1951
Director: Alfred Hitchcock Writers: Raymond Chandler, Whitfield Cook Actors: Farley Granger, Robert Walker, Lauara Elliot
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The movie starts aboard one of Hithcock's favorite devices- a train. He used it not only for the mystery evoked by trains, but because it was a visual metaphor for rootless drifting, or alternatively, for fate (a train's path, unique to all vehicles, is completely predetermined by the path of the track it runs on). Both of these descriptrions fit the two main characters of Strangers on a Train well.
Guy Haines (Farley Granger) is a star tennis player whose nomadic ways have alienated him from his wife, Marion. Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker) is a very unstable child-like personality (at one point, his cowed mother asks him if he's given up his obsession with killing the president, and he offhandedly tells her he's found something else to do). Fate brings them together as fellow passengers on a train. Bruno recognizes Guy and, after chatting him up a little, makes a proposition: if he kills Guy's unfaithful wife, Guy will kill his father. As most people would, Guy humors this psycho (pun intended) until he can escape. Unfortunately, instant best buddy Bruno takes that as agreement, and kills Marion. Now Guy is expected to live up to his end of the bargain.
Guy is not a very interesting character, nor even particularly likeable, thus focusing our attention, and perversely, our sympathies, on the deranged Bruno. We get to follow Bruno through his various attempts to make himself important; by killing the President, by cottoning on to celebrity Guy Haines, by killing his father (whose "holding him back"). This focus on the killer is what makes Strangers on a Train different from other "good guy races against time" movies". As expected, the craftsmanship is superb. The "murder of Marion" and "merry go round" scenes are already famous, but other high impact moments are the scene where Bruno agonizingly forces his arm through a sewer grating to retrieve a crucial piece of evidence, Guy turning his back on Bruno and walking out while Bruno points a gun at him, and the chilling moment when Guy first realizes he's talking to a homicidal maniac. Not brilliant, but solid Hitch.
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