The 1950s proved to be director Alfred Hitchcock’s finest decade of work, a period when he hit the peak of his talents and benefited from outstanding collaborations with composer Bernard Herrmann, actors James Stewart, Grace Kelly, and Cary Grant, and stellar screenwriters such as John Michael Hayes, Ernest Lehman, and Samuel Taylor. But long before all-time masterworks from this decade like Rear Window, Vertigo, and North by Northwest ever hit the screen, he served notice that this was his time to shine with the release of Strangers on a Train, which debuted 75 years ago on June 30, 1951.
To listen to a recording of our CineVerse group discussion of Strangers on a Train, conducted earlier this month, click here. To hear the latest Cineversary podcast episode, which celebrates the film’s 75th anniversary, click here.
This was a perfectly timed comeback vehicle for Hitch, who had directed a string of lesser pictures and commercial disappointments following Notorious in 1946, including The Paradine Case (1947), Under Capricorn (1949), and Stage Fright (1950). Strangers on a Train marks the beginning of his 1950s dominance as arguably the best filmmaker of that 10-year run.
The movie boasts an impressive showcase of one visually astounding set piece after another – even for Hitchcock, a director already well-known for iconic sequences and remarkable imagery. This film flaunts at least five or six showstopper scenes or shots that continue to be studied by film scholars and relished by cinephiles: the strangulation of Miriam by Bruno reflected in her glasses; Bruno seen stalking from afar, standing eerily motionless on the steps of the U.S. Capital building; the kinetic tennis match and the zoom-in that reveals a still-faced Bruno staring directly at the camera amidst a sea of spectator heads swiveling left and right; the gripping cigarette lighter retrieval sequence where we observe Bruno’s hand reaching through a storm drain grate to reclaim that pivotal pocket-sized piece of evidence; and the chaotic carousel spinning violently out of control as Bruno attempts to murder Guy.
There’s also the unforgettable opening wherein we see two pairs of shoes moving toward each other and eventually making contact; Bruno’s choking simulation of a party guest at Senator Morton’s home; the expressively shadow-steeped Tunnel of Love sequence; and the uncomfortable segment where Guy sneaks into Bruno’s father’s home to warn him of his son’s plan.
“Plenty of Hitchcock movies move from set piece to set piece in whatever expedient way can connect them, but in Strangers on a Train the set pieces are organically structured and feed off one another,”
wrote critic Glenn Erickson. “This is Hitchcock's first ‘power suspense story,’ where the dynamism is driven not by lavish action scenes or intense romantic melodrama, but by Hitchcock's nuts 'n' bolts cinematic engineering. Airplanes don't crash, and there are no giant noses of Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck colliding. Instead, our attention is riveted by things as simple as two pairs of walking feet compared in a parallel cutting structure, capped by intersecting rails that visually represent the inevitability of the collision between Guy and Bruno.”
This picture is also dazzling in its intricate narrative construction and powerful as a well-tuned engine that effectively delivers robust thematic ideas. And while the screenplay may not be airtight as far as murderous machinations and plausibility are concerned (by hiding in his father’s bed, doesn’t Bruno risk being killed by Guy? How do Guy and Anne know exactly when Bruno is going to return to the fairgrounds to plant the lighter, and what’s the guarantee that the police will even find that piece of evidence?), it is narratively efficient, thanks to Hitchcock’s masterful “show-don’t tell” visuals. The story and the setup are off and running quickly, and the movie benefits from having no superfluous scenes.
“Strangers on a Train is the first Hitchcock film that fully, equally merges text and subtext in a fashion that will largely characterize the remainder of the filmmaker’s career,”
according to Slant Magazine reviewer Chuck Bowen.
The film showcases Oscar-nominated cinematography, compliments of Robert Burks, who went on to collaborate with the director over the next 13 years. Additionally, the memorable score by Dimitri Tiomkin playfully explores Hitchcock’s theme of doubles, continually using contrasting musical motifs and orchestrated cues that riff on the differences and tension between Bruno and Guy.
The segment where Bruno stalks Miriam and strangles her ranks high in the Hitchcock canon of iconic visual sequences. The specific shot where we see the murder reflected in Miriam’s glasses required a specially constructed distorting or concave reflector/lens setup to film the reflected strangulation image; separate elements were then combined through optical double-printing to achieve the final composite shot. It’s an image that lingers disturbingly long in the imagination, thanks to its aesthetically innovative execution.
