Movie Minx

Starring: Robert Walker, Farley Granger, Ruth Roman, Patricia Hitchcock (Hitch’s daughter)
Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Plot An upwardly-mobile young man meets a guy on a train, who suggests they “swap” murders - one wife, one father. Yuppie thinks the man is joking. He isn’t. Things get interesting.

But is it any good?

I love Hitchcock’s other big films like Psycho, Vertigo and Rear Window, but I hadn’t seen this one before. Watching this film was like opening a very good, completely unexpected present.

Apparently Hitch’s big return to form after a long series of so-so efforts, Strangers on a Train has the Master of Suspense’s fingerprints all over it. It’s a chilling, edge-of-your couch adventure as you watch a man’s world being turned upside down by a newcomer.

Guy Haines (Granger, like a ’50s Keanu Reeves - wooden but cute) is a tennis star and wannabe politician, whose life is mapped out clearly before him. The one spanner in the works is his bitchy wife Miriam, who is pregnant with another man’s baby yet won’t divorce him so he can marry his real love, movie star Ann (Roman). New acquaintance Bruno Anthony (Walker, in a convincing performance) knows Haines’ story from the Society pages and offers to kill Miriam if Haines kills his daddy.

The perfect crime, right? Well, no. Anthony murders Miriam all right, after a goosebump-inducing stalk around a fairground, and a horrified Haines keeps mum because he feels he knows too much. Anthony then follows Haines through the rest of the film, first telling Haines to kill his father and then attempting to frame him for Miriam’s death.

We, as the audience, become a murder accomplice too, simply by witnessing the conversation on the train at the beginning, then seeing Miriam’s murder through her glasses as they lie cracked on the ground. We feel a bit sorry for Haines, whose clear path through life is disrupted by this slovenly, murderous creep, yet at the same time we admire Anthony’s wits and sense of adventure. When he loses a cigarette lighter crucial to framing Haines for the murder, we hold our breath as he painstakingly tries to retrieve it.

Strangers on a Train is full of black humor. As we hear Miriam scream in the Tunnel of Love, we assume she’s being killed. But no, she’s just messing around with her friends. While watching a tennis game, the audience’s heads swivel left and right to follow the ball - all except Anthony, who has his gaze fixed firmly on Haines. It’s one of the film’s more memorable scenes, along with the “strangulation” at a party where Ann’s bubbly sister Barbara (played by Pat Hitchcock) is watching Anthony and has an uncanny sense of deja vu.

The film’s climax has often been rubbished by fans and critics (a Salon article about Hitchcock’s lame endings is here), but I enjoyed the madness of it all. As long as you can hold any scepticism at bay (a merry-go-round with “spin cycle” option?) you’ll enjoy it for what it is: an exhilarating ride at the end of a dark, thrilling and highly entertaining film.

My rating: 9/10

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