Strangers on a Train

STORY

Amid a rousing Dimitri Tiomkin score, the camera captures a train station. A diamond cab pulls up to the entrance, and a man in white spats exits. Another cab pulls up, and a man in dress shoes carrying a tennis racket also exits. Both men walk through the station headed toward the same train. The man wearing dress shoes and the other wearing spats accidentally end up sitting together on the train. The man in spats, Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker), recognizes the other man as tennis phenom Guy Haines (Farley Granger) and starts a conversation. Bruno is attracted to others who manage to do something. He seems to know intimate details of Guy’s life, even details of a pending divorce. Bruno recounts having a rich father who expects him to do manual labor. He admits wanting to murder him at times. Bruno compliments Guy on marrying a Senator’s daughter and having the world at his beck and call.

Bruno asks Guy if he wants to hear his idea for the perfect murder. He says some people are better off dead. Bruno says suppose you want your wife murdered. He says you won’t murder her because you would be caught. Suppose you meet someone you’ve never met before and have absolutely no connection to, so you swap murders. Each fellow commits the other person’s murder for him. Nothing connects them to the crime since each person is a total stranger. Guy must switch trains and leaves abruptly. Unfortunately, he leaves his cigarette lighter behind, and Bruno keeps it. Guy exits the train as director Alfred Hitchcock boards with a wrapped double bass.

Guy goes immediately to Miller’s Music Store to see the clerk, Miriam (Kasey Rogers), his wife, to discuss what is holding up the divorce. She demands a specific sum, and he pays. Miriam is going to have another man’s baby, but the public doesn't know who the father is. After accepting the money, Miriam refuses to get a divorce, citing his growing fame as a tennis star and the swanky people he’ll now hobnob with. Miriam wants to destroy his relationship with Senator Morton’s (Leo G. Carroll) daughter, Anne (Ruth Roman). His wife does not want to be thrown away like an old shoe.

Guy immediately telephones Anne to tell her Miriam no longer wants a divorce. Both are shocked, but Guy is angry and wants to break her neck. He tells Anne he wants to strangle her.

Meanwhile, Bruno talks with his mother (Marion Lorne), a woman who fawns over her son, and she tells him to shave before his father gets home. This angers Bruno, who says, “I’m sick and tired of bowing to the king!” His mother, a painter, shows him a highly abstract portrait, and he laughs hysterically, thinking it captures his father perfectly, even though it’s another man. When his father (Jonathan Hale) arrives home, Bruno has a brief phone call with Guy, who hangs up almost immediately.

Bruno takes a train to the small town of Metcalf, where Guy lives, and watches Miriam Haines and two male friends board a bus; Bruno soon boards it. When the gang exits to attend a craft show/carnival, Bruno follows close behind. When a young child in a cowboy suit walks right up to Bruno and says, “Bang, bang,” pointing his toy pistol, Bruno says nothing and pops his balloon with a lit cigarette. Bruno sneaks up to Mariam, catches her attention, and makes flirty eye contact. When the party goes on the Merry-Go-Round, he does, too. When Mariam and friends take a boat ride to the Tunnel of Love, Bruno also buys a ticket. Inside the structure, Mariam’s two male friends are all hands, practically assaulting her. They all return to shore about the same time. When Bruno sneaks up on Mariam, asking her name, he chokes her in the dark as her thick-lens glasses slip off her head, falling next to the lighter Bruno retrieved from the train ride with Guy. He quietly strangles her to death. Mariam’s two male companions start calling for her, and Bruno picks up the lighter and glasses. Bruno, unseen, mounts the Tunnel of Love boat and drives away. They yell out that she is dead as Bruno is halfway across the water. Finally on land, Bruno notices a carnival employee’s look and leaves the carnival after helping a blind man across the street.

Guy returns home by taxi, but before he enters, a man calls out to him from across the street. Bruno, hidden in the shadows, calls out. Bruno happily gives Guy Miriam’s cracked glasses and tells him the deed is done. Guy, very upset, calls the ever-calm Bruno a maniac. Bruno tells Guy that if he goes to the police now, he will be considered an accessory to the murder. Guy rushes inside the house, disgusted. Anne calls, upset, and asks Guy to come over right away.

As they enter Ann’s, the couple kisses passionately, and she professes her love for him. With a troubled expression, Anne says her father wants to see him. Inside one room are Senator Morton, Ann’s sister Barbara (Patricia Hitchcock), and now Guy and Ann. The Senator glumly states that Guy’s wife has been murdered. To establish an alibi, Guy states he was on a train and talked to Professor Collins at the time of the murder. Barbara tells the loving couple they are now free to marry.

