Strangers on a Train is a 1951 American psychological thriller film noir produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and adapted by Raymond Chandler and Czenzi Ormonde from the 1950 novel of the same name by Patricia Highsmith. It was shot in late 1950, and released by Warner Bros. Pictures on June 30, 1951, starring Farley Granger, Ruth Roman and Robert Walker.
The story concerns two strangers who meet on a train, one of whom is a psychopath who suggests that they "exchange" murders so that neither will be caught. The film initially received mixed reviews, but has since been regarded much more favorably. In 2021, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Plot
Amateur tennis star Guy Haines wants to divorce his promiscuous wife, Miriam, so he can marry Anne Morton, the daughter of a US Senator. On a train, wealthy smooth-talking psychopath Bruno Antony recognizes Haines and reveals his idea for a murder scheme: two strangers meet and "swap murders", with Bruno suggesting he kill Miriam and Guy kill Bruno's hated father. Each will murder a stranger, with no apparent motive, so neither will be suspected. Guy humors Bruno by pretending to find his idea amusing but is so eager to get away from Bruno that he leaves behind his engraved cigarette lighter.
Guy meets Miriam, who is pregnant by someone else, at her workplace in Metcalf, their hometown. Guy gives her the money she demanded to pay for a divorce lawyer, but Miriam tells him she is no longer interested in a divorce, and threatens to claim that he is the father if he pursues a divorce. That evening Bruno follows Miriam to an amusement park and strangles her while Guy is on the train to Washington, D.C. When Guy arrives home Bruno informs him Miriam is dead and insists that he must now honor their deal.
Guy goes to the Mortons' home, where Anne's father informs Guy that his wife has been murdered. Anne's sister, Barbara, says that the police will think that Guy is the murderer since he has a motive. The police question Guy but cannot confirm his alibi: a professor Guy met on the train was so drunk that he cannot remember their encounter. The police assign an escort to watch him.
Bruno follows Guy around Washington, introduces himself to Anne, and appears at a party at Senator Morton's house. To amuse another guest, Bruno playfully demonstrates how to strangle a woman. His gaze falls upon Barbara, whose appearance resembles Miriam's. This triggers a flashback: Bruno compulsively squeezes the woman's neck, and other guests intervene to stop him from strangling her to death. Barbara tells Anne that Bruno was looking at her while strangling the other woman, and Anne realizes Barbara's resemblance to Miriam. Her suspicions aroused, Anne confronts Guy, who tells her the truth about Bruno's scheme.
Bruno sends Guy a package containing a pistol, a house key, and a map showing the location of his father's bedroom. Guy creeps into Bruno's father's room to warn him of his son's murderous intentions but instead finds Bruno there waiting for him. Guy tries to persuade Bruno to seek psychiatric help, but Bruno threatens to punish Guy for breaking their deal.
Anne visits Bruno's home and tries to explain to his befuddled and besotted mother that her son is a murderer. Bruno overhears and when his mother leaves mentions Guy's missing cigarette lighter to Anne and claims that Guy asked him to search the murder site for it. Guy infers that Bruno intends to plant it at the scene of the murder and incriminate him. After winning a tennis match Guy evades the police escort, helped by Barbara, and heads for the amusement park to stop Bruno.
When Bruno arrives at the amusement park, a carnival worker recognizes him from the night of the murder; he informs the police, who think he has recognized Guy. After Guy arrives, he and Bruno fight on the park's carousel. Believing that Guy is trying to escape, a police officer shoots at him but instead kills the carousel operator, causing the carousel to spin out of control. A carnival worker crawls underneath it and applies the brakes too abruptly, causing the carousel to spin off its support, trapping the mortally injured Bruno underneath. The worker who called the police tells them that Bruno, not Guy, is the one he remembers seeing the night of the murder. As Bruno dies, his fingers unclench to reveal Guy's lighter in his hand. Realizing that Guy is not the murderer, the police ask him to come to the station to tie up loose ends.
Some time later, another stranger on a train attempts to strike up conversation with Guy in the same way as Bruno did. Guy and Anne abruptly hurry away from him.
Cast
Farley Granger as Guy Haines Ruth Roman as Anne Morton Robert Walker as Bruno Antony Leo G. Carroll as Senator Morton Patricia Hitchcock as Barbara Morton Kasey Rogers (credited as Laura Elliott) as Miriam Joyce Haines Marion Lorne as Mrs. Antony Jonathan Hale as Mr. Antony Howard St. John as Police Capt. Turley John Brown as Professor Collins Norma Varden as Mrs. Cunningham Robert Gist as Detective Hennessey John Doucette as Det. Hammond (uncredited) Jack Cushingham as Fred Reynolds (uncredited)
Alfred Hitchcock's cameo appearance occurs 11 minutes into the film. He is seen carrying a double bass as he climbs onto a train.
