Strangers on a Train: DVD Review
September 11, 2004
In the Hitchcock universe, one of the major rules is the rule of two’s, or, the rule of duality. This rule, stated plainly, says that for every cause there is a direct effect, or, for every one, be it a person, object, or motive, there must be either its opposite, or its companion. You can scan his career, the early British silents, the late British period, the early American period, the fruitful middle American period, and the final days of the late ‘60’s and ‘70’s, and find plenty of examples of this most important theory. In “Shadow of a Doubt”, the doting niece, Teresa Wright, slowly begins to realize that her beloved uncle, Joseph Cotton, is an infamous wanted murderer, but because she thinks they are so much alike -both of their names are Charlie- she doesn’t want to confront the growing evidence, almost until it’s too late. In “Rear Window”, the study of two apartments, one the setting of a potential murder, the other a harbinger of voyeurism, sets the grounds for a multitude of cause-and-effect, from the repercussions of Peeping-Tomism, to the offset of paranoid curiosity in the wheelchair bound James Stewart photog. In “Psycho” (is there a better case of split personality in Hitch’s canon?) Norman Bates disguises himself as his knife-wielding mother to suppress (act out?) his sexual feelings for Janet Leigh’s unfortunate night guest. On and on one could go, there is enough material in “Vertigo” alone to fill a book, but for the sake of brevity, I’ll limit it down to one film, what I think is arguably the directors supreme study in two’s, primarily evil on good, and vice versa, “Strangers on a Train”, a film so giddy, funny, and suspenseful in its black humorous study of murder, guilty, and manipulation between an innocent tennis player and a psychotic strangler, that you almost forget that it’s a serious exploration of two, count ‘em two, perfectly different individuals, and just simply sit back to enjoy the cinematic ride.
The case to be made for “Strangers on a Train” illuminating Hitchcock’s propensity to mirror characters and situations, lies in the character of the psychopath Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker), and his obsessions, and/or taunting of the clean-cut tennis star, and would be politician, Guy Haines (Farley Granger). The two characters are seeming opposites –Bruno, a spoiled Mama’s Boy who hates his father with an insane passion, and Guy, a straight-laced upper-middle class athlete who just wants a divorce from his trampy wife so he can marry the Senator’s daughter- but when they meet on a train, strangers who innocuously touch shoe tips (in the very famous opening sequence), and one, the crazy man, suggests to the other, the not so crazy man, that they swap murders (“your wife for my father”), they are suddenly forged into a psychotic partnership, one that seems breakable, but in the Hitchcock universe, is utterly suffocating. The plot is set up after the Walker character stalks and kills the Granger characters wife (a prolonged sequence culminating in the famous strangulation shot reflected in the lens of the victims thick glasses), and then insists that his part of the pact be fulfilled, the murder of his domineering father, or else the authorities, already suspicious of Guy’s motives, will be very interested to find Guy’s signature lighter buried at the scene of the crime.
The structure to the film plays out like a novelette, with a series of big set pieces connected with well-placed exposition and simple Hitchcockian montage. I like to think that the film has four major chapters, following a prologue (the initial meeting on the train), and ending with a brief, happy epilogue, each one psychologically rich and cinematically suspenseful. The first chapter is the long murder sequence at an amusement park, and Guy’s dismissal of Bruno as a dangerous lunatic, the second chapter is Bruno’s introduction into Guy’s Washington life, including a swanky, socialite dinner party, the third is the great crosscutting between Guy’s big tennis match and Bruno’s slow progression to planting the lighter as evidence, and the fourth, the climax, brings us back to the amusement park, and a wild, brilliantly exciting showdown atop a runaway merry-go-round. Through these six sections, Hitchcock takes the Patricia Highsmith novel of intimidation, homosexual subversion, and guild ridden subconscious, and transforms it into a quintessential psychological cat-and-mouse road map, with good and evil, guilty and innocent, right and wrong dangerously commingling (“Criss-Cross” as Bruno famously puts it) like two attracted opposites.
Hitchcock has said numerous times that he believes the essence of cinema, like Pudovkin and Eisenstein as well, to be in the art of montage. His early American days (including a moderately successful attempt at continuous long takes in “Rope”), swayed from this theory with more lavish experimentation, but his basic editing code (shot-reaction-shot) is ever present in “Strangers on a Train”. Take for instance the famous Washington party, where Bruno crashes and shows a wealthy dowager how to properly strangle a victim. As he practices on her, his subconscious, while starring at Barbara Morton (Pat Hitchcock), whose thick glasses makes her look awfully like the strangled wife at the carnival, reverts back to the killing, and his grip, a constant symbol of strength and macho ego, closes on the old lady, before he finally faints. The editing is simple (made all the more obvious by Dimitri Tiomkin’s pulsating score), Bruno looks, Barbara freezes, and back to Bruno, repeated two or three times and we’ve got it; the glasses, the similarity of the glasses (themselves often mirrors), Hitchcock is telling his story through subtle cutting. Later, when Guy’s fiancé Anne Morton (Ruth Roman), fingers Bruno as the killer, we get a similar three cut setup, one of Anne looking, one of Barbara’s glasses (now reflecting the lighter), and back to Ann’s reaction as she figures it all out. “Pure cinema is complementary pieces of film put together,” he said in an interview with Peter Bogdanovich, “like notes of music make a melody.” Later generations would rebel against this mostly classical analysis of filmmaking, but for what it’s worth, Hitchcock uses montage like a conductor uses a baton, to create great art with the most basic of all tools, in this case, the editing table.
“Strangers on a Train” was something of a comeback for Hitchcock, who had four minor flops after the artistic heights of 1946’s “Notorious”. Bought for 2,000 dollars from the first-time novelist Highsmith, ‘Strangers’ was, and wasn’t, an easy experience for the great director, who battled a surly Raymond Chandler during the early formation of the script, and, as usual, had to cope with casting choices (namely, Farley Granger) he didn’t want. Nonetheless, the three-month shoot was practically flawless (the climax, where an old man crawls under the out of control merry-go-round, was real, and was said to make Hitchcock’s palms moist whenever he thought about the potential for decapitation), and when the film premiered, audiences and critics alike knew he had made something special, even if Oscar voters later that year didn’t, only nominating Robert Burks’ masterful cinematography, which lost anyway. The films legacy lies not only in its expressive characters, baroque cinematography, and constant toying with the basic fabric of a “couple” (Guy and Bruno), but in its ability to blend strange humor (Bruno to Senator Morton: “I’d like to talk to you sometime, sir, about harnessing the Life Force”), with seemingly impossible social scenarios (the crosscutting between the tennis match and Bruno’s fishing the lighter out of a storm drain is somehow out of balance, geographically and time-wise), all the while maintaining a semblance of excitement and sanity. It is, like much of Hitchcock’s work of this era, a masterpiece of two-sided cinema; a slightly plausible plot balanced with a strong psychological undertow, sweeping its characters down into a pool of social confusion, the likes of which that, as Godard put it, even God couldn’t grant an escape from.
by Adam Suraf
“Strangers on a Train” has been released with a 2-disk special edition treatment by Warner Brothers as the jewel in their impressive 9-movie “Alfred Hitchcock Signature Collection” boxed set.