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Alfred Hitchcock's Film Strangers On A Train

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Around the 1950’s Hitchcock released one of his greatest thriller films, Strangers on a Train (1951). This film was essentially based on Patricia Highsmith’s novel. Even though the film incorporates many aspects of the novel, Hitchcock decided to change many parts of the novels plot. Some of his major changes were seen within the characters. First of all, in the novel Guy was not a tennis player, instead he was an architect. The plot in the novel was also completely different than the film. For instance, in the novel Guy actually went through with Bruno’s request by killing his father and ending up in jail. All while Bruno ended up dead from a boating accident. In Strangers on a Train, Hitchcock again uses a common theme we are used to seeing …show more content…

In the film, Bruno appears to be Guy’s doppelganger that does all the actions that Guys subconscious wishes he could do. Based on the scenes where Guy and Miriam are together, we see them violently arguing. Hitchcock purposefully shows the fighting scene in a shot from looking through the glass as an observer of their dysfunctional relationship. Based on this initial scene, the audience can tell that Guy has darker feelings of getting rid of Miriam. In Guy’s eyes he sees the divorce as a jail cell. The cinematic symbolism of this feeling of being locked in a jail cell is seen when Guy is talking with Bruno behind the gate. The gate bars seen upon Bruno’s face shows that he is the one who is more likely to end in jail because he is the one who murdered Miriam. While, Guy is standing opposite side of Bruno, Guy appears to be in the spot where the gate bars are not shown on his face. This shot of each men behind the gates suggests that Guy is now free of the holds that connected him to Miriam. The point of this scene was to prove that deep down Guy, was actually quite relieved that Miriam was now out of the way. Bruno’s character was like Guy’s evil subconscious coming to life and fulfilling Guy’s inner desires that he did not even realize were there. As for the moment the film starts, Hitchcock shows the shot of train tracks, which can imply the two sides to a person finally coming together as one. In the train tracks, there are two tracks that finally come together. The double train tracks can be seen as the moment Guy meets his doppelganger in the form of

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This paper will discuss the motif of the double in Strangers on a Train. While the double is a recurring motif in Hitchcock’s work that he routinely employs in order to explore questions of moral responsibility, identity, and guilt, it receives its most overt and thorough treatment in Strangers on a Train. Studies of the film have consistently understood Bruno as a stand in for Guy’s unspoken desire, the chaos held at bay by societal order - Guy does indeed want to ‘get rid of’ his wife, but he transfers this responsibility (and associated guilt) to Bruno (Walker; Wood; Dellolio; Truffaut). As Walker notes, in Hitchcock’s films, the double most often serves as an ‘alter ego’ that enacts the repressed/disavowed/unpermitted desires of another character. Indeed, as Walker points out, There is little ambiguity that this is precisely what Hitchcock meant to communicate in the film, as he has formally stated this in correspondence with Francois Truffaut:

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In Hitchcock’s Rear Window in the exposition scene itself we are introduced to invalid and wheelchair bound Jeffries a former photojournalist. His active involvement in the field of journalism is depicted through the photographs on the wall and from that the viewers comprehension that he was injured while covering a car race crash. Jeffries room itself is a reminder of a car crash and his profession. Without saying Jeffries profession Hitchcock uses this technique to introduce the character to his viewers who interprets it. The other film that was influenced by photojournalism is Psycho and according to Cynthia Erb the images displayed in the Biography programme based on the serial Killer Ed Gein whose story inspired Robert Bloch’s novel

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