Strangers on a Train

Strangers on a Train reverted back to the black and white filming, which almost seemed appropriate for almost any Hitchcock film. It is in a way a little poetic since Hitchcock is all about the world and people not being entirely black or white, good or bad.

Bruno, the antagonist of the film, is definitely an embodiment of this concept. He is handsome and charming and much more charismatic than Guy was. He could even talk an old woman into letting him wrap his hands around her neck, smiling all the while. Everyone but Anne, Guy, and Barbara seemed to be caught up in Bruno's charm.

Bruno's mother, however, was very different from most of Hitchcock's mother-figures. She was very much the subservient one. She is actually very much afraid of him. This is noticeable by the way she caters to him and cowers around him. I feel like she supported Bruno to Anne more out of fear of what Bruno might do to her should he find out than because he is her son.

Guy, on the other hand, is not as charismatic or dominant, which is displayed when his wife takes advantage of him and his new-found fame. He has a hard time standing up to Bruno even when they first meet and Bruno insults him and invades his privacy.

In the concept of duality, there are a lot of likenesses made in the movie, both with events and with people. For instance, Barbara resembles Marion, which causes some psychological trauma to Bruno. There is a bookend moment when the man who is tailing Guy on his way back to the amusement park bumps his shoe into another's man's foot, just like Guy and Bruno had met. Duality is also portrayed with the tennis match scene. Guy changing his tactics with his opponent shows his frustration with his current situation, but also how is has changed him, and made him almost more prepared to stand up for himself, to be a more aggressive person. The match itself seems to resemble the relationship between Bruno and Guy. At first, the opponent takes control, which is similar to when Bruno first took the life of Marion. Then Guy takes control of the tennis match which is akin to how he resisted Bruno's advances to get Guy to murder his father. Then again the opponent takes control, where Bruno starts to shadow over Guy, threatening to bring down his entire life. In the end, Guy wins over, just as they are hair to hair. This happens too with his dealings with Bruno.

The “It” factor in this movie wasn't as visible as it was in Rope, however, Bruno did display an attitude towards Guy that was much more intimate at times than merely an acquaintance or even friendship standing. Also, the idea of having a dark secret shared between two people tends to have a bit of a romantic air to it. This is sometimes illustrated when both Guy and Bruno are talking and they stand closer than normal because they are acting guilty or do not want anyone to hear what they are saying.

On the subject of crossing paths, there seems to be a lot of instances that make me wonder. For instance, the people who saw Bruno at the amusement park remembered him, even though he didn't make himself entirely obvious. Yet when Guy spoke to the man on the train, they shared a moment that would have normally been remembered, when the man was talking about his lecture and was surpried that Guy could understand it. However, when called in confirm Guy's alibi, he could not remember him. My favorite moment concerning the idea of crossing paths though, is when Bruno stalks Marion into the Tunnel of Love and just as the two boats go out of sight, Bruno's shadow looms over and almost swallow's Marion's.

There were a lot of scenes that I liked the technical aspects of. For instance, the point of view shots that came in occasionally. Or the shot of Bruno standing at the Jefferson Memorial, a man in a black suit in rather stark contrast to the white marble. And the scene where Bruno calls out to Guy from the shadows of an alleyway; the way the voice carried was almost scary all in its own. My favorite part though was when the scene where Bruno strangles Marion was shot through the view of her fallen glasses.

I was really fascinated by this movie, not necessarily for the plot, but definitely for the technical achievements. I absolutely love the one long shot technique. It was a little shaky at times, but I think it was appropriate for the story. It really goes through the stages of murderers directly after the they kill someone. Brandon and Phillip are at first very excited and exhilarated. Then one starts getting cold feet and soon and the two start spinning into very different attitudes. The singular long-shot allows you to follow their downward smile completely. The technique does have its drawbacks, namely when the film roll runs out and they need to change it. While he tried his best to keep them from being too noticeable, Hitchcock still had to allow from some rather awkward shots.

Since Hitchcock was obsessed with the strange, the element of homosexuality in the script definitely attracted him. It was more obvious directly in the beginning, right after the murder of David. They maintained an intimate feeling throughout the entire film. The two assumed roles similar to those of any relationship, where one dominates the other. Brandon was the more dominant one. He seemed both smarter and more in tune to the philosophies they were preaching.