Likewise, the climactic scene depicting the chaos of the out-of-control carousel inventively employed a combination of rear projection, miniatures, facial close-ups, and insert shots, all ingeniously edited together. Hitchcock detonated a small explosive charge inside a toy carousel model and filmed the blast. He then blew up and projected this footage onto a massive background screen, carefully staging live actors in the foreground to seamlessly blend them into the deadly shower of flying plaster horses and debris. (Incredibly, the shots of the older man crawling beneath the whirling carousel are not photographic fakery – the man was an actual carousel operator who volunteered for this role and risked his life.)
Ponder how this director shrewdly uses geography and space in the frame to convey his themes and also build suspense. After scrutinizing the tense scene where Guy returns to his D.C. apartment to find Bruno lurking across the street with Miriam's glasses, British film critic Robin Wood noted that Hitchcock places the symbolic forces of good and order on the right side of the screen – as symbolized by the towering, floodlit dome of the U.S. Capitol – and the forces of evil on the left. When a police car suddenly approaches, Guy's panic drives him to the left side of the screen, physically retreating into the darkness with Bruno. Guy quickly steps behind the bars of an iron fence and laments that he’s being forced to act like a criminal, suggesting that his submissive positioning has trapped Guy within Bruno's malevolent, chaotic world.
The director gave careful thought to virtually every aspect of his lead character’s personalities. For proof, consider what he purposely chooses Bruno and Guy to eat and how they consume it. Hitchcock said, "Preferences in food characterize people…Bruno orders with gusto and with an interest in what he is going to eat – lamb chops, French fries, and chocolate ice cream...And the chocolate ice cream is probably what he thought about first. Bruno is rather a child. He is also something of a hedonist. Guy, on the other hand, shows little interest in eating the lunch, apparently having given it no advance thought, in contrast to Bruno, and he merely orders what seems his routine choice, a hamburger and coffee."
The film’s sexual dynamics are particularly fascinating. Bruno, as played by Walker, is eccentric in mannerisms, walk, and flirtatious behavior, clearly insinuating a queer-coded character. Looking closer, you can perceive that Bruno is angered by the heterosexuals around him, including his father; Miriam, with her repellant flirtatious behavior with men (recall her phallic licking of the ice cream cone); and Guy, whose success Bruno envies.
We know that Guy is intrigued by Bruno, and deep down we know he has to be contemplating Bruno’s murder proposition. A 21st-century queer reading of the film suggests that Guy is perhaps sexually confused, suppressing a latent desire that Bruno coaxes to the surface.
Per Roger Ebert: “Granger is softer and more elusive, more convincing as he tries to slip out of Bruno’s conversational web instead of flatly rejecting him. Walker plays Bruno as flirtatious and seductive, sitting too close during their first meeting, and then reclining at full length across from Guy in the private compartment. The meeting on the train, which was probably planned by Bruno, plays more like a pickup than a chance encounter. It is this sense of two flawed characters – one evil, one weak, with an unstated sexual tension – that makes the movie intriguing and halfway plausible, and helps explain how Bruno could come so close to carrying out his plan.”
However, Bruno unfortunately continues a tired tradition during Hollywood’s golden age where queer characters are depicted as deviant, aberrant, perverse, askew, and criminally capable – as evidenced by famous non-heterosexual personalities in classic films like Mrs. Danvers in “Rebecca,” Joel Cairo in “The Maltese Falcon,” Waldo in “Laura,” and the college roommates in “Rope.”
But what’s fascinating about Bruno as a Hitchcock villain is that, regardless of his sexual orientation, he’s capable of both magnetic charm and wit as well as appalling violence and volatility. Bruno can murder cruelly without compunction, while in a subsequent scene help a blind man across the street. He’s a loose cannon who’s boasted of driving a car over 150 mph and flying a jet plane, and he’s expressed a desire to blow up the White House. This is a creepy, malicious, nearly omniscient presence who seems to know where Guy is at all times – he’s almost like a stalking vampire who waits for the sun to go down so he can fulfill his evil plans.
