[27] Anne reaches for the big phone, but actually answers a regular one: "I did that on one take", Hitchcock explained, "by moving in on Anne so that the big phone went out of the frame as she reached for it. Miriam and the two boyfriends in her odd ménage à trois bring "The Band Played On" to life by singing it on the merry-go-round, lustily and loudly... Grinning balefully on the horse behind them, Bruno then sings it himself, making it his motto. [17] Hitchcock preferred the writing credit of Whitfield Cook and Czenzi Ormonde, but Warner Bros. wanted the cachet of the Chandler name and insisted it stay on. "Holden would have been all wrong—too sturdy, too put off by Bruno", writes critic Roger Ebert. "[46], Guy and Bruno are in some ways doubles, but in many more ways, they are opposites. It is based on the book by Patricia Highsmith who is very famous for her “The Talented Mr. Ripley”. "[47] And at this point the blurring of good and evil accelerates: Guy fails to repudiate Bruno's suggestive statement about murdering Miriam ("What's a life or two, Guy? As in other famous thrillers from the filmmaker, the growing danger is interlaced with ironic twists (including, in this case, a perverse reversal on the fateful footsie that connects the two men). And the chocolate ice cream is probably what he thought about first. It is a typical film of Hitchcock. "[22], Burks considered his fourteen years with Hitchcock the best of his career: "You never have any trouble with him as long as you know your job and do it. Amateur tennis star Guy Haines wants to divorce his promiscuous wife Miriam so he can marry Anne Morton, the daughter of a US Senator. "[60], More recent criticism is generally, though not universally, more positive. Is 'Strangers on a Train' based on a book? With a release scheduled for early summer, the studio press agents swung into high gear early in 1951. The unusual angle was a more complex proposition than it seems. "[3], Warner Bros. wanted their own stars, already under contract, cast wherever possible. Bruno then proposes a double murder plot, where each would kill the other’s problem. "[42] "This was good stuff for press agents paid to stir up thrills and it has been repeated in other books to bolster the idea of Hitchcock's sadism,"[35] but "we were [only] up there two or three minutes at the outside.... My father wasn't ever sadistic. When Bruno arrives at the amusement park, a carnival worker recognizes him from the night of the murder; he informs the police, who mistakenly think he has recognized Guy. Believing that Guy is trying to escape, a police officer shoots at him, but the shot misses, and instead kills the carousel operator, causing the carousel to spin out of control. And just like its A New York City advertising executive goes on the run after being mistaken for a government agent by a group of foreign spies. "The climactic carousel explosion was a marvel of miniatures and background projection, acting close-ups and other inserts, all of it seamlessly matched and blended under film editor William H. Ziegler's eye. Title: Was this review helpful to you? [17] Three notable additions the trio had made were the runaway merry-go-round, the cigarette lighter, and the thick eyeglasses. It was Hitchcock, not Tiomkin, whose idea brought the four evocative numbers[21] — "The Band Played On", "Carolina in the Morning", "Oh, You Beautiful Doll", and "Baby Face" — to the soundtrack: In one of Hitchcock's most explicit operatic gestures, the characters at the fateful carnival sing the score, giving it full dimension as part of the drama. In the casting of Anne Morton, Jack L. Warner got what he wanted when he assigned Ruth Roman to the project, over Hitchcock's objections. Burks was an exceptionally apt choice for what would prove to be Hitchcock's most Germanic film in years: the compositions dense, the lighting almost surreal, the optical effects demanding. The first encounter between Bruno and Guy on the train is longer, and features a more obvious homoerotic flirtation by Bruno; In the scene where Guy sneaks out of his apartment to go to Bruno's house, a shot of him opening a drawer to get the map Bruno sketched is added; The very last scene in the US version, which involves a clergyman, was deleted. Bruno orders with gusto and with an interest in what he is going to eat — lamb chops, French fries, and chocolate ice cream. "[58], Conversely, Bosley Crowther of The New York Times criticized the film: "Mr. Hitchcock again is tossing a crazy murder story in the air and trying to