STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (1951)
By Ralph Santini - ****
Two
years after shutting down his independent production company, Transatlantic
Pictures, the master of suspense himself, Alfred Hitchcock, finally got back to
his quintessential roots in his greatest movie in five years, Strangers On A
Train. It contains every of his excellent trademarks, including especially the
“wrong man” type who wants to clear his name to justice. The premise here
concerns a young tennis player, Guy Haines (wonderfully portrayed by the
underrated Farley Granger) who meets up with a lazy socialite, named Bruno
Anthony (a riveting Robert Walker) and he gets an idea of wanting to take
advantage to get rid of his domineering father (a brief but sill rigid Jonathan
Hale) by swapping murders with him and Guy’s philandering, Femme Fatale wife
(the viciously lovely Kasey Rogers, who gets credit from Warner Bros. as Laura
Elliott) so that Guy can have better time with Anne Morton (the even more
beautiful Ruth Roman) a woman he loves a lot more. Bruno thinks it’s a good
idea because it’s about each person murdering total strangers; with Bruno
ending up saying his iconic crescendo “Criss-Cross”.
The
problem with that is, Guy only takes it as a morbid joke but nevertheless Bruno
goes on by following Miriam Joyce Haines, the cruel pretended wife of Guy’s and
suddenly MURDERS her. That’s right a murder has been committed and Bruno goes
on giving his glasses to Guy and he is SHOCKED; he desperately yells at Bruno
“YOU MANIAC!!!!!” but Bruno retorts Guy that they both planned it together but
Guy wants to call the police and Bruno tells him that that won’t do any good
because they’d “both be arrested for murder”. Although Guy would eventually be
questioned by the police, his alibi turns out that it doesn’t work since the
witness, college professor from New York, was drunk while Guy was taking his
train from Metcalf to Washington. So the film would eventually put the
character of Guy in a spot and that’s where we get to the exciting continuation
of this brilliant story.
There
are plenty of things that I love so much about “Strangers On A Train” that I
should point out a few topics for my analysis of this great movie. First we
have Bruno Anthony, this is one character that really needs a lot of merit
because I believe that his portrayal by Robert Walker is extraordinary because
I think he is this movie. Bruno is just a tortured character who obviously
needs a lot of psychological help because he seems to think that murder is
something very essential. And yet, murder is against the law, as there is a
moment where Bruno talks to a judge about what should happen to all murderers,
and the judge retorts that “when a murder, must be caught, he must tried, he
must be sentenced to die, and must be executed”. Another great thing about
Bruno’s opinion of the law is how Guy tells him that he may old-fashioned by
telling him that murder IS against the law. But Bruno gets angry at Guy’s
agreement with the Law telling him that a life or two doesn’t really matter and
that some people should be better of dead. That is one of those Hitchcockian
trademarks that worked as an outburst about “The Perfect Murder” that appeared
in his first color film Rope; only I find Bruno Anthony a finer villain than
the ones Farley Granger (ironically the hero of this film) and John Dall
portrayed in that picture.
My
second topic is Guy Haines, whom, like I said, Farley Granger portrayed in
reverse to his character in Rope. Guy however is very much a law abiding
citizen who wants to make himself respectable in his sports career in Tennis,
though sometimes when is angry at his no-good wife he does feel like
terminating her by making an outburst on a phone call he has with Anne saying
“I could break her foul useless neck!”. But after Miriam is murdered he is
still shocked at what Bruno did to his wife and he feels that it’s his duty as
a citizen to deal out justice against Bruno only the psycho keeps warning our
hero that he still be turning himself as an accessory. That’s why Guy must keep
on surviving by doing his best to clear his name or otherwise it’ll too late
for him to be innocent in the eyes of the law. This Hitchcockian “wrong man”
trademark is absolutely puzzling even though the police here are not used as
that rigid compared to especially Hitchcock’s previous works concerning this
theme e.g. The 39 Steps or master’s underrated 1942 thriller Saboteur.
My next
topic in this film is the incredible amount of shots used by Alfred Hitchcok
with cinematographer Robert Burks. The opening shot of this film contains a
rather funny use of both Robert Walker and Farley Granger’s walking feet
clashing with one another as both of their characters are on their way taking
the train. That still really chills me because we don’t know whether something
terrible will go on during the train scene or not. Another equally fun shot in
this film is when we see the first tennis game which Guy plays where we see the
audience concentrating on the game while Bruno only stares at Guy. Another
great shot for this gem is the way Bruno stares at a character portrayed
Alfred’s daughter Patricia Hitchcock every time Bruno encounters her. But the
most compelling shot that comes to my mind is the one where after Guy decides
to visit Bruno’s Mansion. This is one the scariest scenes I’ve ever seen in the
history of thriller filmmaking because it reminds me of one those childhood
nightmares I had in the past. I also love how Guy and Bruno’s dog interact with
each other because at first we suspect that the dog may harm Guy but it
actually doesn’t since it knows how Bruno has a deep affection for Guy in spite
of not being so, vice-versa. After Guy approaches Bruno’s father’s room we seem
to be presumed that is talking to the old man, while it turns out that the man
asleep is Bruno himself and he warned Guy that his father was really leaving
from Washington D.C. to Florida.
This is
basically one Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest post-war thrillers in his career
because it has a great spirit to the Master of Suspense roots in both the
interwar period in his career in British cinema and his World War II period in
Hollywood. It’s got a great blend of eerie suspense and black comedy and that’s
why I absolutely adore it. I never get tired of watching it especially because
of Robert Walker’s extraordinary portrayal of the psycho villain with great
ideals about the perfect murder.
