Cinema Seminar:
Strangers on a Train

Taught by Andrew J. Douglas, Ph.D.
Senior Director of Education, Renew Theaters

Based on the eponymous debut novel by Patricia Highsmith (The Talented Mr. Ripley), Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (1951) is the suspenseful tale of two men who plan to swap murders. It stars Farley Granger (Rope, They Live by Night) and a mesmerizing Robert Walker (The Clock, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo), and also features the director’s own daughter, Patricia, in a flashy supporting role.

The film came about during a relative low point in Hitch’s Hollywood career. After laboring for imperious uber-producer David O. Selznick (Rebecca) for his first seven years in America, Hitchcock started his own production company with longtime associate Sidney Bernstein, Transatlantic Pictures, for which he directed Rope and Under Capricorn. The subpar response to these films led their distributor, Warner Bros., to essentially absorb Transatlantic, and it was under this arrangement that Strangers on a Train was made.

But like many filmmakers who struggle with total freedom (and complete responsibility), once those “burdens” were lifted, Hitchcock returned to form. Always a skilled visual stylist, his composition and camera work take a leap forward in this first of a dozen collaborations with cinematographer Robert Burks, who would receive his first of four Oscar nominations for this film. Their expressive use of framing, light, and movement brings new dimensions to the familiar Hitchcockian themes of the doppelgänger, voyeurism, and the wrongly accused. These are just some of the reasons why it is worth getting to know Strangers on a Train.