The next morning, Guy is called to the office of Police Captain Turley (Howard St. John) to offer any information about the crime. Professor Collins is also summoned to the Captain’s office. The professor admits to “celebrating” that day and fails to remember Guy. Later, Guy attends dinner at Senator Morton’s house with the others. He explains why his alibi is weak and won’t hold up in court. Guy shows them, standing outside the window, his tail detective, Leslie Hennessey (Robert Gist). The Senator suggests Guy work from the senator’s house for the next few days. Guy soon gets a phone call from Bruno, who calls him “Darling.” Soon, Bruno follows him around town and even sends him letters.

In one scene, Guy goes to the tennis court for a match, with the audience bobbing their heads back and forth. But right in the middle sits Bruno, still, smiling broadly. Guy’s face registers distress, but Bruno suddenly leaves. But when Guy finishes the match, Bruno, Anne, and her family are drinking and chatting at an outdoor café. Bruno presents himself as Guy’s biggest fan. But Anne recognizes him because of his tie that is labeled Bruno. Barbara enters wearing thick-lensed glasses, reminding Bruno of Mariam.

Later, at a party, Bruno appears and goes straight up to Guy, then to Anne and the Senator. He converses with a judge and manages to upset him. He even discusses murder with two elderly ladies, but he is again distracted by the sight of a staring Barbara. Bruno soon faints dead away. Reviving, Bruno faces an angry Guy who punches him in the nose when Bruno says he likes him. After escorting Bruno to his car, Anne tells Guy that Bruno was staring at Barbara, especially when pretending to choke Mrs. Cunningham. Ann figures out both girls wore thick-lensed glasses. Anne soon concludes that he killed Mariam. Guy admits he did it, that he is a maniac, and that he met him on a train. And Guy shares his scheme about each committing a murder for the other. And that man was supposed to murder his father.

Guy phones Bruno and tells him he is ready to kill his father tonight. Guy then pulls out the pistol that he earlier planted in a shelf drawer and puts it in his sports jacket pocket. He walks to Antony's home and uses the key he was given to enter. He uses his flashlight to read Bruno’s map and follow the directions. Walking slowly toward Bruno’s father’s room, a large dog appears on the staircase, barking and growling. But Guy still walks up the stairs. The dog ultimately licks his hand in friendship. Stopping outside the old man’s room, Guy checks his gun one more time. Guy says to the man in bed I must speak to you about your son. But the light flips on, and a fully dressed Bruno emerges from the bed. Guy tells the demented loon that he never had plans to kill anyone. Bruno asks for his key back, and Guy throws the pistol on the bed, telling Bruno how sick he is. Bruno states how much he hates being double-crossed and puts a gun to Guy’s back. Guy walks away out of the bedroom, the pistol always aimed at him. But Bruno says he won’t shoot him, that he has something better planned.

Two policemen assigned to watch Guy notice that he is gone, having given the cops the slip. One suggests arresting him, but the other says they don't have enough evidence. Meanwhile, Anne seeks out Mrs. Antony for help, but she offers none. Meeting Bruno on her way out, she confronts him, and he retells the story, saying Guy said how much he hated his wife. He holds Guy’s lighter in his hand and says it would have been stupid to kill Marium.

Guy and Anne realize Bruno will plant his lighter on the amusement park island to frame him, so Guy plans to win the match in three sets to beat the police to the island and retrieve his lighter first. We interweave the tennis match with Bruno taking a cab to Union Station, as the tennis match drags on. The game is two sets to one, and Bruno has exited the train, getting closer to the amusement park. As he walks, another man hits him in the shoulder and knocks the lighter into a sewage-grated hole. The tennis match turns into a dogfight, and Bruno tries to get help from the sewage grate. He reaches through the metal grate but only manages to drop the lighter further down. Eventually, Guy wins his match by one point, and Bruno retrieves his lighter. Guy ducks away from his cop protectors and takes a cab to Union Station.

Hennessey and partner observe Guy buy a train ticket and ask the clerk where he is going. The ticket seller says Medford, and they quickly alert the police force there. Back at the carnival, Bruno waits for darkness to make his move. A police plant notices he boards a taxi to the amusement park. Finally, Guy arrives at the amusement park and sees a squad car arriving at the same time.

