This breathtaking thriller opens at the railroad station, where the audience sees only legs of the passengers hurrying to their trains and two different pairs of shoes, a pair of conservative ones and another pair of very loud white shoes, immediately catch your attention. The men in these shoes take adjacent seats on a train and the shoes bump against each other. They strike up a casual conversation which is gradually turning into a rather bizarre one.
The man in the loud white shoes, Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker), shows an unusual and unexpected knowledge of another man ‘s (a famous tennis player Guy Haines – Farley Granger) private life and romance and his desire to divorce his wife and marry another woman. Although Guy is reluctant to continue the conversation they go to lunch together, where in a most strange twist Bruno proposes to Guy to “switch murders” – criss-cross as he called it – Guy’s wife for Bruno’s father, whom Bruno apparently hates immensely. This way there would be no motive for either murder, which ultimately could lead to the discovery of the murderer’s identity.
Guy is about to descend the train at the town where his wife lives and he clearly does not take the conversation seriously, so he makes some sort of placating noise and leaves the compartment. He’s come to finalize his divorce, but his wife changes her mind. She is expecting a child from another man, but the father -to-be ran from her and she figures a successful tennis player husband could provide for her and her future child. As Guy is very much shaken by this turn of events, which interferes with his marriage plans, the conversation between Guy and Miriam turns rather bitter and a number of people are witnessing it.
Meanwhile Bruno is at home, talking with his mother and one gets a certain feeling he just might be one card short of a full deck. His doting mother looks like a complete loon too (fantastic performance by Marion Lorne), you surely can see where Bruno’s nuttiness is coming from. Loved the scene with the picture of St. Francis she’s painted – the portrait is so horrifying to look at that in Bruno’s demented mind it reminds him of his father as he seems to perceive his father as the Devil himself!
Meanwhile, his father arrives home and seeing him prompts Bruno to call Guy and taunt him about the divorce. Convinced that Guy is perfectly willing to go with the “criss-cross†scheme he proposed, Bruno ends up in Metcalf stalking Guy’s wife, who is having lots of fun at the fair with a couple of men. As they enter the amusement park you know in your mind that this will be the end of Miriam’s adventures.
The loud and noisy atmosphere of the park is a perfect setup for the following murder. Bruno openly flirts with Miriam, but you can feel the intensity in his gaze.
There is a funny scene with a little boy with a balloon, who jumps out at him, brandishing his toy pistol, and fakes pistol shots. Bruno promptly blows his balloon with his cigarette, very matter-of-factly, you can see he’s in no mood for jokes tonight. Poor silly Miriam goes with her boys in a rowboat to an island nearby and, catching the right moment, Bruno strangles Miriam, unseen by anyone in the dark – the whole scene is shown through her glasses.
This is one of classic Hitchcock’s moments, where the murder looks even more macabre due to the uniquely inventive method of its portrayal.
Guy is intercepted on his way home by Bruno, who informs him of the murder. Guy is shocked, since he’s had no idea that Bruno was serious about this. He is ready to call the police, but Bruno is threatening to say that they’ve planned the whole thing together.
Meanwhile, the police cannot find Guy in his house, thus weakening his possible alibi. In addition, later, when his fiancee calls him to ask to come to her house and her father the senator tells him of the murder, Guy’s reactions are all off, since he already knew of the murder.
The police put a tail on Guy, while Bruno continues to stalk him and insist that Guy is duty bound to kill his father, since he did him a favor and removed his wife, an obstacle for his marriage. He goes as far as sending Guy a plan of his house, indicating where his father room is.
Actually, the scenes with Bruno stalking Guy are the quintessential Hitchcock’s moments. In one scene, where all we can see is a solitary figure standing on the steps of Jefferson Memorial. We can’t be even sure it’s Bruno, the figure is quite far, but Guy’s nervous reaction at seeing the man is adding to the suspense of the scene, prompting the audience to think it must be Bruno. Another great scene happens at a tennis match, where all spectators on the stands are turning their heads, following the course of the ball, and only Bruno’s head is not moving all the time as he is constantly staring in one direction, at Guy. These few scenes are gradually raising the level of anxiety for both Guy and the audience as it is very unnerving to see Bruno’s intensity and determination in pursuing his cause.
Guy’s fiancée, Ann, begins to feel something strange is going on, when Bruno shows up unexpectedly at the tennis match and later, at a dinner party in their house, where he causes quite a commotion. In sort of a jest he begins to show an old lady how to commit a murder without leaving a trace of blood and imitates strangling her, but at that moment his gaze incidentally falls on Ann’s younger sister Barbara (Patricia Hitchcock, the director’s only daughter). Barbara has glasses, just like Miriam did, and Bruno loses control. He starts to strangle the woman in earnest and when everybody around him is already in the state of panic, fervently trying to pry his fingers from her neck, he faints. Unnerved by the event, Ann challenges Guy to tell her the truth and he recounts the story of the chance meeting on the train and what has followed.
They are at a loss on what to do. Guy even goes as far as calls Bruno and tells him that he’ll kill his father tonight. He goes into the house, finds the father’s room. The audience sees him checking his gun and involuntarily wonders if he’s really going to do it. But Guy is trying to call out to Bruno’s father in order to warn him – only to find out that Bruno was anticipating this all along and he was the one waiting for him in his father’s room. Ann also tries to help by talking to Bruno’s mother, but only realizes that she’s made things worse – the old lady does not want to hear anything bad about her son, but Bruno overhears the conversation and is enraged by Guy’s “betrayalâ€. He vows to implicate Guy for this murder. He has Guy’s lighter and it would be enough evidence for the police, should they find the lighter on the scene of the crime, to arrest Guy for the murder of his wife.
