Strangers on a Train is a Hitchcock film from the middle of his Hollywood era.\u00a0 It has one of Hitchcock\u2019s craziest villains and one of the weirdest finales.\u00a0 Which with Hitchcock is really saying something.\u00a0 The premise is that two strangers meet on a train and one of them proposes that each commit a murder that benefits the other.\u00a0 The idea is since they\u2019re perfect strangers they won\u2019t be suspected in a murder associated with the stranger but not himself.\u00a0 The one proposing the deal is a very strange man named Bruno Anthony (played by Robert Walker) who hates his father.\u00a0 The other man is a relatively famous amateur tennis player named Guy Haines (played by Farley Granger) who has an unstable and unfaithful wife Miriam, that he\u2019d like to divorce to marry Anne Morton, the daughter of a US Senator.\u00a0 But Miriam refuses to allow it because of the monetary benefits marriage provides.\u00a0 Guy doesn\u2019t even know how to react to this outrageous proposal so he treats it jokingly and gets off the train at his stop.\u00a0 But he accidentally leaves his very expensive and monogrammed cigarette lighter on the train with Bruno.\u00a0 Guy may treat this proposition as a joke but Bruno certainly doesn\u2019t.\u00a0 We get a scene with Bruno and his parents.\u00a0 Bruno and his mother are both lunatics but she seems relatively harmless.\u00a0 We hear his father state that he will have Bruno put away.\u00a0 This activates Bruno and he proceeds to murder Miriam at an amusement park.\u00a0 He stalks her and flirts with her and chokes the life out of her.\u00a0 Then he casually walks away.<\/p>\n
Bruno\u00a0 goes immediately to Guy and announces that he has carried out his side of the bargain and expects Guy to kill Bruno\u2019s father.\u00a0 When Guy threatens to call the police Bruno counters by saying both would be held responsible in the conspiracy.\u00a0 Most of the rest of the movie involves Bruno hounding Guy even within his circle of friends.\u00a0 And this is where you realize that Bruno is the most interesting character in the movie.\u00a0 His insanity does not prevent him from entertaining the minor characters at dinner parties and outside restaurants.\u00a0 He tells Anne\u2019s father about his theory of interplanetary clairvoyance and he entertains an old lady socialite with his theories on murder.\u00a0 Unfortunately he gets carried away and almost chokes her to death at a dinner party.\u00a0 All in all he\u2019s a very spirited fellow.\u00a0 But eventually all good things come to an end and when guy doesn\u2019t come through with his \u201ccriss-cross\u201d side of the murder bargain, Bruno decides to frame him for the original murder using the monogrammed lighter as evidence.<\/p>\n
Several additional scenes advance the story to the climax and we return to the scene of the crime, the amusement park.\u00a0 A very bizarre and cinematically interesting scene with a carousel brings it to a head and Bruno and Guy and the police finally sort things out.<\/p>\n
Even though Guy and his friends are the innocent victims, I never felt all that much sympathy for them.\u00a0 They don\u2019t really evoke much interest.\u00a0 They\u2019re all kind of flat.\u00a0 So, despite the fact that he\u2019s a thoroughgoing psychopath, the movie is really the Bruno Anthony show.\u00a0 And as creepy as he is he definitely keeps my interest.\u00a0 I like this Hitchcock pretty well but I could see how it might not appeal to all tastes.\u00a0 Caveat emptor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Strangers on a Train is a Hitchcock film from the middle of his Hollywood era.\u00a0 It has one of Hitchcock\u2019s craziest villains and one of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,238,237],"tags":[494,1255,43,191,38,1256,1215],"class_list":["post-3839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-classic-movie-reviews","category-reviews","tag-alfred-hitchcock","tag-farley-granger","tag-movie-review","tag-ocf-classic-movie-review","tag-review","tag-robert-walker","tag-strangers-on-a-train"],"yoast_head":"\n