con us into thinking that it will stand up without support. The film holds a 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and Roger Ebert has called Strangers on a Train a "first-rate thriller" that he considers one of Hitchcock's five best films. "[19] Hitchcock, who had drawn gay characters so sharply yet subtly in Rope in 1948, "drafted the left-leaning Cook... expressly because he was comfortable with sexually ambiguous characters. Guy is suspended between tennis and politics, between his tramp wife and his senator's daughter, and Bruno is seeking desperately to establish an identity through violent, outré actions and flamboyance (shoes, lobster-patterned tie, name proclaimed to the world on his tiepin). The idea is that because they aren’t linked to the murder victim then they’ll get away with the crime. "[21], Hitchcock took a toy carousel and photographed it blown up by a small charge of explosives. [11][14] Chandler took the job despite his opinion that it was "a silly little story. Bruno Antony thinks he has the perfect plot to rid himself of his hated father, and when he meets tennis player Guy Haines on a train he thinks he's found the partner he needs to pull it off. and the other, far distant, makes a choking gesture. [55] In the movie, "Guy became a decent guy who refuses to carry out his part of the crazed bargain..." writes Patrick McGilligan, "to head off the censors. Although Hitchcock admitted to undercranking the shot (artificially accelerating the action),[33] it was not a trick shot: the man actually had to crawl under the spinning ride, just inches from possible injury. Guy creeps into Bruno's father's room to warn him of his son's murderous intentions, but instead he finds the suspicious Bruno there waiting for him; the father is not at home. Strangers on a train Before I ventured to Bodnant Gardens . Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. But, for all that, his basic premise of fear fired by menace is so thin and so utterly unconvincing that the story just does not stand. [5], David Keyes, writing at cinemaphile.org in 2002, saw the film as a seminal entry in its genre: "Aside from its very evident approach as a crowd-pleasing popcorn flick, the movie is one of the original shells for identity-inspired mystery thrillers, in which natural human behavior is the driving force behind the true macabre rather than supernatural elements. He also showed intense interest in a seldom-considered detail of character delineation: Food. A tale of innocent American tourists in Morocco whose son's kidnapping sets off a twisting plot of international intrigue. Two men attempt to prove they committed the perfect crime by hosting a dinner party after strangling their former classmate to death. This piece of film he then enlarged and projected onto a vast screen, positioning actors around and in front of it so that the effect is one of a mob of bystanders into which plaster horses and passengers are hurled in deadly chaos. Right from the start, we see that Guy does, on some level, accede. "[4], The two characters, Guy and Bruno, can be viewed as doppelgängers. ‘Strangers on a Train’ is a murder-suspense, from director Alfred Hitchcock, based on the 1950 debut novel by Patricia Highsmith, with a screenplay co-written by Raymond Chandler. He got a treatment that pleased him on the second attempt, from writer Whitfield Cook, who wove a homoerotic subtext (only hinted at in the novel) into the story and softened Bruno from a coarse alcoholic into a dapper, charming mama's boy — a much more Hitchcockian villain. [42] First of all, she was not up there alone: flanking her were the actors playing Miriam's two boyfriends — "and I have a picture of us waving. His plan is relatively simple: Two strangers each agree to kill someone the other person wants gone. Chandler completed a first draft, then wrote a second, without hearing a single word back from Hitchcock; when finally he did get a communication from the director in late September, it was his dismissal from the project.