Film / Strangers on a Train

Bruno Anthony: It's so simple, too. Two fellows meet accidentally, like you and me. No connection between them at all. Never saw each other before. Each one has somebody that he'd like to get rid of. So... they swap murders.
Guy Haines: Swap murders?
Bruno Anthony: Each fellow does the other fellow's murder. Then there's nothing to connect them. Each one has murdered a total stranger. Like, you do my murder; I do yours.
Guy Haines: We're coming into my station.
Bruno Anthony: For example: your wife, my father. Criss-cross.

A 1951 Psychological Thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, based on a novel of the same name by Patricia Highsmith (of Ripliad fame), starring Farley Granger and Robert Walker.

Guy Haines (Granger), an amateur tennis star, chances to meet the eccentric Bruno Anthony (Walker) on a train. Bruno has read about Guy's romantic troubles in the paper, and suggests that he might want to... dispose of his wife, the unfaithful Mrs. Miriam Joyce Haines (Kasey Rogers under the alias "Laura Elliot"), so he can marry Anne Morton (Ruth Roman), the daughter of a U.S. Senator (Leo G. Carroll). Bruno tells Guy of his own unhappiness with his father, and outlines his plot for the perfect murder: two strangers who each have someone they want dead "exchange murders" so that neither's motive can be uncovered. Guy laughs the whole thing off and gets off the train, but as he learns a few days later, Bruno wasn't joking.

The book and film together are the Trope Namer, Trope Maker, and Trope Codifier for "Strangers on a Train"-Plot Murder, though that particular trope is actually just one part of a complex storyline here. Raymond Chandler wrote the first draft of the screenplay (before he was fired and replaced by Czenzi Ormonde^note on the recommendation of screenwriter Ben Hecht, whom Hitchcock had actually reached out to first to replace Chandler; Ormonde was Hecht's assistant at the time).

This was the final completed film for Robert Walker, who died suddenly of an overdose amid drug and alcohol abuse less than two months after release.^note He did appear in one more film (My Son John), but his death occurred before he finished filming his scenes.

The story was loosely remade in 1969 as the film Once You Kiss a Stranger, with the Bruno character Gender Flipped into a woman, who wants the protagonist (now a golf pro) to murder her psychiatrist in exchange for her killing a rival player for him. The 1987 comedy Throw Momma from the Train is part remake, part Homage, and part Affectionate Parody of this film. In 2015, yet another prospective remake was announced, to be directed by David Fincher, written by Gillian Flynn, and starring Ben Affleck. However, this film — simply titled Strangers — has gotten stuck in Development Hell due to the schedules of those three people.

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This film provides examples of:

• Adaptational Heroism: In the original book, Guy tragically succumbed to Bruno's pressure to murder his father.
• Adaptational Job Change: In the book, Guy is an architect and Anne is a fashion designer. In the movie, Guy is an amateur tennis star with political aspirations and Anne is a socialite.
• Adaptational Name Change: Charles Anthony Bruno became Bruno Anthony, while Anne Faulkner became Anne Morton.
• Adaptational Ugliness: Bruno's mother is a mild case. In the book, she keeps up a youthful appearance; Bruno is specifically proud of her for having the legs of a much younger woman. In the movie, she looks really like a woman in her sixties and we never get a look at her legs.
• Almost Dead Guy: Bruno, under the carousel, is able to deliver some final incriminating words against Guy before dying. Not that it does him much good, as Guy has basically already been absolved thanks to a carnival worker who correctly identifies Bruno as the murderer.
• Ambiguously Gay: Both lead characters. Bruno, the Sissy Villain, is almost overt about it; Guy (whose actor was openly bisexual) is more of a "sexually ambiguous" ingenue. The film, about an up-and-coming man with a future in politics who gets involved with another man who acts in a flirtatious manner, has been read as commentary on the anti-homosexual hysteria of the 1950s, when the HUAC was on a witch hunt for "sex perverts" and other subversives in the government (and in Hollywood).
• Amusement Park: The scene of Miriam's murder and of the film's climax.
• Angry Guard Dog: Subverted. After sneaking into the Anthony house late at night to find Bruno's father and warn him, Guy encounters a growling Great Dane on the stairs. However, as he gets closer the dog comes up and licks his hand.
• Artistic License – Gun Safety: The cops chasing the clearly unarmed Guy through a carnival break every police firearm procedure by firing at him as he runs through a crowd of children. One of the shots hits and apparently kills an innocent bystander, who happened to be operating a merry-go-round, causing it to careen out of control.
• Asshole Victim: Miriam Haines is an extremely selfish adulteress who cheats on Guy and uses the resulting pregnancy to keep Guy from leaving her. All of this softens the blow when she gets killed by Bruno.
• Ax-Crazy: Bruno. In addition to being a cold-blooded killer, he displays disordered and delusional thinking in a number of scenes — thinking Guy is agreeing to his murder plan, rambling about how he plans to harness human "life force" in order to create a new energy source, and possibly having a persecution complex in regard to his father.
• Badass Bystander: The random Cool Old Guy who volunteers to stop the speeding carousel... by crawling underneath it to get to the mechanism at the center.
• Bait-and-Switch: while Bruno is stalking Miriam through the carnival, she and her friends move out of sight on the tunnel of love ride and we hear her scream. A second later, the boat comes into view and it turns out she screamed with excitement. Bruno comes face to face with and then murders her in the next scene instead.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Miriam. She's a rather pretty and proper-looking woman, but she's an extremely selfish adulteress who cheats on Guy and uses the resulting pregnancy to keep a justifiably-pissed Guy from leaving her. Downplayed in that anyone who knows Guy knows about Miriam's dalliances.
• Chekhov's Gun: Bruno's tie pin which Anne notices later.
• Child Supplants Parent: Bruno wants to kill his father and is very... close with his mother. More so in the book where Bruno's mother is described as moderately attractive and has a lot of male friends. In the film, she's fairly old and delusional.
• Clutching Hand Trap: Bruno, a remorseless murderer, gets his arm stuck in a drainage hole by the sidewalk. This is played for suspense, as it helps buy time for Guy to finish his scheduled tennis match (though Bruno makes it to the amusement park first anyway), though it does have Alfred Hitchcock's trademark dark humor. Subverted, as Bruno is able to easily pull out his hand clutching the lighter from the tight grid where he struggled to slide his forearm through just moments ago.
• Conspicuous in the Crowd: As Guy Haines prepares for a tennis match, he notices a single man in the stands is staring at him, instead of watching the ball in the current match like everyone else is. He's unnerved when he recognizes him as the stranger who suggested Guy murder his father in exchange for him murdering Guy's promiscuous wife.
• Creator Cameo: Hitchcock appears lugging around an upright bass the first time Guy gets off the train.
• Dead-Hand Shot: The close-up shot on Bruno opening his hand in his dying moment to reveal the lighter.
• Defiant to the End: In the face of a witness to his murder, his possession of incriminating evidence, and his imminent death, Bruno never stops trying to frame Guy.
• Depraved Homosexual: If Bruno is gay he definitely fits this trope.
• Depth of Field: In the final scene, Barba and Anne await Guy's call. Since the phone is the key element of the scene, it's placed in the foreground, occupying a great portion of the screen. However, the limited depth of field of the time couldn't clearly focus both the phone and the women at the same time, so the scene was shot using an oversized phone prop.
• The Ditz: Bruno's mother. Anne had to bluntly spell it out for her that her baby boy killed a woman, for his mother to ask if Bruno told her any of this and if not, that it isn't true.
• Divorce Requires Death: Since Guy's estranged wife refuses to divorce him, Bruno suggests that murdering her would be the best way out for Guy.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Much like in Shadow of a Doubt, there is a preoccupation with strangulation in this film, Bruno strangles Miriam and Guy expresses a desire to strangle Miriam. Their desire may very well be a response to subconscious sexual urges, namely that of erotic asphyxiation. It's also important to note that Miriam, declared a tramp and adulteress by numerous characters before and after her murder, is double-teamed by two men in the tunnel of love and goes to the secluded island, which is referred to as a hot spot for 'smoochers', with them. For comparison, in the book at least one of her companions is noted to be her brother.
• Erotic Eating: Miriam really makes a show of licking that ice cream cone while making eye contact with Bruno at the carnival.
• Expy: Barbara Morton could be seen as an older version of little Ann Newton from Shadow of a Doubt, since they're both bespectacled and both seem to think that life should play out like fictional plots do.
• Faux Affably Evil: Bruno. While showing a calm demeanor throughout his scenes, he gets extremely agitated and rude to bystanders when the lighter drops into the drain hole which jeopardizes his plan.
• Feet-First Introduction: For both Bruno and Guy, the first of many times the movie contrasts the two.
• Flashed-Badge Hijack: When Guy takes off in a cab after the tennis match, the two cops shadowing him decide to hijack a car in order to stay on his heel.
• Foil: Bruno and Guy, very intentional (see Numerological Motif below).
• Foot-Dragging Divorcee: Guy wants the divorce but Miriam refuses.
• Forced Perspective: The final scene of the so-called American version has Barbara and Anne Morton waiting for Guy to call on the telephone. Alfred Hitchcock wanted the phone in the foreground to dominate the shot, emphasizing the importance of the call, but the limited Depth of Field of contemporary motion picture lenses made it difficult to get both phone and women in focus. So Hitchcock had an oversized phone constructed and placed in the foreground. Anne reaches for the big phone, but actually answers a regular one.
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: Bruno's homosexuality was portrayed subtly enough to fool the Media Watchdogs at the time.
• Glasses Are Sexy:
  • Miriam is a Really Gets Around type whose glasses are a significant part of her personal look.
  • Barbara, though not a particularly sexualized character, becomes this by association because she is a Bespectacled Cutie whom Bruno mentally conflates with Miriam.
• Hand Stomp: Bruno stomps on Guy's hands when the latter is hanging on to a steel bar to keep him from being propelled away from the spinning carousel.
• Homoerotic Subtext: Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Walker (Bruno) worked out an elaborate series of gestures and physical appearance to suggest the homosexuality and seductiveness of Bruno's character while bypassing censor objections.
• Identical Stranger: Barbara Morton and Miriam Joyce Haines. Not quite identical, but similar enough that it becomes a plot point.
• Idiot Ball: A fair amount of the drama could have been easily avoided if Guy had just gone to the police after finding out Bruno killed his ex-wife. If Bruno accused him of conspiracy, Guy could mount an easy defense since there was no exchange of money, no evidence of coercion, the two men had never met before, and Bruno's father could've easily testified to his son's general instability, which he probably would have done because he believed Bruno needed help. In addition, he was more-or-less the son-in-law of a Senator, which would have probably given him access to a more than competent defense attorney. What's more, the police could've easily verified Guy's alibi for the night of the murder. Even if Guy's witness didn't remember him, the platform/train attendants who presumably took his bags at New York and then Washington could have identified him and debunked the theory that he got on at Baltimore.
• Idle Rich: Bruno. He hates his rich father partly because the latter wanted him to take on a regular job.
• Imperiled in Pregnancy: Miriam is pregnant at the time of her murder. (In the book, she has suffered a miscarriage shortly before that point.) Oddly, nobody seems particularly concerned by this fact. She's not yet showing (or if she is, her outfits hide it) so her pregnancy might not be widely known yet.
• Informed Attribute: Bruno claims his father is a horrible person, but we have only the word of a madman to go on. Indeed, the one time we see him, he appears genuinely concerned for his son's well-being. More so in the novel, where the aforementioned scene never takes place and the reader knows nothing about Bruno's father right up until Guy kills him, at which point a private detective in Bruno's father's employ tells Bruno that if he honestly thinks his father didn't love him then he really didn't know him at all.
• In the Back: Subverted. It looks like Bruno is going to shoot Guy in the back as the latter walks out of the mansion but he refrains from doing so, noting that the noise would wake his mother.
• Karmic Death: Bruno.
• MacGuffin: Guy's lighter.
• Mama Didn't Raise No Criminal: When Anne comes to talk to Bruno's mother about his deed, the latter wouldn't hear any of it.
• Manipulative Bastard: Bruno, to an extent. He tries his damnedest to get Guy to go along with the plot, which doesn't seem to work, but his threats to frame Guy succeed in getting Guy to refrain from turning him in to the police. He also manages to keep his mother from suspecting anything bad about him.

