While I love film, and I love noirwith its dark cynical tones there are many classics that I have not seen. As a youth I was drawn only to genre films and that has left a gapping hole that I still work to fill-in. Strangers on a Train is a part of the missing education which I was fortunate enough to not only see last night but experience on the big screen at the local art house as part of their week of classics.

Released in 1951 and from the master of suspense (should there be a trademark there?) Alfred Hitchcock, Strangers, is about tennis pro Guy Haines (Farley Granger), trapped in a marriage to a woman who not only cheats on him, but has the gall to get pregnant while doing it as well. A chance encounter on a train with the mentally imbalanced Bruno Antony (Robert Walker) leads to Bruno murdering Guy’s wife as part of Bruno’s harebrained scheme for a perfect murder. Not only does Guy end up with a dead wife and himself as the prime suspect, Bruno expects Guy to murder Bruno’s father as part of the deal that Guy never accepted. With the police watching his every move and Bruno burrowing into his life like a murderous tick, Guy is trapped with little hope for escape and vindication.

Spoilers from here on out.

I can’t judge the plotting of the novel that the screenplay was adapted from but I can say that the script display’s Hitchcock’s preference for suspense over logic. Hitchcock cared more the mood of a piece, for its emotional impact than any moments that failed make sense when considered at one’s leisure. The third act revolves around to elements, Bruno’s plan to plant Guy’s lighter at the scene of the murder to implicate him and Guy’s need to quickly win his tennis match so he will have enough time to get there ahead of Bruno. The use of the lighter is a classic example of Hitch’s ‘macguffin’ an item that drive the plot by compelling the characters’ action but in this case it’s rather weak especially when one takes a moment and realizes a much more power item of evidence was displayed and discard in the film, the glasses the murdered woman was wearing when Bruno killed her.  Glasses that Bruno brought to Guy as a ‘gift.’ Finding those in Guy’s possession is far more damning than the fact his lighter was found near his wife. Yet this very damn bit of evidence, once handed to Guy, is dropped and never visited again during the rest of the film. Second, if Guy, fighting for his life against Bruno’s plot need to get out of the tennis match quickly, rather than trying for a fast win, throwing the game and loosing serves his needs far better. Frankly if I am trying to avoid an unjust murder conviction I’d be willing the lose a match.

With Hitchcock one expects these sort of logical inconsistencies and setting those aside, and the very clear ‘queer coding’ for Bruno, the film Strangers on a Train is fun experience, though not one I need to at to my library of movies.