Strangers On A Train is a very tense film; Guy, a famous tennis player, meets a fan who proposes the perfect murder: what if they could each swap, each kill the person the other wants dead, and the only link between them is a chance meeting on a train.
Naturally, the tennis player brushes it off, but the fan, Bruno, murders Guy's ex-wife and starts to stalk him, trying to worm his way into his life, with his friends and family.
Naturally, the tennis player brushes it off, but the fan, Bruno, murders Guy's ex-wife and starts to stalk him, trying to worm his way into his life, with his friends and family.
The resulting tension comes from the fact that only the two men know what has happened, and that whilst Bruno is trying to convince Guy to commit murder, at any second he could easily persuade everyone that guy was in fact the murderer, since he is the prime suspect.
Every conversation becomes a careful balancing act, with Guy trying to find a way to remove Bruno from his life, while Bruno tries not to expose his motives. But the conflict of interests is only part of what makes the film so tense.
Not only do all of the interactions between Bruno and Guy rest on the edge of conflict, but in the film's climactic finale, Guy must race against time to complete his tennis match and intercept Bruno before he removes all evidence left at the crime scene. The high stakes help to build the tension, but what really captivates throughout the film is the fact that no character entirely knows what is going on, and whilst we think we know what's happening, Bruno is unsettlingly unpredictable enough that every scene with him in commands our interest.
Hitchcock famously said about building tension:
"There's two people having breakfast and there's a bomb under the table. If it explodes, that's a surprise. But if it doesn't..."
The root of tension comes from the anticipation that something is going to happen. The art of suspense is building the atmosphere for that tension to thrive in.
Every conversation becomes a careful balancing act, with Guy trying to find a way to remove Bruno from his life, while Bruno tries not to expose his motives. But the conflict of interests is only part of what makes the film so tense.
Not only do all of the interactions between Bruno and Guy rest on the edge of conflict, but in the film's climactic finale, Guy must race against time to complete his tennis match and intercept Bruno before he removes all evidence left at the crime scene. The high stakes help to build the tension, but what really captivates throughout the film is the fact that no character entirely knows what is going on, and whilst we think we know what's happening, Bruno is unsettlingly unpredictable enough that every scene with him in commands our interest.
Hitchcock famously said about building tension:
"There's two people having breakfast and there's a bomb under the table. If it explodes, that's a surprise. But if it doesn't..."
The root of tension comes from the anticipation that something is going to happen. The art of suspense is building the atmosphere for that tension to thrive in.
And creating an atmosphere is exactly what Hitchcock does. If I were inclined to write a listicle about the top ten shots from Strangers On A Train, I'd have plenty to choose from, but the most brilliant example is surely when Guy is trying to finish his tennis game, ever aware of Bruno's insidious presence. Hitchcock's use of motion is brilliant, painting Bruno in negative space: through the entire film, he stands out by what he lacks, be it compassion, honesty in his emotions, or the fact that he looks and acts almost like the people around him but only enough to manipulate them for his own needs. |
And here, in this one shot, Hitchcock sums up everything that makes us feel uncomfortable about Bruno, giving us just enough time to notice that something doesn't look right before we zoom in on exactly the anomaly in both the shot and Guy's life: Bruno is hidden, amongst everyone else, unmoving, emotionless, but always visible, always there.
It makes a great gif, too.
It makes a great gif, too.