There is an amazing pedigree on the film Strangers on a Train. Based on the book by Patricia Highsmith, adapted (in part) by Raymond Chandler, and of coarse directed by Hitchcock, Strangers comes from a number of masters. It is a tale of doubles, duality, and dark desires.
On the one hand Strangers is about a murder, but really the film is about obsession. While Bruno plans out what is apparently the "perfect crime" that isn't what is disturbing about this film. It is Bruno's obsession with Guy that is so compelling. Guy is an everyman but also a man who is hiding things. And Bruno is an outsider, someone who should from his position in society be riding high, but due to his own oddities remains just outside. And it is the coming together of these two "strangers" where the seed is planted, a seed which could destroy them both.
Granger plays Guy so perfectly. Guy is a man desperate to keep his secrets hidden. Although I understood Granger himself lived fairly openly as a homosexual man in the real world he still lived in a time when the gay experience was one of hiding. Strangers was made in the era of the McCarthy hearings when men were outed and their lives ruined for it. There is a palpable energy to Granger's portrayal of Guy, the everyman next door who is so worried he'll be found out (although his character is not queer, the subtext is palpable). Paired with this is Walker playing so perfectly the evil man who would exploit that for his own desire. It's a deal with the devil, even thought the deal itself is never made.
As this plays out Walker's Bruno becomes more and more obsessed with Guy and the film becomes sort of a stalker film with a very terrifying realness to it. Bruno is a man who doesn't back down, even up to the end making it so Guy is never safe as long as he's alive. There is something truly terrifying in that, even if Hitchcock's ending wraps things up a bit to pat. Another terrifying element is the fact that we must wrestle with the contention that Guy may actually want Bruno to go through with his initial threat. What does it say about us that the character we identify with might have, even briefly, entertained the killing of his pregnant ex? Hitchock plays her as unlikable as possible so we are complicit potentially as well. Sure Guy admonishes the suggestion of the double murder, and so do we, but we all think about it...
The two are played as mirror images, doppelgangers, to show this connection, and Bruno becomes a shadow that Guy cannot disconnect himself from. He's there every time Guy turns around. It is paranoia inducing. And that is where so much of the magic of this film lies. Hitchcock film is so wonderfully, from the murder framed in the victim's glasses reflection to the way the camera studies Granger's face as he stresses himself almost to death. It is all fascinating to watch.
I think there is something this film captures in the guilt we all feel about whatever little thing we've done that doesn't sit well with us. One could make the case, the film almost does this, that Guy really isn't to blame. Yet he still almost destroys himself, still blames himself. Perhaps that is something we can all relate to.
Strangers on a Train
Starring: Farley Granger, Robert Walker, Ruth Roman, Patricia Hitchcock, Kasey Rogers
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Writers: Raymond Chandler, Whitefield Cook, Czenzi Ormonde
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