“Strangers on a Train” (1951)
“Wanna hear one of my ideas for a perfect murder?” Guy Haines (Farley Granger), a famous tennis player, is recognized on a train by Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker). Guy wants to divorce his cheating wife Miriam in order to marry Anne Morton, the daughter of a U.S. senator, and advance his career in politics. Over lamb chops on the train, Bruno also reveals he’d like his interfering father dead, and so suggests the perfect crime — an exchange of murders by perfect strangers. The conversation ends somewhat up in the air, with Guy placating the seemingly eccentric Bruno, who is satisfied a deal has been struck. Guy and Bruno’s relationship dynamic is set from the start, the seductive Bruno and the elusive Guy. Bruno ends up killing Guy’s wife, in one of the most elegantly shot strangulations scenes in cinema history, shown in reflection of Miriam’s thick glasses. Then Bruno demands that Guy keeps his end of the bargain, and Guy, with motive aplenty, is put in a tricky spot. The final confrontational climax between the men resulted in a magnificently shot action scene in which Guy and Bruno fight on a merry-go-round spun out of control, resulting in a fantastic trick shot of an explosion. “Strangers on a Train” is perfectly taut thriller, in which the two male leads shine as, respectively, the ostensibly good but pretty unlikeable guy at the wrong place at the wrong time and the creepily seductive and occasionally frenzied villain who embodies Guy’s darkest desires. Adapted from Patricia Highsmith‘s novel of the same name, Hitchcock endured a grueling adaption process with endless rewrites, but his passion for the story never waned, and is clear in the final product, filling it with double-entendres and masterful film noirish use of black and white and shadow — and a number of shots still obsessing film students today. Despite its shocking-by-1950s-standards themes, with homosexual overtones galore, “Strangers on a Train” did gangbusters at the box office and critical esteem for the film has only grown with time. [A]
Hitchcock Cameo: Continuing the ever-growing string-instrument theme from “Spellbound” and “The Paradine Case,” getting on train with a double bass ten minutes into the film. All he needed was a viola and he would have had a quartet.
“I Confess” (1953)
Squashed between two bona fide Hitchcock classics, this “morality play” starring Montgomery Clift, Anne Baxter, and Karl Malden has quite a few interesting things going for it but ultimately (and unfortunately) wades in the pool of mediocrity. Deep in Quebec City, dutiful Catholic priest Michael William Logan (Clift) receives a confession from the rectory groundskeeper in which he admits to murdering a man — but due to the whole “Priest–penitent privilege” thing, Logan is unable to assist the police in their investigation, throwing him into distress. But it gets worse: a few students admit to seeing the priest near the crime scene, causing the authorities to suspect pious Logan to be the true perpetrator. In actuality, the lead was meeting Ruth, a married woman he previously had a fling with ages before joining the priesthood. Initially a fairly intriguing look into a complex situation (complete with a terrific opening), “I Confess” gets bogged down the more characters it throws into the situation, with the romance history between Ruth and Logan being particularly lackluster. What would probably work best as a focused character study seriously loses weight with the barren mug of Clift, who just doesn’t bring the goods as a priest with serious inner turmoil. He’s much too stoic, and although it’s truly impossible for him to reveal the killer’s confession due to his vocation, some semblance of his contemplation should be felt. Its general middling nature might also have something to do with the troubled production: it took eight years and twelve writers to get going, and the director had no toleration for his lead’s method acting. Such drama was eventually mined for the 1994 film “Le Confessional.” At the end of the day you could certainly do a lot worse in this oeuvre (see: “Jamaica Inn,” “Topaz”), but it’s an intriguing premise that should be a lot more powerful. [C]
Hitchcock Cameo: Crossing a staircase at the 00:01:33 mark.
“Dial M for Murder” (1954)
A debonair former tennis player plots the perfect murder of his wife in “Dial M for Murder,” based on the play by Frederick Knott. Tony and Margot Wendice (a smooth Ray Milland and a luminous Grace Kelly in her first Hitchcock outing) at first appear to be a happy couple living in London. It’s quickly established, though, that Margot has been having an affair with an American crime novelist (Robert Cummings), and Tony has been hiding his knowledge of her infidelity. Milland, in a role originally intended for Cary Grant, gives a suave, chilling performance, calmly and meticulously putting his plan into motion by blackmailing an old college acquaintance (Anthony Dawson) into murdering his wife for her inheritance. But Tony has to be quick on his feet and change his plans when the murderer becomes the murdered, in an over-the-top scissor death scene. Margot has enough fortitude to kill her attacker, but frustratingly lacks the smarts to suspect her husband’s involvement, and the detective work is left up to her rather bland but clever boyfriend and the police inspector (John Williams) on the case. While Margot’s passivity is a mild annoyance, it doesn’t overshadow the real joy of watching this film – absorbing Tony’s keen attention to detail and premeditated actions and waiting for him to slip up and get caught. ‘Dial M’ was Hitchcock’s only third full-color film, and he uses it expressively with Kelly’s costumes, ranging from virginal white to scarlet red to somber black. It was also Hitchcock’s only film shot in 3D. The camera was cumbersome to work around and very large – said to be as big as a dressing room — and then the film was primarily screened “flat” anyway. While not as claustrophobic and tense as the similarly single-set “Rope,” Hitchcock wisely decided against opening up the sets and instead used dramatic angles and tight direction to keep the film from feeling inert. [B]
Hitchcock Cameo: Another pictorial cameo rather than a physical one: he’s on the left hand side of the class reunion photo 13 minutes and 13 seconds in.
“Rear Window” (1954)
Hitch knew as well as anyone the value of a thriller in a confined space (see “Lifeboat,” “Rope,” the preceding “Dial M For Murder“), but never demonstrated it as well as he did in “Rear Window,” a film that is among the most entertaining films the director ever made, but also perhaps his greatest love letter to the voyeurism of his medium. If you’ve never seen the film (somehow), it stars James Stewart as photographer L.B. Jeffries, who’s broken his leg, and is now stuck in a cast in his apartment. The titular window of the property looks out onto a courtyard, and L.B, to the slight disappointment of his girlfriend Lisa (Grace Kelly, making a good case for being the most beautiful woman in history), starts spending his time spying on the eccentricities of his various neighbors. But things take a darker turn when he comes to suspect that one of them has murdered and dismembered his wife. It’s astonishing that a film that, for all intents and purposes never leaves a single room, is so cinematic, with the director right at the top of his game, and using the inherent tension of separation of space to the full. And Stewart is about the perfect lead, Hitchcock subverting his persona subtly as he would later in “Vertigo,” but ensuring that he’s a firmly rootable hero (not to mention the complex and deeply sexy chemistry with Kelly). They announced last week that the film is heading to Broadway; they’ll have an almost impossible task to live up to this one. [A+]
Hitchcock Cameo: At 26:10, winding a clock in the apartment of the songwriter character.