Hitchcock said that correct casting saved him "a reel of storytelling time", since audiences would sense qualities in the actors that did not have to be spelled out. Hitchcock said that he originally wanted William Holden for the Guy Haines role, but Holden declined. "Holden would have been all wrong—too sturdy, too put off by Bruno", wrote critic 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."
Warner Bros wanted their own stars, already under contract, cast wherever possible. In the casting of Anne Morton, Jack L. Warner got what he wanted when he assigned Ruth Roman to the project, over Hitchcock's objections. The director found her "bristling" and "lacking in sex appeal" and said that she had been "foisted upon him". Perhaps it was the circumstances of her forced casting, but Roman became the target of Hitchcock's scorn throughout the production. Granger described Hitchcock's attitude toward Roman as "disinterest" in the actress and said he saw Hitchcock treat Edith Evanson the same way on the set of Rope (1948). "He had to have one person in each film he could harass", Granger said.
Kasey Rogers noted that she had perfect vision at the time the film was made, but Hitchcock insisted she wear the character's thick eyeglasses, even in long shots when regular glass lenses would have been undetectable. Rogers was effectively blind with the glasses on and needed to be guided by the other actors.Strangers on a Train: The Victim's P.O.V. (2004), DVD documentary
Production
Pre-production Hitchcock secured the rights to the Patricia Highsmith novel for just $7,500 since it was her first novel. As usual, Hitchcock kept his name out of the negotiations to keep the purchase price low. Highsmith was quite annoyed when she later discovered who had bought the rights for such a small amount.
Securing the rights to the novel was the least of the hurdles Hitchcock would have to vault to get the property from printed page to screen. He got a treatment that pleased him on the second attempt, from writer Whitfield Cook, who wove a homoerotic subtext into the story. With treatment in hand, Hitchcock shopped for a screenwriter; he wanted a "name" writer to lend some prestige to the screenplay but was turned down by eight writers, including John Steinbeck and Thornton Wilder, all of whom thought the story too tawdry and were put off by Highsmith's first-timer status. Talks with Dashiell Hammett got further, but here too communications ultimately broke down, and Hammett never took the assignment.
Hitchcock then tried Raymond Chandler, who had earned an Oscar nomination for his first screenplay, Double Indemnity, in collaboration with Billy Wilder. Chandler took the job despite his opinion that it was "a silly little story." But Chandler was a notoriously difficult collaborator and the two men could not have had more different meeting styles: Hitchcock enjoyed long, rambling off-topic meetings where often the film would not even be mentioned for hours, while Chandler was strictly business and wanted to get out and get writing. He called the meetings "god-awful jabber sessions which seem to be an inevitable although painful part of the picture business." Chandler also felt that the original novel's plot was superior to Hitchcock's version and argued that it should be restored. He complained privately that Hitchcock was too ready “to sacrifice dramatic logic (insofar as it exists) for the sake of a camera effect.” Interpersonal relations deteriorated rapidly until finally Chandler became openly combative: at one point, on noticing Hitchcock struggling to exit from his limousine, Chandler remarked within earshot, "Look at the fat bastard trying to get out of his car!" This would be their last collaboration. Chandler completed a first draft, then wrote a second, without hearing a single word back from Hitchcock; when finally he did get a communication from the director in late September, it was his dismissal from the project.
Next, Hitchcock tried to hire Ben Hecht, but learned he was unavailable. Hecht suggested his assistant, Czenzi Ormonde, to write the screenplay. Although Ormonde was without a formal screen credit, she did have two things in her favor: her recently published collection of short stories, Laughter From Downstairs, was attracting good notices from critics, and she was "a fair-haired beauty with long shimmering hair."—always a plus with Hitchcock. With his new writer, he wanted to start from square one:
There was not much time though—less than three weeks until location shooting was scheduled to start in the East. Ormonde hunkered down with Hitchcock's associate producer Barbara Keon—disparagingly called "Hitchcock's factotum" by Chandler—and Alma Reville, Hitchcock's wife. Together the three women, working under the boss's guidance and late into most nights, finished enough of the script in time to send the company East. The rest was complete by early November. Three notable additions the trio had made were the runaway merry-go-round, the cigarette lighter, and the thick eyeglasses.
There was one point of agreement between Chandler and Hitchcock, although it would come only much later, near the release of the film: they both acknowledged that since virtually none of Chandler's work remained in the final script, his name should be removed from the credits. Hitchcock preferred the writing credit of Whitfield Cook and Czenzi Ormonde, but Warner Bros. wanted the cachet of the Chandler name and insisted it stay on.