Meeting Two Strangers on a Train

A cab pulls up to a big urban train station. A man gets out, but all we see are his snazzy two-toned spectator brogues. Another cab arrives; another man emerges. We spot some his luggage, including a pair of tennis racquets, but also his sensible dark dress shoes. Both pairs of feet stride through the station.. We next discover them beneath the table of a club car, where one man’s foot accidentally nudges the other’s shoe.

 This, of course, is the very enticing opening of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1951 psychological thriller, Strangers on a Train. This film, made midway through a directing career that began in the 1920s and ended with Family Plot in 1976, is considered one of Hitchcock’s most effective in ramping up suspense by way of skillful screen artistry. The original plot, involving two young men who seek to evade the long arm of the law by committing murders on one another’s behalf (“cross-cross”) was concocted by Patricia Highsmith, for whom this was a first novel, five years before she gave the world the talented but lethal Mr. Ripley. Still, Hitchcock and company made some key changes to Highsmith’s story. For one thing, the Guy Haines character is far more culpable in the novel than he is in Hitchcock’s version, wherein (possibly to get past the censors) he can’t ultimately be tempted to follow the murderous path of Bruno (an eerie Robert Walker).  Hitchcock also deleted a key detective character, and added a famous merry-go-round scene that is one of his all-time most climactic. 

 Critics often discuss Hitchcock’s use of symbolic doubling in this film.  It focuses on the similarities (as well as differences) between two young men who accidentally meet in a train car: each of them is burdened by a relative who would perhaps be better off dead. We can’t miss the fact that Walker’s character—wealthy and superficially charming but deeply dissatisfied with his lot in life—responds to Granger’s attractiveness and is determined to bind the two of them together via the committing of two perfect crimes. There’s also the key parallel between two young women who wear thick spectacles: one is violently assaulted and the other soon finds herself in deeply symbolic danger.

 Barbara, the second of these bespectacled young women, is played by Patricia Hitchcock, the Master’s only child. She’s a distinctive character, much  different from her elegant sister (Ruth Roman) who is Guy Haines’ beloved.  Small and definitely rather Hitchcock-like in her appearance, Barbara is introduced as someone who is much fascinated by criminal behavior. The implication is that she shares Hitchcock’s own obvious delight in the macabre . . . until dangerous doings seem to be heading her way.

 Though Pat Hitchcock is fascinating (and Ruth Roman is, frankly, not), the crux of the film involves the interaction of the two male leads. As the preppy tennis player, Farley Granger is appealingly handsome and gentlemanly, which makes him slow to recognize the evil lurking in his fellow passenger. But it is Robert Walker who is unforgettable. We see his Bruno Anthony first as a fancy dresser and a glib talker, someone who can get under the skin of a complete stranger and bend him to his will. With an enigmatic smile on his face, he can pursue a young woman through an amusement park tunnel of love, and then commit a murder that is reflected in her glasses. This moment is perhaps the film’s grim high point: there are other shocks and scares to be had, but somehow the ending just doesn’t live up to what has come before.

 

Ripley: Believe Him or Not

A few months back, following the death of Alain Delon, I watched the 1960 French thriller, Purple Noon, which helped launch Delon’s career as a screen idol. It was a colorful flick about deception and mayhem, and boasted not one but two impressive twists at the end. It wasn’t until recently that I learned that this film was based on Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 The Talented Mr. Ripley, the first in a string of five novels featuring a young American who’s adept at impersonating others, for his own personal gain. Much more recently, Netflix showcased Ripley, a eight-part miniseries based on Highsmith’s first Ripley novel. I watched the critically acclaimed series from start to finish, thrilling to its take on the Ripley character and on its spectacularly detailed black-and-white cinematography.

Though the Texas-born Highsmith spent her adult life in Europe, her story has always had an All-American hustler at its center, and of course Hollywood eventually provided us with an American take on her plot. The 1999 film written and directed by Anthony Minghella (known for his Oscar-winning The English Patient) starred a  youthful Matt Damon in the title role. Key supporting parts were played by Gwyneth Paltrow, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Cate Blanchett, with a very young Jude Law in the key supporting role of the wealthy, feckless Dickie, Ripley’s first victim. (It won him an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actor.)

