Review by C.J. Bunce
It really should be your favorite tennis movie. It’s also much more stylish than you might remember. It’s Alfred Hitchcock’s 1951 black and white thriller, Strangers on a Train. Based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith, Hitchcock put together Farley Granger straight out of his co-starring role in Rope with short-lived rising star Robert Walker in one of his last performances. Powerhouse composer Dimitri Tiomkin, and a script co-drafted by Raymond Chandler was a set up for a pristine tale of deceit, miscommunication, and terror like only Hitchcock could deliver. Writer Stephen Rebello, author of Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho turns his attention to one of the auteur’s springboards to Psycho in the new book Criss-Cross: The Making of Hitchcock’s Dazzling, Subversive Masterpiece Strangers on a Train, available in hardcover this week here at Amazon.
Hitchcock’s twisty thriller follows two men who meet on a Washington, DC, commuter train. Farley Granger plays Guy, a tennis pro going through a public divorce. Robert Walker plays Bruno, a highly intelligent fast-talker who is planning to bomb the White House. In the long train commute the men get to like each other, but did they really agree to plan the perfect murder by exchanging murders–Bruno would kill Guy’s wife and Guy would kill Bruno’s suffocating, king-like father? The author explores the meticulous delivery of the key components of the story into visual form, comparing the film to other Hitchcok works including Shadow of a Doubt.
Adapted into a parody comedy decades later starring Star Trek Voyager’s Kate Mulgrew and Billy Crystal called Throw Momma from a Train, the movie is largely known as the last “what might have been” for co-star Robert Walker (father of lookalike Star Trek guest star Robert Walker, Jr.) whose death at 33 entered the Hollywood mythos like James Dean’s would a decade later. But author Stephen Rebello argues the movie is more than a second tier Hitchcock effort. Authoritative and comprehensive, the book guides readers through the entire filmmaking process from script to marketing and public reception, compiling interviews and detailing the casting process and key contributors to the film. The author reveals that Strangers on a Train (now streaming free on Tubi) is full of a lot more sexual innuendo and racy themes Hitchcock got past the censors of the era, making Hitchcock ahead of his time in more ways than being the master of suspense.
Just as Hitchcock successfully pushed undertones of homosexuality into theaters across America in the 1940s via his movie Rope, he may have been even more successful with Strangers on a Train. Rebello lays out all the facts, including discussions with cast and crew derived from his extensive research. Hitchcock was a master at more than movie direction–just as the writers of Saturday Night Live would later pad their scripts with over-the-top content to try to get their preferred ideas past the censors, Hitchcock did the same thing to get racy content past the notorious “Breen office” that slashed many a movie often to something unable to be produced.
The book is also full of tips and tricks used by Hitchcock in making the film, from getting a kid to react just right to a balloon popping to managing an actor wearing prescription glasses trying to make their way without stumbling through a scene, to filming a compelling tennis match, to filming a murder in the reflection of a pair of eyeglasses, to making a carnival a place of terror. Hitchcock was an early adopter of storyboarding an entire movie. Rebello details the six key “showstopper” scenes of the film: the “strangling” of the dowager, the murder after the carnival, the tennis match, Bruno’s struggle to recover the lost cigarette lighter, Guy’s visit to Bruno’s father, and the merry-go-round finale. Along with repeating themes is Hitchcock’s careful use of symbols and imagery. It’s also another Hitchcock film featuring his daughter Patricia Hitchcock in a supporting role. The author makes great use of studying Hitchcock’s approach to villains, especially with Shadow of a Doubt’s Uncle Charlie and Psycho’s Norman Bates.
The book includes an appendix with deleted scenes, another with scenes that were screened by test audiences but removed, an appendix of filming locations, a bibliography, and an index. Both the deleted scenes and the screening versions of the film illustrate the difficulty in making movies in an era of paranoia, misogyny, and homophobia. It’s a reminder of how Americans should take every effort to thwart anyone from censoring free speech in all its forms in any era.
A good read for film students and fans of Hitchcock, Criss-Cross: The Making of Hitchcock’s Dazzling, Subversive Masterpiece Strangers on a Train, available in hardcover this week here at Amazon from publisher Running Press.
Editor’s Note: I reviewed an advance review copy of this book, and do not know if the published version includes photographs, but included those above for reference.
