Strangers on a Train

Strangers on a Train (1951) begins with two strangers talking on a train, and the conversation turns into a murder pact. Bruno puts an idea to Guy, a tennis player: you kill my father, I kill your wife. Since neither has a motive, neither gets caught. Guy takes it as a joke. Bruno does not. The horror comes from this: Guy did nothing. He simply failed to object. Hitchcock kept his name out of the negotiation so he could buy the book cheaply. It was Patricia Highsmith's first novel; it went for seven and a half thousand dollars and she learned afterwards who had bought it. Raymond Chandler was hired to write it and the partnership was a disaster. They agreed on almost nothing and parted badly. Hitchcock threw out Chandler's pages and had Czenzi Ormonde rewrite from scratch. The strange part: virtually nothing of Chandler's survives in the film, but Warner kept his name on the credits for its advertising value. There are two great scenes. One is at the tennis match, where the whole crowd follows the ball while one man sits motionless, looking at Guy. The other is a carousel running out of control at a fairground. Robert Walker's Bruno is Hitchcock's best villain, and Walker died shortly after the film. It runs 101 minutes. Good for: Hitchcock, classic suspense, and screenplay structure. Less good for: some subplots belong to their period and the pace sags in the middle.