Strangers on a Train: Movie & DVD Review

Alfred Hitchcock’s “Strangers on a Train” is about weakness crisscrossing with evil, with evil pushing hard for the upper hand.

Nobody comes away unscathed.

As written by Raymond Chandler and Czenzi Ormonde from Patricia Highsmith’s novel, the film is smashing. It’s another way to look at noir, as conceived by a master of the medium, with a thrilling climax that mines all of Hitchcock’s perverse humor and sense of the absurd.

It’s dark and it’s funny, awful and spot on. No blockbuster this summer matches the whirling audacity Hitchcock unleashes at the end of this movie--and he wasn’t working with a fraction of their budgets.

What he had was something deeper than their pockets--the theme he carried through most of his movies. As Hitchcock saw it, in every man is evil. Touch the right button, rub one the wrong way, and watch evil bloom.

The movie tells the story of fey Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker) and good-looking tennis star, Guy Haines (Farley Granger)--strangers who meet on a train.

The flirty, well-informed Bruno takes an immediate shine to Guy, eventually proposing how tidy it would be if they swapped murders, thus assuming Guy wants someone dead. For instance, Bruno says, he’d be happy to strangle the last breath out of Guy’s cheating wife, Miriam (Laura Eliot), if Guy would be willing to shoot Bruno’s wicked, wealthy father (Jonathan Hale) in the head.

“Crisscross,” Bruno says lightly. “You’ll do my murder, and I’ll do your murder.” The idea is that since neither know their victim, neither will be suspects in their murder.

More bemused than appalled, Guy leaves the train, only to soon be shocked when Miriam is found strangled to death after carousing with two men at a local amusement park. Now the psychotic Bruno wants to collect the debt he feels he’s owed. He wants his daddy dead. If Guy doesn’t do the job, the persistent Bruno makes it clear that he will cause his share of problems for Guy, who is now the chief suspect in his wife’s death.

Released in 1951, “Strangers on a Train” is rich and complex, human and dark. As Hitchcock himself described it, “it has a fascinating design.” The film hit theaters with two versions--the British cut, which heightens the homoerotic interplay between Bruno and Guy, and the American version, which safely downplays it. The American version shows tonight.

Throughout the movie, the suspense is taut, the performances lean and convincing. Ruth Roman is nicely cast as Ann Morton, Guy’s wealthy love interest; and Hitchcock’s own daughter, Patricia Hitchcock, nearly steals the show as Anne’s pushy, pluckish sister, Barbara.

There’s something about her performance that recalls Marilyn Monroe’s turn in “All About Eve,” which opened a year earlier in 1950. Though they look nothing alike, close your eyes when Barbara speaks and you’ll hear her uncanny impersonation of Monroe. It’s so exact, it’s kind of creepy and unsettling. Like the movie.

Grade: A+