STRANGERS ON A TRAIN...his best-remembered film

 Actor Farley Granger died in New York on Sunday at age 85. He'd begun his career in Hollywood under contract to Samuel Goldwyn and made his first film, The North Star, in 1943. Five years later he worked for the first time with Alfred Hitchcock on one of the director's most interesting exercises, Rope (1948), co-starring James Stewart and John Dall. In 1951 he again worked with Hitchcock and it is for this film, Strangers on a Train, that Granger is best remembered. The actor later left Hollywood to work on the New York stage; in 1986 he won an Obie Award for his performance in "Talley & Son." Though Farley Granger is not the specific focus, I'm posting this previously published reflection on Strangers on a Train in tribute to of his life and career.

It was the middle of the 20th Century and Alfred Hitchcock's last major film had been Notorious (1946). Four years and four films later, he seemed to be drifting. Though The Paradine Case, Rope, Under Capricorn and Stage Fright were all interesting attempts, only underrated Stage Fright was successful, but it was not major box office.

Hitchcock and Granger on the set

For his next project, Hitchcock looked to the first novel of young Patricia Highsmith. Intrigued by its clever "criss-cross" murder plot, he bought the rights to Strangers on a Train.

Raymond Chandler was tapped to tackle the screenplay, though Czenzi Ormonde, a protege of Ben Hecht, rewrote most of it. Cinematographer Robert Burks collaborated with Hitchcock for the first time and earned an Oscar nomination for his efforts. He was nominated again for Rear Window and won for To Catch a Thief. Dimiti Tiomkin, who had last worked with the director on Shadow of a Doubt, composed the dramatic score. Hitchcock produced and directed for Warner Brothers.

Strangers on a Train (1951) is considered one of Hitchcock's most accessible films; its overwhelming success revived the director's reputation at a crucial point. It also signaled the beginning of his final great filmmaking period.


"meet cute" moment

A virtual case study of Hitchcock's technique, Strangers on a Train  bears all the hallmarks of his style. There are spectacular set pieces, among them - an intense tennis match cross-cut with scenes of a killer's harrowing journey to plant evidence and a carousel sequence that sweeps to a terrifying climax. Prominent historical sites appear; Washington, D.C., landmarks are woven into the scenario, with the Jefferson Memorial in a stark cameo. There is an "innocent man accused" and a powerful doppelganger motif.


Farley Granger and Laura Elliott/Kasey Rogers

Though there are no marquee names, the cast is solid: Farley Granger as handsome, nearly guileless and beleaguered tennis star Guy Haines and Laura Elliott (Kasey Rogers) as his trampy estranged wife, Miriam. Marion Lorne stands out as the discombobulated mother of a killer, Leo G. Carroll appears as a U.S. Senator and Patricia Hitchcock has one of her best roles as his quirky younger daughter.

Alfred Hitchcock once told Francoise Truffaut, "...the more successful the villain, the more successful the picture. That's a cardinal rule..."

The bold, unforgettable performance of Robert Walker as unhinged Bruno Anthony is proof of that rule. Remarkably, Walker had mostly been cast as boy-next-door types up till then. Like Joseph Cotten's Uncle Charley in Shadow of a Doubt, Walker's Bruno is a glib, self-possessed charmer who is also a remorseless killer. Walker is riveting onscreen. His Bruno is confident, slick, erratic...and very unsettling. His smooth veneer barely masks a simmering rage. With a voice that slides from sensual as velvet to cold and hollow as tin, his eyes glitter, glare, caress.

Robert Walker

From the moment Bruno is first seen in the club car insinuating himself into Guy's life, to his final seconds of life, when he mercilessly implicates Guy with his dying breath, Walker dominates and energizes the film. Pat Hitchcock once observed that for all her father's genius, it was Walker's daring performance that 'made' the picture.

Walker died tragically at age 32 less than two months after the film was released. He had appeared in more than 30 films in his career, but it was Strangers on a Train that allowed him to reveal the devastating range of his talent.

