The Age of Commercialism

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

It was my favorite, but in repeated viewings, Psycho adds up more. The scene when Bruno reaches down the sewer to find the cigarette lighter was odd because how could his arm stretch down there? I also found the scene when the guys leave the girl in the carnival before getting strangled very odd. It does have many classic scenes that are very exciting in countless viewings.

I can't add much to the many excellent reviews of this Hitchcock classic. But I do want to dwell on a crucial aspect of the plot, and comment on a few bits of Strangers on a Train.Why doesn't Guy go to the police immediately after he learns that Miriam has been killed? Sure, the 'trading murders' scheme sounds nuts; but since he knows he'll be under suspicion anyway, he has nothing to lose. Bruno, with his fixation on Guy and their alleged 'deal,' would show his hand, drawing the cops' attention away from Guy.Imagine the guests at the senator's party recounting to the cops Bruno's absurd ranting about a new source of energy, or, even more damning, his choke hold on the elderly lady. Of course, without Bruno free to slither around, then there would be little mystery, and no movie.After just watching it again, it's fascinating how Hitchcock uses the glasses motif to tie in the murder victim with Ann's sister. Bruno focuses on Barbara as a haunting surrogate for Miriam. In a sense, she avenges the victim by helping to entrap Bruno. Her glasses point to the noir emphasis on reflections as a literal mirror held to the criminal side of life.Maybe I can answer the question I began with: Guy won't give up Bruno, because they have a bizarre bond. They're reflections of each other, Bruno the noir Hyde to Guy's everyday Jekyll. Tennis couldn't be a more fitting metaphor for the sunny side of life portrayed by Guy, as opposed to Bruno's mostly nocturnal or interior habitats. Maybe Hitchcock's most noir movie, and one of the better noirs made.

Alfred Hitchcock induced Chandler to break his self-imposed exile from Hollywood for Strangers on a Train (1951). Here we have another screen classic - like Double Indemnity - for which Chandler is not given due credit. Part of this lapse is due to Hitchcock himself who, in later interviews, constantly derided Chandler's contribution. "The work he did was no good," good old Hitch complained to many a celebrated critic. But despite the Chandler script's supposed lack of quality, super-indulgent old Hitch had used it anyway. Adapted from a Patricia Highsmith story, the Chandler hand is evident not only in the inward-twisting plot and contrastingly classy and gaudy atmosphere, but in the tensely nervy and often cynical dialogue, - and even more particularly in the characterization of the festeringly bizarre but remarkably personable psychopath so brilliantly played here by Robert Walker.

After four box-office failures and with the dawn of a new decade, there must have been some pressure on Hitchcock to deliver a hit again. That he did, and then some with this tour-de-force which in fact set the standard for the rest of the decade where he consistently delivered great movies and consolidated his reputation as the Master of Suspense.It helps of course when the source material is good, this time from a writer of the calibre of Patricia Highsmith and while Raymond Chandler may not have contributed too much for his co-screenplay credit, this movie has a particular drive and energy which had certainly been lacking in his recent movies. It may have lacked A-list acting talent but Farley Granger and in particular Robert Walker step up admirably with memorable performances so good you can't imagine anyone else in their places.The idea of twin murders is a delicious one which holds the movie together all the way through particularly after Walker's Bruno casts the first stone with the murder of Granger's loose, grasping but hardly deserving wife. The extended scene of his stalking her at a night-time fun fair culminating in a brilliantly rendered strangulation reflected in the victim's own detached spectacles is just one of many magisterial flourishes from the Master but there's much more such as the shot of Bruno gazing single-mindedly at Granger's Guy Haines playing a tennis match while everyone else is following the ball going back and forth over the net, the later cross-cutting of Bruno striving to retrieve Guy's lighter which he's accidentally dropped down a drain en-route to planting it at the murder scene to frame him contrasted with Guy frantically trying to win his tennis match and of course the suitably dramatic climax aboard (and under!) a crazily out of control merry-go-round.As stated, Walker is superb as the suave but deranged Bruno, with his flamboyantly monogrammed tie-pin and floral dressing gown bringing a homo-erotic edge to proceedings while Granger is almost as good as the innocent caught up in his nemesis's machinations and yet bearing guilt for getting what in his secret heart he really wanted. There's solid support too from Ruth Roman as Haines' new love, the ever-dependable Leo G Carroll as her senator father and perhaps surprisingly Hitchcock's own daughter as Roman's younger sister who bears a striking resemblance to Haines' bespectacled doomed wife.From the introductory criss-crossing of feet and railway lines to that mad smash-up finish at the carnival this is the ultimate cinematic white-knuckle ride.