Interesting aside about the casting: Robert Walker was a heterosexual in real life who was known for playing likable boy next door types – yet, he’s cast against type here as villainous and queer, if not at least sexually ambiguous – while Farley Granger was a bisexual actor being asked to play a straight character.
1950s audiences likely found several elements of the film disturbing or risqué. Exhibit A: Miriam’s licentious behavior for a 1951 movie. She’s married to Guy, yet pregnant with another man’s baby and flirting with multiple men, including the two at the fairgrounds who take turns pawing and playfully groping her. Exhibit B: We are manipulated into identifying with Bruno, a sociopath, just as we are forced to identify with Norman Bates after Marion Crane is killed in Psycho. We find ourselves rooting for Bruno to retrieve the cigarette lighter and evade a near capture by police.
Consider, as well, the outright weird relationship between Bruno and his possibly insane mother, which viewers of any era would find especially peculiar. And let’s not forget the terrible violence that concludes the rogue merry-go-round sequence. It’s evident that many children must have been killed, yet this tragedy is overlooked because the filmmakers and the audience demand – especially in 1951 – that Guy’s guilt and culpability be resolved.
Looking closely, we can clearly see the DNA of Strangers on a Train in later pictures. Running along the same tracks are subsequent movies like Bigger Than Life (1956), centering on a suburban father whose psychological unraveling turns him into a danger to his family; Once You Kiss a Stranger (1968), a loose, gender-swapped reimagining of Strangers on a Train involving a coerced murder pact; Throw Momma from the Train (1987), a pitch-black comedy in which an eccentric student embraces the idea of “swapping murders”; Once You Meet a Stranger (1996), a TV movie remake about two women who meet on a train and devise a deadly arrangement; Horrible Bosses (2011), a comedic variation where three friends agree to eliminate one another’s abusive employers; Mojave (2015), which follows a brilliant drifter who invades an artist’s life and sparks a psychological duel; A Simple Favor (2018), a neo-noir mystery of toxic friendship, manipulation, and deception; Do Revenge (2022), a stylized dark comedy where two teens agree to carry out revenge schemes for one another; and
It’s a stretch, perhaps, but there’s a case to be made that Strangers on a Train (1951) helped establish the thematic blueprint for the giallo horror subgenre that flourished many years later. It traps a “wrong man” in a labyrinth murder plot, features a highly stylized scene involving the strangulation of a woman, and is obsessed with fetishized clues that predate some of the core elements later perfected by Italian directors. The murder swap setup and psychological web potentially paved the path for later giallo thrillers like Sergio Martino’s The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (1971), and Massimo Dallamano's What Have You Done to Solange? (1972).
What helps Strangers on a Train maintain an evergreen sheen are its relevant themes. The big enchilada, of course, is innocence and guilt, and the transference of culpability, which Hitchcock explored in so many of his films. The main motivation for Guy to foil Bruno by the end of the film is Guy’s guilt stemming from the fact that he has overtly wished for Miriam’s death, which is fulfilled.
But just as significant is the examination of good vs. evil, light vs. dark, and the shades of gray and ambiguity between them. It’s easy to regard Guy as the white hat character in this twisted morality tale opposite Bruno’s black hat figure, but let’s not forget the words that came out of Guy’s mouth: "I’d like to break her foul, useless, little neck... I said I could strangle her!" We know he’s not capable of doing so, but Guy secretly wishes for retribution on Miriam, and Bruno represents the dark side to Guy’s wish fulfillment. These are psychological alter-egos, with Bruno acting as Guy’s dark shadow and manifesting Guy's repressed desire to kill his wife. Ironically, the "shocked" Guy is carrying a murder mystery book. The consistent interplay of shadow and light evident in many compositions emphasizes this message.
Other visually and thematically obvious messages replete in Strangers on a Train include doppelgängers, pairs (more on this next), opposites, crisscrossing, and double-crossing. And you certainly can’t miss the sexual tension, as this film so skillfully hints at homoeroticism, cuckoldry, Oedipal rage, and psychosexual obsession, infusing undercurrents of deviant sexually motivated behavior into its story and characters.