Farley Granger later reflected, "he was great in the film; his potential was limitless, his career was just beginning to take wing."

Robert Walker's life had been short and often troubled, but it later became clear that he had a bit of good fortune after all; his greatest role, a virtuoso performance, was preserved in one of Alfred Hitchcock's finest and most popular films.

British film critic and historian David Thomson noted in a 1999 Hitchcock centenniel article on Strangers that Walker's was "...a landmark performance. You see it now and you feel the vibrancy of the modernity...he had had that one chance..."

Read More

Break out the champagne (the '55 Hitchcock)...

Sometime just after Labor Day it began to seem that 2010 suddenly accelerated and was careening headlong toward Halloween…Thanksgiving…Christmas.  Each holiday quickly came and went and, what seems like moments later, 2011 is here.

In my life, 2010 was a year highlighted by reconnecting with old friends and making new ones…so today I celebrate the old year along with the new.

Traditionally, of course, champagne is the drink du jour at New Year’s, and so champagne it shall be now. A bottle of ‘96 Dom Pérignon Rosé would be great, but I’m in the mood for something really special…an old favorite… Hitchcock’s distinctive ’55 vintage from the Cote d'Azur. To Catch a Thief (1955), or “Hitchcock champagne,” boasts a rare combination of elegance and flair. Light-bodied with a smooth finish that lingers, it remains unmatched, though it has been imitated far and wide for decades.

A jaunty score sets the tone as the opening credits roll over a shot of an international travel service with a poster in its window, “If you like life, you’ll love France.” The tinkling keys of a grand piano hint at continental sophistication and adventure long before the first scream bemoaning stolen jewelry issues from a Riviera hotel balcony.


John Robie's Sainte-Jeannet villa

Quickly enough the action takes off with a colorful cruise through the Cote d'Azur as the French police speed to the village of Sainte-Jeannet and the hillside villa of retired jewel thief and prime suspect, John Robie (Cary Grant). The film has just begun and cinematographer Robert Burks has already heralded Hitchcock's first film in VistaVision/Technicolor.

Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Burks had initially worked together five years earlier, following the director's return to the U.S. after making two films in England. Hitchcock was beginning production on Strangers on a Train for Warner Bros. and the studio cinematographer assigned to the project was 40-year-old Robert Burks. This would be the beginning of a fabled partnership.



Cinematographer Robert Burks

Burks began his career in the Warner Bros. special effects lab at 19 when Hal Wallis, who liked shadows and high contrast from his cinematographers, was in charge of production. Burks, who apprenticed under James Wong Howe, worked his way up, becoming a DP and then a cinematographer by 1948.

The early influence of German expressionism on Hitchcock corresponded nicely with the influences Burks absorbed at Warner Bros. and the two collaborated on twelve films from 1951 – 1964, every picture Hitchcock made during that period except Psycho. Like Burks, Hitchcock had detailed knowledge of special effects and tended to devise scenes featuring complex imagery. One of the most memorable scenes in all of Hitchcock came in Strangers on a Train, the scene in which Robert Walker’s strangulation of Laura Elliott is reflected in the lens of a pair of fallen glasses.

Robert Burks was Oscar-nominated for Strangers and again for Rear Window. With To Catch a Thief, he won the Academy Award for Best Color Cinematography. From 1955 – 1958, Burks shot five Hitchcock films in VistaVision/Technicolor; four of the five were for Paramount Pictures.

Hitchcock on the set with VistaVision camera

Paramount had been the only major studio to balk at the widescreen CinemaScope system when it came into use in 1953, and set out to develop a process of its own. The studio worked with Eastman Kodak and came up with VistaVision, a method that delivered a higher resolution, widescreen version of 35 mm. The VistaVision process printed down large format negatives to standard 35 mm, creating a finer-grained print and improved image. The use of Technicolor's dye transfer process was key to VistaVision image quality.

For his first VistaVision/Technicolor excursion, Hitchcock contrived a stylish romantic thriller fueled by dazzling starpower.



