Strangers on a Train (1951)

Director:

Alfred Hitchcock

Writers:

Raymond Chandler (screenplay) and
Czenzi Ormonde (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

3 July 1951 (USA)

Genre:

Crime | Film-Noir | Mystery | Romance | Sport | Thriller

Tagline:

A girl in love with young America's idol--and a good-looking stranger in search of sensation--that's how it all began..! Warner Bros. bring a pounding new tempo to motion picture entertainment!

Plot:

A psychotic socialite confronts a pro tennis star with a theory on how two complete strangers can get away with murder...a theory that he plans to implement.

Plot Keywords:

Tennis | Stranger | Senator | Murder | Amusement Park

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar. Another 1 nomination

Cast

Farley Granger	...	Guy Haines
Ruth Roman	...	Anne Morton
Robert Walker	...	Bruno Anthony
Leo G. Carroll	...	Sen. Morton
Patricia Hitchcock	...	Barbara Morton
Kasey Rogers	...	Miriam Joyce Haines (as Laura Elliott)
Marion Lorne	...	Mrs. Anthony
Jonathan Hale	...	Mr. Anthony
Howard St. John	...	Police Capt. Turley
John Brown	...	Prof. Collins
Norma Varden	...	Mrs. Cunningham
Robert Gist	...	Leslie Hennessy

Also Known As:

Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train (USA) (complete title)

MPAA:

Rated PG for some violence and tension.

Runtime:

101 min | Portugal:96 min (cut version) | 103 min (preview version)

Country:

USA

Language:

English | French

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Certification:

Canada:PG (Ontario) | Spain:13 | Portugal:M/12 | Australia:M (DVD rating) | Australia:PG (TV rating) | Sweden:15 | Germany:12 (DVD) | West Germany:16 (nf) | South Korea:12 (DVD rating) (2004) | South Africa:PG | Brazil:16 | USA:TV-PG | Finland:K-16 | France:U (re-release) | UK:PG | USA:Approved (certificate #14946) | USA:PG (new rating) (1996) | Argentina:13 | Norway:16

Filming Locations:

Danbury Railroad Station - 120 White Street, Danbury, Connecticut, USA

Company:

Warner Bros. Pictures

Trivia:

Alfred Hitchcock bought the rights to the original novel anonymously to keep the price down, and got them for just $7,500.

Goofs:

Continuity: Tennis match played before the end of the movie is clearly put together from 2 different games - you can see those are different tennis courts and also stadiums.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Bruno Anthony: I beg your pardon, but aren't you Guy Haines?

Movie Connections:

Spoofed in Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)

Soundtrack:

Ain't She Sweet

An interesting but largely forgotten Hitchcock entry

Robert Walker is a rich, soft spoken (and possibly homosexual) psychopath who meets his apparent idol, a tennis player played by Farley Granger (who looks like Bernardo from "West Side Story"), and strikes up a conversation with him on a train. After managing lunch with him, Walker strikes up a conversation about "criss cross" murders: two men kill people who are enemies of the other man. Granger is dating a politician's daughter with hope of becoming a politician himself and is divorcing his prettier but unfaithful wife who got herself pregnant by another man. Walker proposes the possibility of killing the unfaithful wife, which Granger shrugs off as "crazy talk".

Later, Granger tries to get his wife to sign some papers, but she reveals her evil plan to make it look like HE was cheating on HER and will try to pass off her illegitimate child as Granger's; odds are the other man left her. Granger is NOT happy. Later, the wife goes running around having a good time at a carnival with two younger men and she is stalked by Walker. After a lot of build up, black humor and creepy imagery, Walker sneaks up on the wife and strangles her to death.

Walker then goes to Granger and tells him he killed his wife. Granger wasn't exactly fond of his wife, but he's appalled to learn that she's been murdered and that Walker ow expects Granger to murder his father (who suspects Walker of his devious doings, whereas his unsuspecting mother does not) in return for the favor. Thus begins a battle of wills wherein Walker torments Granger, his girlfriend and the others in his life, while concealing that he has Granger's cigarette lighter, which could incriminate Granger in his wife's murder if he places it back at the murder scene.

Like many of Hitchcock's films, this features the usual assortment of distorted relationships between men and their mothers, badly portrayed authority figures, creepy imagery, black humor, flawed but essentially innocent men, and lots of observations about the darker side of human nature. An interesting film, but there are some lulls. Not that Hitchcock was perfect, but this one has more lulls than some of his other films, which, when combined with the lack of star power/big name actors that this film had starring in it, may attribute to why it is largely forgotten in light of films like "Rear Window", "To Catch A Thief", "North By Northwest", "Notorious", "The Man Who Knew Too Much", "Vertigo", "Psycho" and what not.

Still, Walker is memorable as the film's killer, with his fey voice and intense gaze. At the time, he actually had the potential for a big career (he turned in some other less threatening performances in other films), but alas, fate was not on his side. One memorable image includes the murder being reflected in the wife's glasses. The climax on the merry go round is overkill though.

One of my favorite quotes from the film comes between the girlfriend's sister and their father. Upon hearing of the wife's murder, the sister (played by Hitchcock's real life daughter) calls the wife "a tramp" (which may have been true) and the father reprimands her with "She was a human being. Even the lowest of us are entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The daughter retorts "She pursued it in five different directions."