Movie: Strangers on a Train
Language: English
Year: 1951
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Why it's Key: This suspenseful scene is a
textbook example of Hitchcock's brilliant manipulation of viewer
identification. A symbolic object that becomes critical to the plot, the cigarette lighter is introduced a few minutes into this masterful thriller, which preserves the basic premise of the original novel but adds plenty of Hitchcockish variations.
Key Scene: Guy (Farley Granger), tennis professional, finds himself in the same train compartment as Bruno (Robert Walker), an eccentric fan who strikes up an awkwardly intimate conversation. Aware that Guy wants a divorce so that he can marry a senator's daughter, Bruno suggests that they swap murders: Bruno will kill Guy's wife if Guy will kill Bruno's father. Rattled by this proposal, Guy hastily departs, leaving behind his lighter, which Bruno pockets. A gift from his girlfriend, Ann, it bears the inscription "A to G" and is engraved with two crossed tennis rackets - a neat emblem of Bruno's "criss-cross" scheme.
Bruno keeps his half of the perceived
bargain and plans to frame Guy by placing the lighter at the scene of the
murder. On his way, though, he drops the lighter down a sewer and has to
retrieve it through a grating. At that moment, Guy is playing a tennis match
that he must win quickly if he is to stop Bruno.
Alfred Hitchcock generates suspense
by cross-cutting between both men's desperate exertions: Bruno thrusting his
arm deep into the dark storm drain and Guy lunging for every ball on the sunlit
court. Here Hitchcock, as usual, complicates the process of audience
identification. The viewer roots for the villain to reach the lighter that he
needs to incriminate the hero - a response that attests to the sly ingenuity of
Hitchcock's film-making!! The video contains a detailed analysis of the scene.
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