[15]. There can be no compromise in his work, his food or his wines. [19], Carringer has argued that the film was crucially shaped by the Congressional inquiries, making Guy the stand-in for victims of the homophobic climate. The psychopath commits the first murder, then tries to force the tennis player to complete the bargain. As the train was readied for departure, our party entered the last carriage, which gave us an uninterrupted view of the three groups, and settled in for the journey. "[52] Bruno tells Guy what he has done and gives him the glasses. Hitchcock had a crew shoot background footage of the 1950 Davis Cup finals held August 25–27, 1950 at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, New York. Written by [66] A two-disc DVD edition was released in 2004 containing both versions of the film, this time with the "British" version titled "Preview Version" (102:49 long) and the "Hollywood" version titled "Final Release Version" (100:40 long). The two sets of feet in the title sequence match each other in motion and in cutting, but they immediately establish the contrast between the two men: the first shoes "showy, vulgar brown-and-white brogues; [the] second, plain, unadorned walking shoes. Guy goes to the Mortons' home, where Anne's father informs Guy that his wife has been murdered. An early preview edit of the film, sometimes labeled the "British" version although it was never released in Britain or anywhere else, includes some scenes either not in, or else different from, the film as released. Hermione Granger is the first person to meet Harry on the Hogwarts Express, not Ron Weasley. West Side Tennis Club - 1 Tennis Place, Forest Hills, Queens, New York City, New York, USA. For example, Guy could kill his father and he could get rid of Guy's wife Miriam, freeing him to marry Anne Morton, the beautiful daughter of a U.S. His plan is relatively simple: Two strangers each agree to kill someone the other person wants gone. Strangers on a Train is a 1951 American psychological thriller film noir produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and based on the 1950 novel Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith. [40] He was also photographed adding the letter L to Strangers on the official studio poster for the film,[25] thus changing the word to Stranglers. Hitchcock had written exacting specifications for an amusement park, which was constructed on the ranch of director Rowland Lee in Chatsworth, California. In Hitchcock's cameo he carries a double bass. "Strangers on a Train is filled with paranoia and anxiety, and through its twists and turns, we, like poor Guy Haines, are also drawn into psychopath Bruno's web." The merry-go-round scene is not in the book, but is taken from the climax of Edmund Crispin's 1946 novel The Moving Toyshop. In 1950, Alfred Hitchcock, after failing to secure Dashiell Hammett’s services, approached Chandler with the job of adapting Strangers on a Train, a debut novel by the then-unknown Patricia Highsmith. It features Leo G. Carroll, Pat Hitchcock (the director's daughter), and Laura Elliott (later known as Kasey Rogers). "[45] It undergirds the whole film because it finally serves to associate the world of light, order, and vitality with the world of darkness, chaos, lunacy and death. "[3] Blurring the lines puts both Guy and Bruno on a good-evil continuum, and the infinite shades of gray in between, became Hitchcock's canvas for telling the story and painting his characters. [67], Strangers on a Train was adapted for the radio program Lux Radio Theatre on two occasions: on December 3, 1951, with Ruth Roman, Frank Lovejoy, and Ray Milland, and on April 12, 1954, with Virginia Mayo, Dana Andrews, and Robert Cummings.[43]. Strangers on a Train marked something of a renaissance for Hitchcock, after several years of low enthusiasm for his late-1940s output,[24] and he threw himself into the micromanagement of some of its production. "[47] They also demonstrate Hitchcock's gift for deft visual storytelling: For most of the film, Bruno is the actor, Guy the reactor, and Hitchcock always shows Bruno's feet first, then Guy's. (1951). The woman with the Welsh Terrier stopped. He called the meetings "god-awful jabber sessions which seem to be an inevitable although painful part of the picture business. [37], Tiomkin's contrasting musical themes continued throughout the film, delineating two characters with substantial differences: "For 'Guy's Theme', Tiomkin created a hesitant, passive idea, made-to-order music for Farley Granger's performance. [8] Granger diplomatically described it as Hitchcock's "disinterest" (sic) in the actress, and said he saw Hitchcock treat Edith Evanson the same way on the set of Rope (1948). He always used the convention that the left side of the screen is for evil and/or weaker characters, while the right is for characters who are either good or temporarily dominant. The pair has what writer Peter Dellolio refers to as a "dark symbiosis. Fast, exciting, and woven with wicked style, this is one of Hitchcock's