Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.

Strangers on a Train (1951)

This is an interesting movie from Alfred Hitchcock, who started his directorial career in England and worked quite a few years for British International Pictures before being discovered by David O Selznick and hired as a director and moved to Hollywood.  Hitchcock then made some of his most memorable work in America including Psycho, The Birds, Vertigo, and this movie which is among his very best.

Strangers on a Train was made in the middle of the film noir period (1940 - 60) and is probably as close as Hitchcock got to making a "genuine" film noir.  The expressionist black and white photography and innovative camera angles certainly are very representative of classic film noir and the story is one where people are drawn to crime in order to get an easy way out of their problems - so they think.

The characters are two gentlemen, one of whom is a spoiled rich kid who is also a psychopath (Robert Walker) while the other is a mild mannered pro tennis player (Farley Granger) who is in a bad marriage and wants to marry a senator's daughter and go into politics.  Just like people you know - right?  Well maybe you, but not like my experience.  The rest of the cast provides support to these two and Robert Walker of the two does the heavy lifting in this career performance.

Walker corners Granger and chats him up with a lot of vanity stuff indicating he knows who he is from the newspapers, where he is playing next, his marriage problems, and his mistress (Ruth Roman); Granger gets flustered but Walker puts him off by his quick changes in mood and apologies, etc., and then offers to trade murders. He'll kill Granger's troublesome wife if he reciprocates by killing Walker's dad and thereby turn the family riches over to the spoiled young man. It will work perfectly because they'll never match the motive to the killer and the other guy will have an airtight alibi. Well, Granger humors him because he is frankly a little scared but then Walker goes ahead and kills the other guy's wife and then expects him to reciprocate.  The rest of the film shows how the police are trying to solve the crime and how Walker stalks Granger trying to goad him into carrying out the killing.  The suspense is very strong and the ending is a little crazy but it sure gets your blood pressure up.

Hitchcock was always trying to trick his audience; he knew they were peepers, but would never admit it, but he still incorporated lots of suspense into the happenings of this little story and nearly everyone who has seen it will tell you they could not wait to see what happened next.  He even made Rear Window to poke fun at the peeping tom in all of us. So Hitchcock if he was anything was keenly attuned to the human psyche and drives we all have.

When you watch Strangers on a Train, you see the two men meet on a train from Washington to NYC.  Walker, a nattily dressed guy in double breasted suit and saddle shoes is contrasted with Granger in much more plain business attire.  They meet by chance (actually probably because Walker was stalking him as we will learn later). Walker starts the conversation by recognizing him by name as the famous tennis player. You will note that Walker is very expressive in his mannerisms, voice inflection, personal space, and mincing walk and this was another trick of Hitchcock's; he cast a straight man to play a gay character and faced him with a closeted homosexual who had to play straight.  Of course, the gay mannerisms are muted enough to pass the censors, but only just. Hitchcock did the same thing with Anthony Perkins in a role and got a memorable performance out of the tormented actor.  Orson Welles had also put Perkins in a bind so they were both sadistic directors that knew how to get a good performance. 

The Warner Bros DVD is double sided and contains both the USA version and the British version which is 2 minutes longer.  You choose the version by flipping the disk. There is really no big difference between the two as they are both very edgy. There are some production notes and subtitles but that is about the extent of the extra content.

I have to give Alfred Hitchcock his due on this one as he really did a great job with the suspense and there were no big stars or fake photography like in most of his other stuff with the cool blonds.  Robert Walker certainly was bound for big stardom but died just shortly after making this movie but it was a career performance nonetheless. Five stars.



Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV