Overall Rating Awesome: 46.43% Worth A Look: 50% Average: 0% Pretty Bad: 0% Total Crap: 3.57% 2 reviews, 16 user ratings

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Strangers on a Train

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by Greg Muskewitz

"Loco’s-motives."

A weaker, though certainly not ineffective, effort from Hitchcock, concerning a chance encounter (or maybe not?) between one pro tennis player (spurned by a cheating wife, taken in the arms of a senator’s daughter) and one mollycoddled flaneur (a mamma’s boy with only a sensible father in his way).

Though both tend not to see reality clearly enough, the slacker is given to grander ideas of delusion, ergo offering to off the official misses in order to advance the prospective relationship, if in turn the athlete agrees to kill his father. A further demonstration of the delusion has the spoiled brat taking the unasked-for initiative to grant his end of the bargain without ever receiving confirmation or interest from the other party. Hitchcock tips the bow in this suspense story by over-extending or over-infiltrating the levels of coincidence that shape the progression. Granted, chance plays many supporting roles over the course of Hitchcock’s body of work, but further investigation would lead one to suspect the written word of Patricia Highsmith’s mystery novel to cause the misstep, or gradual reduction in sole size, from the determined pacing to and fro of the mystery’s plotting calculations. And equally identifiable — if not handicap-able — are the shades of Highsmith’s blueprints with her Ripley series. (Although the tennis player largely strays from Tom Ripley, the similarity of the mamma’s boy is a model of Dickie Greenleaf, emoting some heavy homoerotic vibes absent in Rene Clement’s Purple Noon, but inferred from Ripley in Anthony Minghella’s re-make.) Stylistically, Hitchcock introduces several nice touches, the ping-pong reaction of the crowd during a tennis match, save for the watchful eyes of the intent; the mise-en-scène of the carousel fight; and naturally, the reflected image of the strangling through the wife’s knocked-down eyeglasses (and repeated allusions to throughout). Nevertheless, each corner is fun to turn.

With Farley Granger, Robert Walker, Ruth Roman and Patricia Hitchcock.

[Worth-seeing.]

link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=3048&reviewer=172
originally posted: 08/29/02 12:44:08

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User Comments

6/07/11 Silkworm Walker was a brilliant choice - Superb twisted character - Great film 5 stars

6/01/10 User Name A stunning example of Hitchcock's genius; a eerily fun ride. 4 stars

5/31/09 student Hitchcock very well with foreshowdowing and visual affects 4 stars

1/20/09 PAUL SHORTT THE PROTOTYPICAL HITCHCOCK THRILL RIDE 5 stars

2/11/07 action movie fan top notch hitchcock thriller-finale aboard carousel istruly memorable 5 stars

5/11/06 rabdalas Just saw this DVD. Much better than I expected and Warners did a BEAUTIFUL job on the disc 4 stars

9/02/05 Zack one of his best films ever. 5 stars

4/26/05 hp Sir Hitchcock - grt opening scene - cant go wrong with this movie 4 stars

3/25/05 Trish Rucker Underrated Hitchcock 4 stars

9/21/04 Autumn This movie is defianately worth seeing (even though it is black & white) 4 stars

7/30/04 ben royston sankalp this movie was total CRAP!! id rather watch my grandma go toilet than watch this... 1 stars

5/21/04 Sean Scanlan Robert Walker aat his best 5 stars

7/28/03 Mr. Hat Really clever and two great leads. A Hitchcock classic. 4 stars

10/18/02 Karol This was a well thought out, well written, well acted film. Hitchcock at his best. 5 stars

9/24/02 I Can't Swim Magnificent work by a cinematic genius; Granger & Walker perfectly cast 5 stars

1/02/01 R.W. Welch Hitchcock style emerging; clever plot stretches at times. 4 stars

IF YOU'VE SEEN THIS FILM, RATE IT!
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USA 03-Jul-1951 (NR) DVD: 07-Sep-2004 UK N/A Australia N/A

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock Written by Raymond Chandler Whitfield Cook Czenzi Ormonde Cast Farley Granger Robert Walker Ruth Roman Leo G. Carroll

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