Strangers On A Train DVD

 Welcome to Hitchie's Fifties.
Alfred Hitchcock kicked off the decade with a resounding return to form in "Strangers on a Train" (1951), adapted from Patricia Highsmith's novel. "I'm very much concerned with dualism and the good and evil that exists in everyone to some degree," said Patricia Highsmith about the novel. This was a fundamental concern of Hitchcock's as well. The basic situation is dazzlingly ingenious. Two strangers, Guy (Farley Granger) and Bruno (Robert Walker), meet on a train. Each discovers that he has someone in his life he would like to be rid of-Bruno his father, Guy his clinging wife who will not give him a divorce. Bruno suggests that they swap murders; there is nothing to link the two men and therefore no motive will connect them to the murders they commit. Guy humors Bruno without taking him too seriously, but his smile vanishes when Bruno appears one night to tell him that he has murdered Guy's wife and now expects Guy to keep his side of the bargain. Although Hitchcock makes numerous changes from the novel, Highsmith's pattern of dualism is followed rigorously through the film. Bruno is clearly Guy's dark side, and the literal embodiment of Guy's mental crime in wanting his wife Mariam dead. "I could strangle her," Guy shouts to his girlfriend over the phone. This is followed by the sound of a train rushing past reminding us of Guy and Bruno's meeting and the murder proposal; and then a shot of Bruno's hands which do strangle Miriam. Even prior to their meeting, we have followed the progress of both men's shoes as they cross the station; seen a shot of the railroad tracks which establishes a pattern of both crisscross and double-cross; and witnessed Hitchcock himself in his famous guest appearance trying to struggle on a train carrying a double-bass. The film invents some details to reinforce the Double theme. Guy's girlfriend, Ann (Ruth Roman), has a sister Barbara (Patricia Hitchcock) who, in looks, is almost the double of Guy's wife Miriam (Laura Elliott), and finds herself a potential murder victim of Bruno at a party. "His hands were on her throat, but he was strangling me," she cries. Barbara is also like Bruno in that she says things that might be better left unsaid, because they bring subconscious desires guiltily to the surface. "Marrying the boss's daughter-short cut to a career," says Bruno of Guy's engagement to the senator's daughter: nothing in the film contradicts that. On hearing of Mariam's murder, Barbara tells Guy and Ann: "Well, you two, nothing stands in your way." True enough, and it is Bruno who has made it true. "Strangers on a Train" is famous for some of Hitchcock's most remarkable set-pieces. Bruno's murder of Guy's wife is shown reflected through the victim's glasses in a hideous distortion of what she had anticipated as a love scene. Guy's tennis practice is thrown when he notices that one spectator's head remains perfectly still; it is Bruno in fixed obsession gazing at Guy. There is some dazzling crosscutting between Guy's tennis match and Bruno's reaching down the grating for the incriminating lighter he has dropped and a tremendous finale when a fight between Guy and Bruno and a careless police bullet send a carousel spinning out of control. For all its excitement, "Strangers on a Train" is one of the Hitchcock films where sense and suspense do not quite go together. But the film moves with such verve and sparkle that this only belatedly becomes noticeable. [filmfactsman]
Submitted by filmfactsman (Beverly Hills, CA, USA)
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 THE NO #1 Hitchcock Movie
This is the best Hitchcock movie you will ever see. And he has a lot of great movies. Yo...
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