Strangers on a Train
By Kit Macdonald
"With these fibres of fate Alfred Hitchcock weaves the startling adventure that marked one man's conscience with another man's evil!" The Master of Suspense's nerve-shredding 1951 thriller has an ingenious yet simple premise: what if two men who wished to commit murder "swapped" murders, so both could avert suspicion and avoid being caught? Farley Granger's famous tennis player Guy is engaged in conversation in his train carriage by Robert Walker's psychopathic Bruno, who knows an unsettling amount about Guy's private life. He suggests the deal, under which he will kill Guy's cheating wife, leaving him free to marry his fiancee, a Senator's daughter, and Guy will reciprocate by killing Bruno's father. Bruno carries out his side of the deal with relish, and then embarks on an increasingly chilling, creepy campaign to force Guy to carry out his.
It's one of Hitchcock's finest films, as well as a call to arms for anyone who dreads being accosted on public transport.