who are upstaged by the villain. Although Farley Granger is an improvement over John Gavin, and Granger is more credible here than he was as John Dall's wimpy confederate in Hitchcock's Rope.

But Strangers on a Train is also an entry in Hitchcock's decades-long string of 'Wrong Man' films. As with I Confess, To Catch a Thief and North by Northwest (along with numerous others) the protagonist can only prove his innocence by cornering the villain in the dramatic finale. But Granger isn't innocent, having become an accessory to murder by not turning Walker in earlier.

Is Strangers on a Train a black comedy? If one tries hard enough, any film can become a comedy, including The Sorrow and the Pity. Granted, Walker's performance is on the campy side, and several of the minor players (especially a series of bubbleheaded elderly ladies) have comic roles. Still, this is a very tense movie. The question is, is Walker's character sinister or funny? My vote is for the former.

Walker, the former husband of incandescent 1940s film star Jennifer Jones, has the role of his career as the deceptively charming and aristocratic Bruno Antony. He would not get to relish his new-found notoriety, however. While Strangers on a Train was still playing in theaters, he had a nervous breakdown. He was taken to a clinic, where he died after being injected with a sedative.

Hitchcock's career had been in a recent funk, with Stage Fright (1950) and Under Capricorn (1949) not well received. Perhaps this explains why Strangers on a Train garnered only a single Academy Award nomination, for Robert Burks' black and white cinematography.

If any part of the film can be criticized, it is the final, famous confrontation between Guy and Bruno on the wildly spinning merry-go-round. It is difficult to believe that any merry-go-round can be made to go fast enough for the horses to fly from their poles when it is suddenly stopped. Policemen of any competence do not fire weapons into a crowd, and perhaps elderly women should not be typecast as fools who are easily led. But such trivial complaints should not interfere with the film's status as Hitchcock's most nail-biting thriller. (97/100)

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