Stars: Farley Granger, Ruth Roman, Robert Walker, Leo G. Carroll, Patricia Hitchcock, Laura Elliott, Marion Lorne
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Cinematography)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars
Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age. This month, our focus is on Ruth Roman-click here to learn more about Ms. Roma (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.
When I selected Ruth Roman as our star of the month, one of the main reasons I did so was I wanted to see her most noted film, Strangers on a Train. I didn't realize at the time that this would be a complicated decision in retrospect. Roman's time on Strangers was probably a mixed one. At this point in her (relatively short) career as a leading woman, she'd had a few hits (which we've profiled already here and here), and with this picture she was about to get her closest brush with immortality in what is generally considered to be one of Alfred Hitchcock's best pictures. However, personally this was a rough shoot for Roman. She and Hitchcock (who would never work together again) detested each other, with Hitch (after Jack Warner forced him to hire Roman, whom the director thought "lacked sex appeal") frequently harassing her. Hitchcock was known for his intense, in some cases predatory, treatment of his leading ladies, and one wonders how much Ruth Roman liked being most associated with a film that was hell for her to make. However, it is impossible to take a look at the career of Roman and not talk about Strangers, so here we are.
(Spoilers Ahead) The film centers on two men who meet by chance on a train (strangers, if you will): Guy Haines (Granger), a tennis star who in in a messy divorce with his cheating wife Miriam (Elliott), and who desperately wants to meet the classy senator's daughter Anne (Roman), and Bruno (Walker), a man who wants to kill his father so that he won't chastise him and will give him his fortune. Bruno proposes that the two men "swap murders," solving both of their problems, and Guy politely laughs, thinking the man is just being morbidly silly, but in fact Bruno is serious, and takes this chuckle as an agreement to the bargain. Bruno then does, in fact, kill Miriam (who has refused to grant Guy a divorce, ruining his chances at happiness), and the film unfolds with Bruno essentially blackmailing Guy into trying to commit the murder he didn't really agree to, all-the-while having planted enough suspicion on Guy that he might be able to pin Miriam's murder on the tennis player if he doesn't go along with the plan to kill his father. The film ends with a chase on a carousel (which apparently didn't use as much trick photography as you'd think, which makes this scene one of the most literally dangerous you'll probably ever see in an actual movie, as a man climbs under an actual moving carousel), and eventually the police reveal, despite him lying with his last breath, that Bruno is in fact the killer of Miriam, exonerating Guy to marry Anne.
The movie is great. I love Hitchcock in general, and so I was predisposed to this, but probably put it more in the camp of North by Northwest than a film like Vertigo or Notorious (I've never released my personal favorite Hitchcock list on this blog because I'd have to admit to not seeing a few classics, but this puts it right on the cusp of the 4-star brilliant ones and my 5-star beloveds). Walker is sensational in the role of a lifetime (sadly, he'd die almost immediately after this film so it wasn't a movie that he could capitalize on), and Granger looks sexy as hell as Guy. Obviously Anne is in love with Guy, but Bruno clearly is also (Hitchcock intended Bruno to be coded as gay, and it works-there's no confusing this for merely a brotherly swapped homicide), but who can blame him-Farley Granger in his tennis whites is the stuff that makes men realize their inclinations. The film's plot has been so borrowed from that watching it for the first time nearly seventy years later likely doesn't have the same impact that it did in 1951 (you can't fault the movie for that, though-it's not its own fault it was such a landmark), the acting from the likes of Walker is timeless enough it's still sensational.
Roman, our star of the month, continues her curse of having top-billing for supporting parts, and she's good in the film, acting lovely and occasionally getting some interesting scenes (particularly one at the tennis match), but she's no match for her female costars. Hitchcock's antipathy to her might have been because, for possibly the first time in his filmography, he gave the impossibly gorgeous woman the least interesting part in the picture. After all, Strangers on a Train is brimming with great supporting turns for the ladies, from Elliott's vicious Miriam to Patricia Hitchcock's brainy-but-oblivious Barbara (proving that nepotism can occasionally advantage the audience) to Lorne's doting, enabling, and probably knowing mother-of-the-murderer. Roman gets saddled with the love interest and doesn't really have enough script to stand out in a picture filled with standouts. At this point, Life Magazine had proclaimed "The Rise of Ruth Roman" across its cover, but in looking at her key films of the era, we haven't actually seen her rise to anything other than the woman-behind-the-man.
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