• My God, You Are Serious!: Guy's reaction when he learns about Bruno killing his wife.
• No OSHA Compliance: Why does the merry-go-round have an option to go dangerously fast? Why isn't there a safety lever that makes it slow down gradually instead of brakes that would only end up making matters worse once physics ensue when a fast-moving object stops?
• Not His Sled: A miniature version. Early in the novel, Guy accidentally leaves his book with Bruno — an oversight that comes back to haunt him later. In the film, Guy remembers to take his book. But he leaves his lighter behind, which also causes some headaches down the line.
• Numerological Motif:
  • The number two and the concepts of doubles and doppelgangers are both important in this movie.
  • The theme of crosses and double crossing could fit under here as well.
• The Perfect Crime: At least Bruno likes to see it as this.
• Pet the Dog: After the murder, Burno helps a blind man across the street.
• Police Are Useless: The Metcalf police department might be the most incompetent cops in the Hitchcock canon (no easy feat at all). They assume the Tunnel of Love operator is leading them to Guy when he's really incriminating Bruno, then they open fire on an unarmed man on a crowded merry-go-round.
• Psychological Horror: Not as much compared to some Hitchcock movies, but it's certainly there. While he's kind of funny most of the time, there are moments when Bruno is terrifying.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Bruno. He's a spoiled rich brat who wants to murder his father for telling him to get a job.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Detective Hennessey becomes friendly with Guy even though he's technically following him around.
• Really Gets Around: Miriam, full stop. She cheats on Guy, gets pregnant with another man's baby, and even after refusing to divorce Guy, still goes on a carnival date with two other men.
• Reflective Eyes: Or Reflective Eyeglasses, anyway; we see Bruno strangle Miriam in them after they're knocked to the ground.
• Sarcasm-Blind: Guy's reaction to Bruno's plan is bewilderment, and when Bruno asks if he thinks it is a good plan, Guy sarcastically responds in the affirmative.
• Sinister Suffocation: Discussed. The antagonist playfully asks two women what they would consider being the best way to murder a person. He then dismisses all of their guesses and replies that strangulation is the only correct answer, as it leaves no bloodstains, produces no noises, and causes death in a relatively quick timeframe
• Sissy Villain: Bruno. He's a slight, effeminate dandy who has a deep homoerotic subtext with Guy.
• Slouch of Villainy: Bruno is lazily slouching in his train seat, for most of the scene where he makes Guy's acquaintance and explains his murder scheme.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: Miriam's murder is accompanied by jaunty carousel music in the background (which actually goes twice as fast as it does in the rest of the amusement park scenes).
• Spanner in the Works: Bruno's plan to plant Guy's cigarette lighter gets delayed due to a random passerby who bumps into and causes him to drop the lighter into the street grate.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Guy actually kills Bruno's father in the book. In the film, he doesn't go through with it.
• "Strangers on a Train"-Plot Murder: invoked Trope Namer, and an Unbuilt Trope: Guy laughs Bruno's suggestion off as a joke, only to discover that Bruno is all too serious. In the end, Guy doesn't go through with it — in the movie, at least.
• "Test Your Strength" Game: An Establishing Character Moment for Bruno, showcasing his physical prowess. He follows Miriam and her two beaus to an amusement park where he impresses her with his strength by winning the "Test Your Strength Game". The vendor half-jokingly says that Bruno broke the bell.
• Threw My Bike on the Roof: Shortly before murdering Miriam, Bruno pops a child's balloon for fun. His motives for killing his father also boil down to his father telling him to get a job and stop mooching off the family wealth.
• Tunnel of Love: At the amusement park, Miriam goes through one with her two male companions, and Bruno follows them.
• Unconventional Vehicle Chase: A "chase" on a Merry-Go-Round.
• Undercrank: The climax on the spinning carousel — alongside the prior shot of Guy fainting after nearly strangling Mrs. Cunningham — was achieved this way.
• Villain Ball: Bruno all but outright tells Anne what he's going to do to frame Guy, just to rub Guy's nose in it, even though it gives Guy a chance to stop him.
• We Are Not Going Through That Again: At the end of the American version, Guy finds himself in a train carriage with a stranger who recognizes him and tries to strike up a conversation. Having just gone through a hell of an ordeal resulting from someone else on a train recognizing him and striking up a conversation, Guy gets up and goes to another compartment without saying a word.
• We Need a Distraction: Babs distracts the cops after the tennis match long enough for Guy to slip by them and into the cab.
• Would Hurt a Child: In the climax, after the carousel has accelerated to dangerous speeds, Bruno throws a little boy off his horse. He gets very close to the edge before Guy saves him at the last minute and gets him out of harm's way.
• You're Insane!: Variations of the phrase are frequently used by Guy to describe Bruno, much to his chagrin.

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