Though I confess I’ve never read the novel that started it all,  the contrast between the various screen versions has been fascinating. The French-language film much admired by Highsmith stands out for its gorgeous leading man, its spectacular Italian locales, and some nifty surprises that make a sequel unlikely. The TV miniseries apparently sticks far closer to the mood and plot of the original. I was fascinated by Andrew Scott’s playing of Ripley not as a charismatic rogue but as a sort of nonentity, a quiet con artist who succeeds because he seems to blend in everywhere he goes, with no one quite able to spot the fact that he’s dangerous. A snake in the grass, without question. 

Then there’s Minghella’s Hollywood version. The leading role is played by Matt Damon, clearly chosen in part for the youthful innocence of his looks. (I’ve read that Leonardo di Caprio was an earlier choice for the part.) Whereas the Tom Ripley of the TV miniseries is an experienced grifter, bilking the unwary whose medical bills he’s stolen, Damon’s Tom starts out looking like a clean-cut young man, a pianist sensitively accompanying a classical singer at a house concert. He doesn’t seem to be on the make until opportunity suddenly drops into his lap, giving him a trip from NYC to an Italian beach resort to persuade the scion of a wealthy American family to quit loafing around and come home. 

Damon’s Tom Ripley and Jude Law’s Dickie Greenleaf quickly bond over a passion for jazz. (The role of music in the film is an effective change from the miniseries, in which Dickie—though by no means talented—aspires to a career as an artist and Tom claims to share his interest in Caravaggio.)  As we see from the start, Damon’s Tom really does love music . . . and quickly comes to love the handsome, mercurial Dickie. Every bad thing his Tom does seems almost accidental; his most dastardly deeds stem from spur-of-the-moment decisions made in time of crisis. He’s played, in a low-key way, as a closeted homosexual, one whose self-loathing leads him in dangerous directions. We’re supposed to end up feeling sorry for the guy. I ask you: what’s the fun in that?

 

The Colorful Drama of Purple Noon

The recent passing of French leading man Alain Delon called my attention to the fact that, at the start of a long career, he first hit it big in René Clément’s 1960 thriller, Plein Soleil, known to American moviegoers as Purple Noon. I never saw this film until recently, but its title instantly had meaning for me. Back when I was in high school, my French teacher handed out extra credit for various experiences involving the French language. If you dined at a local French restaurant and swore that you’d spoke en français to the waiter, you got points. (This proved very popular with my family, all of whom loved the opportunity to further my scholastic career by dining out.) You also got points for attending a French-language film and trying hard not to read the subtitles. Most of us kids, thoroughly brainwashed by Hollywood, had no interest in checking out a film in French. And our teacher, in recommending Purple Noon (then playing at a local art house), said nothing to convince us that we’d actually find this film entertaining. As a consequence, I missed out on more extra credit, as well as a chance to see a really fascinating cinematic game of cat-and-mouse.

 Purple Noon (certainly a garish title) turns out to be the first screen adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s famous 1955 thriller, The Talented Mr. Ripley. Forty-four years later, Anthony Minghella wrote and directed a much more complicated English-language version. It starred a young Matt Damon and featured such rising talents as Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Cate Blanchett, and Philip Seymour Hoffman in a tale of a young man who’ll go to any lengths (including bloody ones) to achieve the lifestyle he feels he deserves. Highsmith herself strongly preferred Delon’s take on Tom Ripley, which relies less on pathos and more on the audience’s ability to identify with a young man whose creative improvisations help him get what he wants out of life.

 It's been pointed out that Ripley’s story goes well into film noir territory, but shifts the formula by being shot in brilliant color in some of the world’s most beautifully sunlit places. Much of the action of Purple Noon takes place on a gorgeous yacht off the coast of Italy. That’s where a feckless, and very wealthy, young San Franciscan named Philippe Greenleaf sets out on a cruise along with his fiancée, Marge, and his amusing new buddy, Tom Ripley. Philippe is not a very gracious host, especially after he discovers Tom trying on his clothes. What happens between them sets the stage for a series of deceptions in which Tom, back on shore, creatively pretends (with the help of a portable typewriter and some glue) that Philippe is alive and well, happily ensconced at a local hostelry. His on-and-off masquerade as Philippe leads to additional mayhem, as well as to his passionate wooing of Marge, for reasons that eventually become all too plain.

