DIRECTOR: Alfred Hitchcock
Produced by Alfred Hitchcock
Screenplay by Raymond Chandler and Czenzi Ormonde.
Novel: Patricia Highsmith
Cinematography: Robert Burks
Edited by: William H. Ziegler
Original Score: Dmitri Tiomkin
Distributed by: Warner Bros.
Starring: Farley Granger, Robert Walker, Ruth Roman, Patricia Hitchcock
Hitchcock reverses his usual casting dynamics here: gay actor Farley Granger plays the straight man, while straight actor Robert Walker gives one of cinema’s great queer‑coded performances. Unfortunately, Granger’s character finds his happy ending in the arms of the not‑so‑electrifying Ruth Roman, who—along with Anne Baxter in I Confess—was reportedly among Hitchcock’s least favorite actresses. Walker died at thirty‑two, only weeks after the film’s release, making his performance all the more haunting.
The plot is classic Highsmith perversity. Architect and tennis star Guy Haines (Granger) wants to divorce his unfaithful wife, Miriam (Kasey Rogers), so he can marry Anne Faulkner (Roman). On a train to meet Miriam, he encounters Charles Bruno (Walker), a charming sociopath who proposes a “perfect” exchange of murders: Bruno will kill Miriam if Guy kills Bruno’s father. Guy laughs it off, but Bruno follows through, strangling Miriam while Guy is in Mexico. From that moment on, Bruno expects Guy to complete the pact.
The source material comes from Patricia Highsmith, a gay writer whose fascination with queer sociopathy would later crystallize in her five Tom Ripley novels. Ripley has been adapted repeatedly—René Clément’s Purple Noon (1960) with Alain Delon, Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) with Matt Damon, and most recently the superb black‑and‑white Netflix limited series written and directed by Steve Zaillian and starring Andrew Scott.
Strangers on a Train was a major hit, ending Hitchcock’s brief slump after Under Capricorn (1949) and Stage Fright (1950). It contains some of his most indelible sequences—the tennis match, the lighter in the drain, the deranged carousel climax. Walker is extraordinary, proving—as he had in the gentle, romantic The Clock (1945) opposite Judy Garland—that he was capable of remarkable range. His death remains one of Hollywood’s great losses. Marion Lorne steals her single scene as Bruno’s mother, matching her son’s eccentricity beat for beat. And Patricia Hitchcock, in her most substantial film role, is lively and appealing as Roman’s younger sister.
Granger is competent, but unlike in Rope, where his sensitivity and tension are perfectly used, here he never quite convinces as a straight leading man. That absence of star wattage weakens the film’s emotional stakes. For all its brilliance—and it has brilliance to spare—Strangers on a Train does not make the cut for Hitchcock’s seven perfect films.
This would be the first of 12 movies in which Robert Burks and Alfred Hitchcock collaborated, including Burks’ Oscar-winning film, To Catch a Thief (1955). Their partnership from 1951 to 1964 ranks among the most significant director-cinematographer collaborations in Hollywood history, paralleling Hitchcock’s close relationships with his gifted composer, Bernard Herrmann (eight movies from 1955 to 1964), and his skilled editor, George Tomasini (nine movies from 1954 to 1964). Only Hitchcock’s professional relationship with his wife, screenwriter Alma Reville, lasted longer (nineteen films from 1926 to 1953).
Hitchcock’s cameos:
Cameo one:0:02:22 – He’s on the book’s cover that Farley Granger is reading. Cameo two:0:10:34 – He’s seen boarding a train with a double bass as Farley Granger gets off in his hometown. The double bass is no accident since Hitchcock fills the movie with doubles and criss-crosses.