They follow Guy and work with a carnival employee to locate him, the same person who earlier saw Bruno. Before long, Guy sees Bruno and calls out to him. The two police close in on Guy, firing shots as he boards the Merry-Go-Round, instead injuring its operator in the process, causing the amusement ride to spin out of control. Bruno and Guy are on that crazy spinning carousel, struggling with one another. People scream as the amusement ride spins faster and faster. Apparently uninjured, the operator climbs beneath the ride to slow it down as the two men physically engage.

One little boy riding a horse smiles broadly, having the time of his life, until he is pushed off the ride and nearly flies into space. Guy also nearly slides off the ride, holding on to a metal pole as Bruno kicks his hand. The operator finally reaches the off switch on the other side and pulls the lever. Sparks fly as the spinning carousel wobbles off center, then disintegrates into a heap of dust and debris as people scream for their lives.

As the police recover a disheveled Guy, the carnival employee identifies Bruno as the suspected murderer. Bruno is found injured under rubble by Guy and the chief of police. In his dying confession, he swears that Guy is the guilty one and that the lighter is still on the island, but when he dies, his hand opens to show the lighter, proving his innocence. Anne, the family, and Guy reunite and ride a train again as the credits roll.

CRITIQUE

By 1950, Alfred Hitchcock was a master of mainstream commercial film. He was not the kind of “artist” director like Fellini or Orson Welles; he wanted to produce and direct commercially successful films that people around the world discussed at length. He didn't necessarily want to make piles of cash, but many considered that was the primary way to measure the success of such films. Several screenwriters wrote his screenplays, including a mystery/detective icon novelist: Whitfield Cook, Czenzi Ormonde, and Raymond Chandler. The movie was based on Patricia Highsmith’s novel.

The movie is based on a single novel premise and a strong McGuffin. The premise is that if two strangers meet and switch murders, the second person murders a member of the first’s family, so there is no relationship between the murderer and the victim. But suppose one stranger is a sociopath and is bonkers. How will that fact further complicate the situation? The McGuffin is an inscribed lighter one stranger owns, and the other retrieves it and uses it to implicate the first stranger in his crime. Very novel. One stranger, Guy, is a decent man, a professional tennis star, and the other, Bruno, is a Moma’s boy, most likely gay, and a professional vagrant supported by a rich father.

This is one of the early movies that hinted at a homosexual attraction Bruno has for Guy, admitting at a dinner party that he “likes” him and partially explaining why he originally approached him on the train, explaining his swapping murder theory. Though in 1950 mainstream cinema homosexuality could not be displayed openly, the implication is there, but only in the desires of a sociopath and not an ordinary human being.

The performances in the movie stand out. Perhaps Patricia Hitchcock delivers her finest performance, though she usually serves as inconsequential set dressing. She plays Anne’s sister, who wears heavy glasses similar to the ones worn by the first murder victim, Marian. Both are cute but made to appear spinsterish by unflattering eyewear. Bruno is distressed and put off when he sees someone alive who looks like Mariam. Her unease at being made to feel uncomfortable is strikingly presented on screen.

The photography, by Robert Burks, who also filmed other Alfred Hitchcock movies such as Vertigo, Rear Window, and To Catch a Thief, imbues this black-and-white film with kinetic shots of Farley Granger and Robert Walker darting back and forth. He likes to film tennis matches with the audience’s heads bobbing back and forth in sync. Then he places the stationary Robert Walker in the center of the audience, standing out from everyone else. During the Merry-Go-Round sequence, the carousel speeds up and goes out of control. People hold on for dear life, their legs lifted behind them. The ultimate crash sequence is filled with smoke, sparks, and screaming people. His photography of glasses, their distorted lenses, close-ups of faces behind them, and glasses lying in the grass, depicts quirky visions of humans hiding beneath lenses.

Strangers on a Train fails to get the respect that Hitchcock’s Technicolor films such as North by Northwest, Rear Window, and Vertigo receive, but Strangers on a Train contains commanding performances, illustrating Farley Granger’s distorted and conflicted morality, Robert Walker’s gay-laced psychopath, and the quirkiness of an array of supporting characters. The film is suspenseful as it fleshes out the swap-murder scenario. It is probably the only great Hitchcock film that many viewers hardly recognize. But it illustrates Hitchcock at his most subtle and artistic. It remains among his classics.

GUY HAINES (FARLEY GRANGER) AND BRUNO ANTONY (ROBERT WALKER) ARE STRANGERS ON A TRAIN.

BRUNO ATTEMPTS TO KICK THE HAND OF GUY SO HE WILL FLY OFF THE MERRY-GO-ROUND TO HIS DEATH.

AN EXAMPLE OF FILMING THROUGH A DISTORTED LENS, SHOWING BRUNO MURDERING MIRIAM.

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