Out of the Past 2018 / Strangers on a Train / USA 1951
Thirty-year-old Patricia Highsmith must have felt honored when the great Hitchcock chose to film her very first novel Strangers on a Train (1950). He must certainly have been drawn to a character often found in his own work – the dangerous psychopath hiding his predilections behind a flawless mask. Here, shortly before his untimely death, the talented Robert Walker appears as the dashing and irresistible ladies’ man.
The proposal that Guy, a successful tennis player, receives on the train while talking to an unknown fellow passenger is already beyond bizarre, but then Guy’s unfaithful wife is murdered almost immediately afterward, proving that the stranger meant exactly what he said. Indeed, that man, Bruno, suggested they each “relieve” the other of someone inconvenient, thereby confusing the police as to motive. Now it’s Guy’s turn: He’s to kill Bruno’s hated father… The picture follows the protagonists’ actions in parallel, and the growing suspense is amplified by the fact that the viewer knows what psychopathic Bruno will do next, before desperate Guy does. The thriller noir atmosphere and expressionist inspiration particularly emanate in the amusement park scenes; and the reflection of the murder in the strangulation victim’s glasses is a telltale sign of Hitchcock’s authorship.
Zdena Škapová
101 min / Black & white, DCP
Director Alfred Hitchcock
/ Screenplay Raymond Chandler, Whitfield Cook, Czenzi Ormonde podle románu / based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith
/ Dir. of Photography Robert Burks
/ Music Dimitri Tiomkin
/ Editor William H. Ziegler
/ Art Director Ted Haworth
/ Producer Alfred Hitchcock
/ Production Transatlantic Pictures
/ Cast Farley Granger, Ruth Roman, Robert Walker
/ Sales Park Circus Group
Alfred Hitchcock (1899, London – 1980, Los Angeles) Selected filmography: Blackmail (1929), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934, remade 1956), Jamaica Inn (1939), Rebecca (1940), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Spellbound (1945), Rope (1948), Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), Psycho (1960), The Birds (1963), Marnie (1964), Frenzy (1972)
Park Circus Group
15 Woodside Crescent, G37UL, Glasgow
United Kingdom
Phone: +44 141 332 2175
E-mail: [email protected]
First-hand brews throughout the year.
Be among the first to learn about upcoming events and other news. We only send the newsletter when we have something to say.
