Guy Haines, a famous tennis player, is recognized on a train by Bruno Anthony, whose conversation shows a detailed knowledge of Guy's private life. Over lunch in his private compartment, Bruno reveals that he wants his father dead, and suggests a "perfect crime" in which he would murder Guy's wife, Guy would murder Bruno's father, and neither would ever be suspected.
Bruno's manner is pushy and insinuating, with homoerotic undertones. Guy is offended by the references to his private life, but inexplicably doesn't break off the conversation -- which ends on an ambiguous note, with Bruno trying to get Guy to agree to the plan, and Guy trying to jolly him along and get rid of him. But Bruno does murder Guy's wife, and then demands that Guy keep his half of the bargain. Hitchcock said that correct casting saved him a reel in storytelling time, since audiences would sense qualities in the actors that didn't need to be spelled out.
Hitchcock allegedly wanted William Holden for the role of Guy "he's stronger," he told Francois Truffaut , but Holden would have been all wrong -- too sturdy, too put off by Bruno despite the way Holden allowed an aging actress to manipulate him in " Sunset Boulevard ". Granger is softer and more elusive, more convincing as he tries to slip out of Bruno's conversational web instead of flatly rejecting him.
Walker plays Bruno as flirtatious and seductive, sitting too close during their first meeting, and then reclining at full length across from Guy in the private compartment. The meeting on the train, which was probably planned by Bruno, plays more like a pickup than a chance encounter.
It is this sense of two flawed characters -- one evil, one weak, with an unstated sexual tension -- that makes the movie intriguing and halfway plausible, and helps explain how Bruno could come so close to carrying out his plan. Highsmith was a lesbian whose novels have uncanny psychological depth; Andrew Wilson's biography says she often fell in love with straight women, and her stories frequently use a buried subtext of unstated gay attraction -- as in "The Talented Mr.
Ripley," made into a movie in which her criminal hero Tom Ripley falls in love not so much with his quarry Dickie Greenleaf as with his identity and lifestyle. Although homosexuality still dared not speak its name very loudly in , Hitchcock was quite aware of Bruno's orientation, and indeed edited separate American and British version of the film -- cutting down the intensity of the "seductiveness" in the American print. It's worth noticing that Hitchcock also cast Granger in " Rope " , based on the Leopold-Loeb case; it was another story about a murder pact with a homosexual subtext.
It proceeds, as Hitchcock's films so often do, with a sense of private scores being settled just out of sight. His obsession with being wrongly accused no doubt refers to a traumatic episode in his childhood, when his father sent naughty little Alfred to the police station with a note asking the sergeant to lock him up until called for.
Patricia Hitchcock and Kasey Rogers look a little alike and wear very similar eyeglasses; Bruno is playfully demonstrating strangling techniques at a party when he sees Barbara, flashes back to the murder, and flips out. The kid sister gets the creepiest lines in "Strangers on a Train," especially during an early meeting involving Guy and the senator's whole family; she keeps blurting out what everyone is afraid to say.
We follow these parallel footsteps as they board the same train, hence the title. These brief shots contain the crux of the film: Model citizens often hide hard-core badness and the most unsavory renegades and reprobates can surprise you with a virtue or two especially if we count charm and fashion sense as virtues.
Read the full review here. Thursday, March 6 6 p. Friday, March 7 11 a. They enact a timeless drama surrounded by wild animals and scorching real-life African settings. With Teresa Wright and Jack Elam. Bruno begins to blackmail him in order to persuade Guy to murder his father and after many elaborate schemes Guy ends up at his fathers bedside holding a revolver only to fine Bruno laying under the sheets! You must be logged in to post a comment. Faces of Film Noir. Skip to content. Strangers on a Train Posted on September 25, 1 Comment.
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