Tagline: You’ll be in the grip of love’s strangest trip.
Strangers on a Train movie storyline. Another of Hitchcock’s great suspense thrillers – co-scripted by Raymond Chandler and based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith. During a ‘chance’ meeting on a train enroute from Washington DC (a cleverly-choreographed sequence in which the two sets of the strangers’ shoes are highlighted), rich psychopathic playboy Bruno Anthony (Walker) explains his macabre, morbid theory of the perfect murder – an exchange or swap of murders and victims – to professional champion tennis player Guy Haines (Granger).
Bruno diabolically proposes murdering Guy’s clinging, stifling wife Miriam (Elliot) – since Guy wants to marry US Senator’s daughter Anne Morton (Roman) – in exchange for Guy murdering Bruno’s spiteful father (Hale) and his acquisition of an inheritance, without any trace of clues. Haines dismisses the preposterous idea until Anthony kills his wife Miriam by strangulation at an amusement park and he is expected to fulfill his part of the bargain – with threat of blackmail. With a few great set pieces, including the tennis match, the cross-cutting sewer grating scene, the cocktail party scene of how to commit a murder, and the out-of-control merry-go-round in the finale in which Guy was finally cleared of the murder.
Strangers on a Train is a 1951 American psychological thriller film noir produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and based on the 1950 novel of the same name by Patricia Highsmith. It was shot in the autumn of 1950 and released by Warner Bros. on June 30 the next year. The film stars Farley Granger, Ruth Roman and Robert Walker, and features Leo G. Carroll, the director’s daughter Pat Hitchcock and Laura Elliott. The film is number 32 on AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Thrills.
The film includes a number of puns and visual metaphors that demonstrate a running motif of crisscross, double-crossing, and crossing one’s double. Talking about the structure of the film, Hitchcock said to Truffaut, “Isn’t it a fascinating design? One could study it forever.” The two characters, Guy and Bruno, can be viewed as doppelgängers. As with Shadow of a Doubt, Strangers on a Train is one of many Hitchcock films to explore the doppelgänger theme. The pair has what writer Peter Dellolio refers to as a “dark symbiosis.” Bruno embodies Guy’s dark desire to kill Miriam, a “real-life incarnation of Guy’s wish-fulfillment fantasy”.
Strangers on a Train (1951)
Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Farley Granger, Robert Walker, Ruth Roman, Patricia Hitchcock, Leo G. Carroll, Kasey Rogers, Marion Lorne, Jonathan Hale, Howard St. John, Norma Varden, John Brown, Robert Gist
Screenplay by: Raymond Chandler, Czenzi Ormonde
Cinematography by: Robert Burks
Film Editing by: William H. Ziegler
Set Decoration by: George James Hopkins
Art Direction by: Ted Haworth
Music by: Dimitri Tiomkin
MPAA Rating: PG for some violence and tension.
Distributed by: Warner Bros. Pictures
Release Date: June 30, 1951
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