It is interesting though that Hitchcock would choose to do this film, since the real story it was based on was much less “brilliant”. Based on the idea of the Loeb and Leopold Case, in which two men of the upper class and of “prodigal” intelligence decided to practice upon the teachings of Nietzsche and committed the murder of fourteen-year-old Robert Franks in 1924. The two were documented to have high IQ's and at the age of eighteen and nineteen had already received their bachelor's degrees. However, despite having reportedly spent seven months planning the murder, the two were caught within two days. According to the case report, a pair of glasses were found near the body that were specially made for only three people in the entire city of Chicago, one of them being Leopold. After reading this, I was honestly a little disappointed since they were supposed to be terribly brilliant, but I suspect that is why Hitchcock not only did not confirm the connection to the actual case but also focused solely on the psychological effects of the murder on the two killers.

There were only a few of the small things that typically marked a Hitchcock film. They did drink brandy in the film, but the lead actress was not a blonde. Also, there was no mother actually present in the film. She was only an implied character, though, and yet she still managed to have a really oppressive presence; always checking on her husband and her son.  

Notorious

I really liked this movie. I think it really stuck with Hitchcock's interest in character studies. There was so little that was actually said in the way of really important information. In fact, he seemed to intention drown out some of the dialog. The best scenes where when Alicia was in the house of Sebastian. There was a lot that her face read that shows how much she had to conceal from Sebastian. On her meetings with Devlin, you could tell that most of her actions were more of a way to put up a front. The expressions on both her and Devlin's face read that they were both attempting to mask their feelings for each other, him for his job, and her out of the abandonment she felt. This was most evident in their final meeting when she tells him that she was simply hungover, angry at him for leaving her.

The best example of pure cinema though is the scene where Alicia figures out that the coffee she has been drinking was the source of her illness. She read the looks from both Sebastian and his mother and ended up realizing that they were poisoning her. In turn, we see all of this not because some says are much, but by watching the way she looks from one to the other in suspicion, then the way the react to the doctor picking up the wrong cup of coffee, and watching her expression change in realization. It was an amazing scene.

The role of mother was a significantly changed one. In this movie, Sebastian's mother was fairly strong and powerful. She held and extreme amount of control over her son and she seemed to know exactly what to do in every situation. She was very manipulative and evil. She even sat by Alicia's bed sewing as Alicia slowly died from the poison the mother was administering her.

Her actions, however, did mirror some of Hitchcock's life, however. He talks about how his mother was a very strong influence in his life. Similarly, Sebastian almost reports to his mother about his life. She knew everything about what was going on in the house. Sebastian even came into her room when he realized that Alicia was actually a spy working for the United States government, sits by her bed, and wakes her up to tell her. She is the one he goes to when he has a problem.  

Shadow of a Doubt

Admittedly it was a little difficult to pay really close attention to the typical Hitchcockian traits in the movie because I was so disturbed by the overwhelming, almost suffocatingly “perfect” family life the main characters had. I watched to movie with a small group of friends and I certainly was not the only one who noticed how absurdly wide the mother's and Charlie's smiles were. It honestly looked painful. I did notice, however, that none of the central female characters were blonde. And I do not believe I heard anything about brandy, either, though there seemed to be a lot of fuss made over wine. One thing that was repeated was that the house number was number thirteen.

I am glad I watched the movie with other people, though, because they picked up on things I would not have. For instance, that there never seems to be a finished conversation. Everyone always seems to cut off each other and the subject is changed before the conversation is truly finished. It was not until my friend pointed this out to me that I started realizing how amazingly often it happened. As in, pretty much every conversation. When we were discussing it afterwards, another friend said that an English teacher, (commenting on a book that had similarly disjointed conversations,) once told her that this was a sign of a dysfunctional family. So maybe, even though Charlie's family looks so perfect, they are, in actuality, dysfunctional. Which makes sense when you think about the fact that the father is constantly discussing the perfect way to get away with murder; or that the mother is a little dense and seemingly out-of-touch; or that the little sister acts twice her age. And I hate to be the type that makes a comment like this one, but even considering that Charlie is Uncle Charlie's namesake, the two share a disturbingly intimate relationship. Having to consider that Hitchcock believes one can derive more about a person by watching them than by listening to them, one has to see the kind of looks that Charlie gives her uncle, or vice-versa, or that the two tend to be much closer, physically, than any other pairing in the entirety of the movie.

But setting the disturbing relationship aside, overall, this one was definitely not my favorite Hitchcock movie. The only thing that saved it was that my friends and I eventually dissolved the event into a Rifftrax moment. I was kind of upset that I disliked a Hitchcock film. But I suppose I cannot like them all. . .