Chapter Two
Tippi’s Takes Presents:
What Hitch Taught Me About Life
An exploration of life and cinema from the viral sensation
by Tippi Rathbone
Chapter Two
Strangers on a Train (1951): Be Kind to Strangers
How does one go about planning the perfect murder?
Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, based on the psychologically complex novel by Patricia Highsmith, aims to answer this question.
The plot is brilliantly simple: Two men encounter each other on a train and decide to “swap murders,” thus extricating themselves from future suspicion.
Guy Haines, an acclaimed tennis player hoping to divorce his unfaithful wife and marry his true love, encounters Bruno Antony, a flamboyant, high-flying playboy desperate for his father to die and leave behind an inheritance.
Bruno’s bizarre game of hypotheticals veers into reality when he hunts down Guy’s wife, Miriam, and strangles her, a crime the audience sees reflected in the thick lenses of her fallen glasses.
He spends the rest of the movie pestering Guy to fulfill his end of the deal.
Hitchcock and his team made several changes to the source material to meet censorship guidelines and make the characters onscreen seem more sympathetic. Some of the most memorable scenes, like the climactic fight on a winding carousel, were never mentioned in the novel yet created cinematic magic.
The film reminds us to be nice to strangers…but maybe not too nice. After all, the more someone knows about you, the easier it is for them to hurt you, and you never know when they might decide to take matters into their own hands.