Saturday, April 17, 2010

CURRENTBLIPS

CURRENTBLIPS

Strangers on a Train Its Real Plot is Spread

Posted: 17 Apr 2010 07:43 PM PDT


Strangers on a Train is a 1951 American film by the studio Warner Bros. It was produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The film stars Farley Granger, Ruth Roman, Robert Walker, Leo G. Carroll, Kasey Rogers (credited as Laura Elliott), and Patricia Hitchcock.

The film was based on the novel of the same name by Patricia Highsmith, who also wrote The Talented Mr. Ripley. Detective novelist Raymond Chandler wrote an early draft of the screenplay, despite his having considered the story implausible.

STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, based on the Patricia Highsmith novel, quickly became one of Alfred Hitchcock's most successful thrillers and remains one of his most popular films. En route from Washington, D.C., champion tennis player Guy Haines (Farley Granger) meets pushy playboy Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker). What begins as a chance encounter turns into a series of morbid confrontations, as Bruno manipulates his way into Guy's life. Bruno is eager to kill his father and knows Guy wants to marry a senator's daughter (Ruth Roman) but cannot get a divorce from his wife, Miriam (Laura Elliot). So Bruno suggests the men swap murders, which would leave no traceable clues or possible motives. Though Guy refuses, it will not be so easy to rid himself of the psychopathic Bruno. The film is tightly paced and disturbing from beginning to end, an effect heightened by Hitchcock's inventive camera work, including a terrifying sequence shot through a pair of eyeglasses that have been knocked to the ground.

The Plot

Professional tennis player Guy Haines (Farley Granger) meets indolent rich boy Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker) on a train by chance, or at least Guy thinks so. Bruno, who seems to know an awful lot about Guy, invites him to lunch in his private compartment, and explains that he wants to get rid of his father, who's standing between him and his inheritance. Meanwhile, Guy has a cheating wife who's pregnant with another man's child, and a beautiful senator's daughter waiting for him to get a divorce. In a scene rich with threat and homoerotic subtext, Bruno suggests they switch murders, "criss-cross." Guy thinks it's some sort of sick joke, and leaves with a tossed off, "Whatever you say, Bruno."
Guy promptly heads off to argue publicly and violently with his wife. This proves unfortunate when Bruno arrives later that same day to do away with her, and fulfill his half of the bargain. Guy falls under suspicion immediately, and has to deal with both police inquiries and Bruno's increasingly threatening and invasive demands that Guy murder his father.

Spellbinding from start to finish, Strangers on a Train contains some of the most famous scenes ever filmed. There's a great fake-out and an insanely dangerous stunt with a spinning carnival carousel which could have killed the stunt man -- a chance Hitchcock said he would never take again.

With the acclaim for The Talented Mr. Ripley, more film projects in production, and two biographies forthcoming, expatriate legend Patricia Highsmith would be shocked to see that she has finally arrived in her homeland. Throughout her career, Highsmith brought a keen literary eye and a genius for plumbing the psychopathic mind to more than thirty works of fiction, unparalleled in their placid deviousness and sardonic humor. With deadpan accuracy, she delighted in creating true sociopaths in the guise of the everyday man or woman. Now, one of her finest works is again in print: Strangers on a Train, Highsmith's first novel and the source for Alfred Hitchcock's classic 1953 film. With this novel, Highsmith revels in eliciting the unsettling psychological forces that lurk beneath the surface of everyday contemporary life.

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Posted by Suresh at 11:21 PM

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