Strangers on a Train (1951)
| Crime,Drama,Film-Noir,Thriller
USA / English
"A girl in love with young America's idol--and a good-looking stranger in search of sensation--that's how it all began..! Warner Bros. bring a pounding new tempo to motion picture entertainment! " A psychotic socialite confronts a pro tennis star with a theory on how two complete strangers can get away with murder... a theory which he plans to implement.
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Strangers on a Train - a Review by Jo Henshaw
"Lets swap Murders- your wife, my father"- seemingly innocent conversation
between two strangers - Bruno Anthony and Guy Haines when they meet over
lunch on a train journey.
Guy, a solid, respectable tennis player, whose problem is that his wife,
the
flirtatious Miriam, won't divorce him so he can marry senators daughter
Anne, laughs the whole conversation off as a joke.
The following week he isn't laughing any more. In a scene of classic
Hitchcock suspense, Bruno stalks Miriam through a carnival and strangles
her. As he does, her glasses fall off and we see the murder eerily
reflected
twice through her lenses.
Cold hearted and amoral Bruno, his part of the deal completed, approaches
an
appalled Guy expecting, even pressuring him into 'doing his bit.' Matters
are not helped when Anne's precocious and outspoken younger sister turns
up
suspecting Guy of Miriam's murder.
So accused of a murder he didn't commit and expected to commit another,
what
is Guy going to do?
The power of this film is in the presentation of human beings as having a
murderous side to their nature - and this Hitchcock does to
perfection.