Strangers on a Train’s greatest gift is how it serves as an endlessly captivating exercise in meticulously planned visual design. First, reflect on the many geometric shapes and patterns used throughout that turn this film into a big-screen game of tic-tac-toe, complete with X’s, O’s, and gridlines. Respectively, recall the crosscut editing between two pairs of shoes walking toward each other, the crossed legs, the railroad crossing signs, and the cigarette lighter with its overlapping tennis rackets; the circles, as exemplified by Miriam’s round glasses, the circles spotted on Bruno’s robe, the shape of his strangling hands, the white globe atop the lamppost, the child’s balloon, the sun Bruno glances at, and the spinning, circular merry-go-round; and the parallel lines, as evidenced by the shadow of window blinds that fall across Bruno’s face, the large gate with its vertical bars, the rows of matching heads swiveling left and right watching the tennis match, the lines on the tennis court.
But even more impressively, the movie ingeniously utilizes a recurring motif of doubles, 22 examples of which are cataloged by Stephen Rebello in his outstanding book Criss-Cross. Here’s a roundup of key examples:
- Parallel openings: Two Diamond Cabs arrive simultaneously at the station, where Guy and Bruno walk at the exact same pace toward an inevitable collision.
- The shoes: The film opens tracking two pairs of feet. Later, Guy accidentally kicks a passenger's shoe, mirroring how his and Bruno’s feet first bumped on the train.
- The tracks: A locomotive POV shows tracks intersecting and crossing. Later, the exact same camera angle is used for both Guy's and Bruno's separate arrivals in Metcalf.
- Apparel and shadows: On the train, Guy wears a crisscross tie while Bruno wears vertical stripes. Meanwhile, the window blinds cast a crossed shadow pattern over Bruno's face.
- The lighter: Guy carries a silver lighter embossed with crossed tennis racquets. Bruno lights Guy’s cigarette early on; later, Guy replicates the gesture for a passenger.
- Drinks and gifts: Bruno orders a double Scotch, explicitly asking for "a pair, doubles." Both men carry gifts from women: Guy’s lighter from Anne, and Bruno’s tie pin from his mother.
- Hitchcock's cameo: As Guy exits the train in Metcalf, Alfred Hitchcock makes his signature cameo appearance struggling aboard with a double bass.
- The daughters and fathers: Anne’s sister Barbara (played by Hitch's daughter) creates a "double Hitchcock" presence. Both sisters have an influential, older father, mirroring Bruno's wealthy, elderly father.
- The music store: When Miriam double-crosses Guy, the scene visually features two female clerks, two overhead light fixtures, and two listening booths – one with a young couple, one with an older couple.
- The stranglehold: In a phone booth, Guy rages that he wants to "strangle" Miriam. His face cross-dissolves into a close-up of Bruno's hands flexing, acting out the subconscious wish.
- Agents of chaos: Both Miriam and Bruno are childlike, hedonistic forces who disrupt Guy's life and threaten to embarrass him by causing public scenes.
- Fairground duplicates: At the carnival, Miriam is flanked by two boyfriends. The background mirrors this duplication with two old men at the carousel and two little boys near the grounds.
- The spectacle double: Barbara wears thick glasses, making her Miriam's visual double. At a party with two women discussing "perfect crimes," the flame on Guy's lighter reflects in Barbara's glasses, triggering Bruno to nearly strangle a guest.
- Metcalf repetitions: In Metcalf, Guy encounters a familiar policeman twice. Later, Bruno steps into a public phone booth, directly mirroring Guy’s earlier phone booth scene.
- The double fault: While Guy frantically plays a tennis match, Bruno struggles to fish the lighter out of a storm drain. During the game, the umpire calls a "double fault."
- The detectives: The investigation is highlighted by two sets of detectives tracking the men, closing the law's trap from both sides of the crisscross.
When speaking about Strangers on a Train to François Truffaut, Hitchcock remarked: “Isn’t it a fascinating design? One could study it forever.” I certainly continue to do so, and I firmly believe this remains a major part of the film’s appeal to the new generations that discover it.
It’s little wonder, then, why this work places higher than you’d expect on major industry lists, clocking in at #32 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills (celebrating America's most heart-pounding movies) and No. 75 on Time Out’s 2022 countdown of "The 100 best thriller films of all time." Review aggregators mirror this praise: Strangers on a Train maintains an 88 out of 100 score on Metacritic, while earning a 98% fresh score and an 8.9 out of 10 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes. And in 2021, the Library of Congress inducted the movie into the United States National Film Registry for preservation.
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