Bruno goes back to Metcalf and Guy, who has to play at a prestigious tennis tournament on that day, is racing against time, trying to win the match in time for catching a train to Metcalf as well. Meanwhile, Bruno has a bit of bad luck with the lighter. A passerby bumps into him when he’s had the lighter out and it falls into a drain. While Guy is ferociously trying to beat his opponent at the game, Bruno painstakingly works on getting to the lighter through a narrow grill of the drain. This juxtaposition of both of them is thrilling to watch, the music is very much adding to this thrill. With a great difficulty Bruno manages to get the lighter out, but his actions have collected a big crowd around him, which definitely is not too good for the mission he’s trying to attempt – sneak back on the island under the cover of dark and plant Guy’s lighter there as an evidence.
Meanwhile, Guy wins the match and gives his police watchers a slip, with plenty of help from Ann and Barbara. The police in Metcalf are however alerted by the phone call about his arrival and they are following him to the amusement park. Bruno is held up by the queue at the boats and a man working there recognizes him from the night of the murder. The police attempt to take Guy, thinking it’s him, but the man points Bruno out and Bruno has no choice, but run. Guy goes after him, trying to recover his lighter, and they end up on a merry-go-round. The police start to shoot and they hit the attendant, manning the merry-go-round. It spins out of control, with some people still on it and Guy and Bruno fighting each other. It was one of the most fast paced and breathtaking fight scenes I’ve ever seen. Women screaming, little boy almost falling from the merry-go-round, horses rising and falling and amidst it all Bruno and Guy lashing out with all the hatred they’ve accumulated for each other as the events of the recent days unraveled. Someone manages to stop the merry-go-round and it crashes. Bruno is mortally wounded in the crash, but he still tries to implicate Guy even with his last words. Fortunately for Guy as Bruno dies, his hand opens and everyone around, including the police, can see the lighter falling out from his hand.
The end of the movie is almost comical – Ann and Guy are riding on a train and a priest, sitting in the next chair, is asking Guy if he’s that famous Guy Haines – the same question that Bruno asked at the very beginning of their first conversation. The question alarms Guy and Ann so that they hastily retreat from the compartment and that’s the end of the movie. It looks like Bruno’s managed to turn both of them into a couple of paranoiacs, at least where an innocent chit-chat with the strangers on a train is concerned.
With all my love for detective stories and thrillers I’ve never read any single one of Patricia Highsmith’s novels, can’t really figure out why. I knew that her novels were quite famous and I certainly watched quite a few movies based on them, but somehow never got around to them. Fortunately for me they did have bonus materials on the DVD, so there were some comments from her biographer. It appears the original novel had Guy actually committing the murder of Bruno’s father and there was a unique connection between the “bad boy†Bruno and the “good boy†Guy in the novel, that ultimately prompted Guy to perform the “criss-cross†murder. I think I like Hitchcock’s version better, at least for a film – there would be no sense for the audience to root for the “good guy†if the “good guy†goes over to the “ dark sideâ€!
I have to admit, though, that Robert Walker gives a fascinating performance as Bruno, totally outshining a handsome, but rather bland Farley Granger. As a matter of fact, when I watched “Stranger on a Train†this time I had a distinctive impression that in many ways Farley Granger looked like young Gregory Peck, who’s also made several Hitchcock’s movies, including “Spellboundâ€. I’ve wondered if Hitchcock’s selected Granger as some sort of replacement for Gregory Peck, who would have been probably a bit too old for this role at the time movie was made in 1951.
In any case, Robert Walker’s villain Bruno is absolutely riveting. He’s living in his own world, where everything revolves around him and there is no place for stupid emotions like pity or compassion. His killing of Miriam is chilling in its casualness, you hardly see him wincing. The only emotion he’s capable of feeling, it seems, is his hatred to his father. Funny enough, the comments on the DVD suggested that it was his only second role as a bad guy. Due to his boyish face and blue eyes the directors usually had him play the roles of the good characters. Sadly, Robert Walker died very soon after “Strangers on a Train†was released and such a promising acting career came to an abrupt end. His son is saying in his comment on the DVD that he died during the making of another movie, where his character also dies in the end, so in order to complete the movie they’ve inserted a close-up from “Strangers on a Train†with Hitchcock’s permission!
Marion Lorne is fabulously ditzy as Bruno’s mother Mrs. Anthony. I could not remember at first where I’ve seen her before, until it dawned on me that she played just as hilariously the batty Aunt Clara in the old TV series “Bewitched†– I think first season came out in 1964. Her Mrs. Anthony is a woman of good upbringing and manners, apparently deeply loving her son, but hearing her your begin to understand that roots of Bruno’s disturbing behavior are in his mother, addled brains as a genetic trait…
Can’t say much for Ruth Roman (Ann) – she was glamorously beautiful and dutifully loyal to her fiancée, but in my view she was very generic, you could see almost any other actress with attractive features in her place. Patricia Hitchcock, though, was quite interesting to watch. Granted, a great deal of that interest was due to who her father was, but I believe she was quite successful in providing the comic relief, which she says herself in an interview on the disc her role was partially intended for. In any case, due to her plumpness, rather ordinary features and her spontaneity she looked to me more real than the postcard girl Ruth Roman.
Definitely one of the finest Hitchcock’s films and an absolute must-see! Have to warn you, though, the whole movie is in black-and-white :icon_wink: !