most efficient and ruthlessly delicious thrillers. In Raymond Chandler's second draft script — which Hitchcock ceremoniously dropped into the wastebasket while daintily holding his nose — the final shot is Guy Haines, institutionalized, bound in a straitjacket. In the novel, Guy Haines is not a tennis player, but rather a promising architect, and he does indeed go through with the murder of Bruno's father. [17], Even while the torturous writing stage was plodding its course, the director's excitement about the project was boundless. [56] All the major elements of the scene — the two men struggling, the accidentally shot attendant, the out-of-control merry-go-round, the crawling under the moving merry-go-round to disable it — are present in Crispin's account,[57] though he received no screen credit for it. Anne visits Bruno's home and unsuccessfully tries to explain to his befuddled mother that her son is a murderer. When Guy balks, Bruno makes it clear that he will plant evidence to implicate Guy in her murder if he doesn't get rid of his father. Together the three women, working under the boss's guidance and late into most nights,[15] finished enough of the script in time to send the company East. "[43], The film includes a number of puns and visual metaphors that demonstrate a running motif of crisscross, double-crossing, and crossing one's double. He is seen carrying a double bass as he climbs onto a train. Having given his characters overlapping qualities of good and evil, Hitchcock then rendered them on the screen according to a very strict template, with which he stuck to a remarkable degree. It was not enough for Hitchcock to construct merely a world of doubles — even contrasting doubles — in a strict polar-opposite structure; for Hitchcock, the good-and-evil, darkness-and-light poles "didn't have to be mutually exclusive. It is full of stylistic techniques to achieve a desirable effect of suspense. Follow/Fav Strangers On a Train. "Preferences in food characterize people..." Hitchcock said. For example, Guy could kill his father and he could get rid of Guy's wife Miriam, freeing him to marry Anne Morton, the beautiful daughter of a U.S. You still cannot sit on the outside tables there, but the cafe does the best brewed coffee and so I treated myself to a grande and Mary to a single sausage . The only sadistic part was I never got the hundred dollars."[42]. A priest, who comes under suspicion for murder, cannot clear his name without breaking the seal of the confessional. When Guy arrives home, Bruno informs him Miriam is dead and insists that he must now honor their deal, by killing Bruno's father. "The Band Played On" makes its final reprise during Guy's and Bruno's fight on the merry-go-round, even itself shifting to a faster tempo and higher pitch when the policeman's bullet hits the ride operator and sends the carousel into its frenzied hyper-drive. [10] Highsmith was quite annoyed when she later discovered who bought the rights for such a small amount. By month's end, they were back in California. Guy, on the other hand, shows little interest in eating the lunch, apparently having given it no advance thought, in contrast to Bruno, and he merely orders what seems his routine choice, a hamburger and coffee. garykmcd. Guy meets with Miriam, who is pregnant by someone else, at her workplace in Metcalf, their hometown. Right at the beginning of his best decade, it kicks off one of the best runs any director has had. Her suspicions aroused, Anne confronts Guy, who tells her the truth about Bruno's crazy scheme. Yet both men, like so many of Hitchcock's protagonists, are insecure and uncertain of their identity. Well, in Strangers on a Train, Farley Granger agrees to kill Robert Walker’s father, although, in fact, he really intends to warn the old man against his son. In a final train scene, another stranger attempts to strike up conversation with Guy in the same way as had Bruno. On a train, smooth-talking psychopath Bruno Antony recognizes Haines and reveals his idea for a murder scheme: two perfect strangers meet and "swap murders" — Bruno suggests he kill Miriam and Guy kill Bruno's hated father. He wanted the last line of the film to be Guy describing Bruno as "a very clever fellow". As with Shadow of a Doubt, Strangers on a Train is one of many Hitchcock films to explore the doppelgänger theme. [ 10 ] Highsmith was quite annoyed when she later discovered who the. In the autumn of 1950 and released by Warner Bros. wanted their own,... 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