Cary Grant and Grace Kelly

Robert Osborne remarked, when he introduced TCM's most recent screening of To Catch a Thief, that it had “the best asset any film could have...Cary Grant.” Good point. This was the third of Cary Grant’s four Hitchcock pictures and it came nearly ten years after their last collaboration, Notorious (1946), one of the best films in either man’s illustrious filmography. In the interim, Hitchcock’s career had gone into and dramatically come out of a slump. During the same period, Grant had continued to make popular films, but had increasingly moved away from the kind of part he had trademarked – the dapper, self-effacing man of the world. Following Dream Wife (1953), Grant retired, dissatisfied with the films he was being offered. But then he was approached by Alfred Hitchcock who had a project in mind with the requisite amount of elegance and comedy to attract him. With To Catch a Thief Cary Grant returned to type; John Robie, “The Cat,” is a dashing charmer, “a man of obvious good taste” very few could or would want to resist. Grant seldom departed from type for the remainder of his career.

Cary Grant and Grace Kelly

To Catch a Thief was the third and final film Grace Kelly made with Hitchcock, who would have worked with her for the rest of his career had she not left movies at the height of her stardom to marry Prince Rainier. Hitchcock’s breathtaking onscreen vision of Kelly brings to mind Josef von Sternberg’s cinematic exaltation of Marlene Dietrich 20 years earlier. Kelly was a beautiful woman but among the handful of films she made, her image as a screen goddess achieved perfection only in her films with Hitchcock. In To Catch a Thief she plays a spoiled rich girl, the ultimate "snow covered volcano" and "Hitchcock blonde."

Jessie Royce Landis

The pairing of Grant and Kelly is irresistible. The two are perfect for the roles of debonair thief/innocent man and haughty/hot debutante, and they literally generate fireworks together.

In her first Hitchcock outing, Jessie Royce Landis portrayed Kelly’s jovial, down-to-earth, bourbon-sipping mother. Hitchcock liked to include colorful women as supporting characters in his films, ranging from the silly (Florence Bates in Rebecca, Patricia Collinge in Shadow of a Doubt) to the clever and wisecracking (Thelma Ritter in Rear Window,  Barbara bel Geddes in Vertigo). Royce Landis portrayed two of the most appealing of the latter type in this film and North by Northwest.

Actor John Williams appeared in his third Hitchcock film with To Catch a Thief, this time as an insurance agent helping Robie track down the real jewel thief. His H.H. Hughson is a fine foil for Grant’s Robie. Their early scenes provide Hitchcock the opportunity to have some fun with a favorite theme, the ambiguity of guilt and innocence...Robie tells Hughson flatly that though he “only stole from those who wouldn’t go hungry,” he “kept everything myself.” Chiding Hughson for stealing hotel sundries and cheating on his expense account, Robie comments, “I was an out and out thief…like you.” Robie emphasizes his point with the throwaway line, “I wish I’d known someone in the insurance racket when I went into the burglary business.”

Cary Grant, John Williams, Georgette Anys

Hitchcock toys with guilt and innocence again when Robie refers to the sensitive hands and gentle touch of his cook and housekeeper, Germaine, who bakes a quiche as "light as air" and who, during the war, “strangled a German general once…without a sound.” 


Some have dismissed To Catch a Thief for its lack of weight, however, it is a strong reflection of Hitchcock’s meticulous craftsmanship, lightly touches on some of the director’s pet themes, and is a solid film of its genre.  Hitchcock delivered exactly what he intended, an exciting, lighthearted, romantic thriller. All elements click into place…from the John Michael Hayes screenplay to Robert Burks's VistaVision/ Technicolor photography, Lyn Murray’s score, Edith Head’s eyeball-popping costumes, two scintillating stars and the Cote d’Azur setting.

To Catch a Thief was successful and influential, and many later films bear its earmarks... most prominently Stanley Donen’s Charade, as well as his Arabesque, William Wyler's How to Steal a Million, Blake Edwards's The Pink Panther and countless romantic romps ever since.

Read More