Strangers On A Train is an often overlooked film in the Alfred Hitchcock filmography. Actually, with so many films to his name, it’s an easy thing to do. Here we get an adaptation of a novel, but while the story may not be original, the delivery very much is. Most directors would open a film introducing the stars with shots of their faces, but here we are shown only the bottoms of their legs. This focuses the attention to small details that would otherwise get overlooked.
Duality, pairs, and sets of two figure prominently in the film, as we get two men who initially do not know each other meet, and agree to murder each other’s target (one a wife, the other a father). This is done to provide alibis and while there is some tension as to how this is set up and pulled off, something of course goes wrong, and that’s when the real character tension begins.
Interestingly, this is one of the few films that Alfred Hitchcock employed his daughter Patricia Hitchcock (his only child) to act, and also one of her few acting roles in general. The names Farley Granger, Ruth Roman, Robert Walker, Jonathan Hale or Laura Elliott may not be immediately recognizable (at least the face of Leo G. Carroll should be) but they all turn in solid performances.
As a thriller, Strangers On A Train delivers. The pacing is slow to build, but that’s deliberate and helps to create the overall tension that is felt later on. Just because the “big name cast” is absent that doesn’t mean this is a lesser offering from the director.
Special features are exactly what was offered on a previous DVD – you can tell because they are in standard definition. There’s just over an hour of featurettes looking at the film itself (the largest of the featurettes) as well as his daughter and grandaughters talking about the man, and more. It’s a decent, if perhaps overly fluffy package of special features, but fans of Alfred Hitchcock will enjoy it if they don’t already have the previously released DVD. There is also an audio commentary with a list of names too long to go into. It’s a solid offering that is well worth checking out (many of the participants are featured in the featurettes).
Even if you’re not a fan of Alfred Hitchcock, Strangers On A Train is a classic 50’s thriller that is made all the more interesting because of the techniques used. Classic film buffs should certainly not miss this.