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Strangers on a Train (1951)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock · Shot by Robert Burks · Cut by William H. Ziegler · Music by Dimitri Tiomkin · 101 min
How it was made
- Hitchcock bought the film rights to Patricia Highsmith's novel for just $7,500, deliberately keeping his name out of the negotiations so the price would not rise.
- Raymond Chandler was hired and fired as screenwriter after producing two drafts Hitchcock did not use, but Warner Bros. insisted his name stay on the credits for its marketing value even though virtually none of his writing survived into the final script.
- With less than three weeks before East Coast location shooting began, the final screenplay was written through the nights by Czenzi Ormonde, associate producer Barbara Keon and Hitchcock's wife Alma Reville, who added the runaway merry-go-round, the cigarette lighter and the thick eyeglasses.
- Cinematographer Robert Burks, shooting his first of many Hitchcock films, executed the strangulation of Miriam as a reflection captured in the lens of her fallen eyeglasses, a shot Hitchcock said he had been trying to work out for twenty years.
- Hitchcock personally chose the litter used as sewer debris in the storm-drain scene, selecting an orange peel, a chewing-gum wrapper, wet leaves and a crumpled bit of paper, and designed Bruno's lobster necktie with claws that appear to strangle in close-up.
Behind the scenes
Elsewhere
More by Alfred Hitchcock
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