Strangers on a Train

Alfred Hitchcock's STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (1951)

75th Anniversary Screening

Q&A with Stephen Rebello, author of Criss-Cross: The Making of Hitchcock's Dazzling, Subversive Masterpiece Strangers on a Train and Hitchcockian Thrillers
Wednesday, June 24, at 7 PM

Laemmle Royal Theatre
Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a screening of the movie that launched Hitchcock's greatest decade of moviemaking, the 1951 suspense classic Strangers on a Train. Hitchcock had started his career in England with such top thrillers as The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes. Hollywood quickly came calling, and when Hitchcock moved to America, he won his only Best Picture Oscar for Rebecca in 1940. He continued with other classic films — Foreign Correspondent, Shadow of a Doubt, Spellbound, and Notorious.

But in the late 1940s the Master of Suspense hit a dry spell, when his films The Paradine Case, Rope, Under Capricorn, and Stage Fright failed to connect with audiences. Searching for inspiration, he landed on Patricia Highsmith's first acclaimed novel, Strangers on a Train, a story drenched in homoeroticism and perverse psychology. Highsmith, who was herself gay (she later wrote The Talented Mr. Ripley and a lesbian-themed novel, Carol, that was turned into an acclaimed 2015 film starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara), provided the inspiration that Hitchcock needed.

Strangers tells the story of a chance meeting between a handsome tennis star, Guy Haines, and a charming but deranged aristocrat, Bruno Anthony. Bruno has read about Guy's problems with his estranged wife and suggests half-jokingly that if they swap murders (Bruno wants to get rid of his disapproving father), neither would have a discernible motive for the murders they commit. Guy does not take the suggestion seriously, but when Bruno kills Guy's wife, he expects Guy to return the favor.

The screenplay is credited to acclaimed mystery writer Raymond Chandler and female writer Czenzi Ormonde, but Chandler actually contributed very little to the movie; he and Hitchcock did not get along. Nevertheless, the script is tightly structured and consistently gripping. Like many Hitchcock movies, Strangers is distinguished by several memorable set-pieces, including the murder at an amusement park, a tense tennis match, and the climax on board a carousel spinning wildly out of control. But it also has the psychological depth of the Master's best movies. Defying the Production Code, which had a strict prohibition against depictions of homosexuality, Hitchcock and his screenwriters clearly delineate the attraction that Bruno feels toward the handsome tennis champ. Robert Walker, the star of several lighter pictures, relishes his stab at villainy, and he is well matched with Granger, who had starred in Hitchcock's Rope and who was gay in real life.

Ruth Roman, Laura Elliott, Norma Varden, Leo G. Carroll, and Hitchcock's daughter Patricia round out the cast. Robert Burks, who earned an Oscar nomination for his cinematography, went on to work with Hitchcock again on Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, Vertigo, and North by Northwest, among others. Oscar-winning composer Dimitri Tiomkin, who had worked with Hitchcock on Shadow of a Doubt, wrote the effective score.
Stephen Rebello is the author of the best-selling Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho (which was turned into a film starring Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren) and Dolls! Dolls! Dolls!: Deep Inside Valley of the Dolls, the Most Beloved Bad Book and Movie of All Time. He has written for Movieline, GQ, Playboy, and other publications.