 It's curious (and perhaps disturbing) that author Highsmith, who spent most of her adult years in Europe, imagined Tom Ripley as a born-and-bred American. Her multiple follow-up novels to The Talented Mr. Ripley have led to several additional films as well as a 2024 Netflix miniseries. Obviously, this is a young man whose exploits we love to follow, even if we don’t consider him a model of wholesome behavior. The French version, Purple Noon, largely sidesteps the novel’s obvious homoerotic subtext: what else would you expect in 1960? Still, this is a marvelous intro to a sinister but fascinating world. Too bad it’s too late for me to get extra credit.

 

 

Strangers on a Carousel: Fun and Games with Hitchcock

It’s unlikely that Alfred Hitchcock will be remembered as a comedy writer. His subject matter (which usually focuses on extreme jeopardy) isn’t exactly light-hearted. But as Edward White’s new The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock makes clear, Hitchcock was deft at using comedy both to make social points and to heighten our sense of impending disaster by forcing us to laugh uneasily at the grotesque within our world. There’s that inevitable banana peel in his best work: the leading character is always about to slip on it, and the results can be hideous or hilarious. Gaiety or gore?: that is the question.

 These are the thoughts that run through my mind about one of the master’s best films: 1951’s Strangers on a Train. As usual, Hitchcock based it on the prose work of a talented suspense writer. In this case, the writer was Patricia Highsmith, who 50 years later would be hailed by movie audiences for having created the slippery character of Tom Ripley in The Talented Mr. Ripley and its sequels. (She also wrote the source material for the lesbian drama, Carol. )  Hitchcock and his screenwriters (who included Raymond Chandler) stayed loyal to Highsmith’s basic premise, that—in the course of an accidental meeting—two men discuss a “criss-cross” exchange of murders. Yet the filmmakers gave some significant twists to Highsmith’s original story. Notably, the architect Guy Haines is turned by Hitchcock and company into a noted tennis player, one who tries to laugh off, and then to avoid, the implications of the murderous “bargain” that is insisted upon by the story’s charming psychopath, Bruno Anthony.

  None of this may sound funny, but the finished film is laced with Hitchcockian wit. It begins right at the beginning, when the main characters are introduced as two pairs of men’s dress shoes: one sober black and one flashily two-toned, both heading across a train platform. Ultimately, when one pair “accidentally” kicks the other under the table in a dining car, we are introduced to the shoes’ owners, and drama takes over. Much of the film’s macabre comedy involves Bruno (a spectacularly creepy Robert Walker), who has murder on his mind and won’t take no for an answer. (Part of the joke was that Walker was known in his day for playing heroes and good guys.) Bruno, a wealthy idler itching to bump off his own father, lives in a mansion where he sports garish kimonos and enjoys the loyal support of his hilariously dotty mother (a fluttery Marion Lorne). As Bruno skulks through the film, intimidating the weak but well-intentioned Guy (Farley Granger, who helped commit a murder in Rope), fans of the film will remember him particularly as a spectator in a tennis match scene. While all the rest of the tennis fans watch from the bleachers, their heads swiveling as the ball moves back and forth across the net, Bruno sits immobile in their midst, fixedly staring at Guy. Nervous giggles, anyone?

 There’s also the fact that the script is full of supporting characters who find the idea of murder amusing. These include a dowager at a party who’s tickled by the whole subject of strangulation and also the filmmaker’s own daughter, the late Patricia Hitchcock, who as the sister of Guy’s beloved enjoys airing her own colorful theories about crime and punishment. Her role is not gratuitous: her thick glasses link her visually to Bruno’s victim, slain amid the fun and games of an amusement park. No surprise that the film ends on a carousel: hilarity and mayhem come together in one jauntily revolving package.