Tag: Thriller

Film Review: Strangers on a Train

It may have come about as a result of an exhausting train journey I endured a few days ago or possibly because it’s Wimbledon fortnight – tennis being a daily headline at the moment. Maybe it happened because of both of these things or perhaps neither. However yesterday, Hitchcock’s 1951 thriller popped into my mind, vied for my attention and consequently prompted me to put pen to paper, so to speak.

Actually I’m surprised after looking back at the titles I’ve reviewed for this website over the past sixteen months that I’ve only reviewed one other Hitchcock film – North by Northwest. After all, I am a great admirer of his work. Maybe I’ve restrained myself on account of his films having been so extensively written about already but then, when one thinks of his best known films, Strangers on a Train often gets overlooked. And yet for me, it’s one of his finest efforts.

The plot is a simple one and I shall refrain from giving too much away for those who might not yet have seen it. It begins with a chance encounter between two men on a train. Guy Haines (Farley Granger) is a semi-famous tennis player (ergo the Wimbledon connection) with designs on a political career, a slut of a wife, Miriam (Laura Elliott) whom he’s hoping to divorce and a real dish of a girlfriend, Anne Morton (Ruth Roman) who just happens to be the daughter of a senator (Leo G. Carroll). The other man, Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker) is a smooth-talking weirdo with a worrying line in small talk. The two men chat over lunch in Bruno’s compartment and Bruno, who is aware of Guy’s private life via the gossip columns, explains his idea for the perfect murder. A simple criss-cross theory. Two complete strangers with nothing to connect them, swap the murders they would like to commit thereby absolving themselves of any motive and giving the police no clue as to the guilty parties. Bruno says that he’ll murder Guy’s unfaithful wife, leaving him free to marry Anne if Guy will murder Bruno’s overbearing father. Naturally enough, Guy makes a polite but hasty exit from the train compartment however, unfortunately for him, Bruno thinks a deal has been made.

Sometime later, Bruno follows Miriam and her two boyfriends to an amusement park and after a short boat ride, he strangles the life out of her in the darkness on the Isle of Love. Meanwhile Guy is on a train chatting to a drunk college professor who turns out to be an unreliable witness when, called by the police to corroborate Guy’s alibi claim, says he can’t remember their meeting. Guy is shocked and horrified that Bruno actually went ahead and murdered Miriam and is repeatedly harassed by Bruno and told that he now has no choice but to kill Bruno’s father. What ensues is a sublimely constructed thriller, perfectly paced, with just the right amount of humour (supplied in the main by Patricia Hitchcock who plays Anne’s younger sister Barbara) to make it still scary yet hugely entertaining.

Fade outs to black and swipes between scenes are replaced by a quick editing style and often cross-cutting between Guy and Bruno via their dialogue and movements, thereby seamlessly moving from scene to scene, the tempo never letting up. Strangers on a Train is a masterclass in how to build tension all the way to the finale and in true Hitchcock fashion, the climax takes place within a great visual location – this time aboard an out of control carousel spinning like a centrifuge. Implausible it may be with Guy’s legs flailing behind him like a sequence from The Simpsons but the skill behind the execution is evident in its greatness. With fighting and explosions and splintering wooden horses and screaming children it’s an incredible blend of close-ups, miniatures and background projections.

In my humble opinion, the film is worth watching for the Oscar nominated black and white cinematography alone. The gorgeous use of light and shadow is perhaps some of the finest of any Hitchcock film and it would see cinematographer Robert Burks begin a fourteen year run with the director and shooting every one of his remaining pictures with the exception of Psycho in 1960. The lighting is frequently dark and moody and choice camera angles and optical effects – so typical of Hitchcock’s style – add to the overall atmosphere of the film and keep the visuals interesting without ever going too far. There are several almost surreal shots from intriguing angles but perhaps the most famous shot of all (and one that is still studied in academic circles) is when Bruno strangles Miriam at the amusement park, the moment captured in the reflection of her glasses after they fall to the ground during her brief struggle. It’s simply cinematic perfection. Numerous other little blink-and-you’ll-miss-them gems are peppered throughout the film – Guy wiping lipstick off his face before meeting Anne’s father, Bruno’s shadow in the tunnel of love looming over his intended victim, Bruno again standing alone on the Jefferson Memorial, his dark figure an unwelcome stain on the white purity of the structure’s marble. It’s these subtleties, telling us the audience so much, that reveal the genius of the director.

The casting is spot on from the clean-cut figure of Guy Haines to Marion Lorne who plays Bruno’s befuddled mother (another character that adds a little comedy) but the performance of the movie and – one would argue – of his life, comes from Robert Walker. He’s just superb; charming, erudite, a bit of a dandy, but dark, deeply unbalanced, brooding. It was a role meant for him and I couldn’t imagine anyone else doing as good a job as he did. Sadly he died two months after the film’s release aged just 32 but his performance here will live on and be lauded for as long as people watch films.

Of course, all this visual brilliance starts with the written word and this came from a novel of the same name by Patricia Highsmith. In the end there would be numerous differences between novel and screenplay and Hitchcock had a bit of a hard time getting the script he wanted. Originally, he had hopes for a proven writer to lend the project some clout and was looking at people like John Steinbeck and Dashiell Hammett but they showed little interest. Raymond Chandler wrote a draft but fell foul of Hitchcock when the two couldn’t get along and so after a suggestion from Ben Hecht – who had already written Spellbound and Notorious for Hitchcock but was unavailable – he hired Hecht’s assistant Czenzi Ormonde. She was a fair haired beauty who had no formal screen credit but had recently published a collection of short stories which was well received by critics. At their first meeting, Hitchcock encouraged her to forget all about Highsmith’s book and proceeded to tell her the entire story himself. It clearly worked because the film has a crisp linearity from beginning to end and a leanness to every scene. There’s no wasted dialogue and not a single unnecessary frame.

Bottom line – a true classic.

 

Book Review: Sharp Objects, by Gillian Flynn

Due to the recent success of Flynn’s Gone Girl, many people are now coming to her earlier offerings – Sharp Objects, and Dark Places – having already read her runaway bestseller. As a result, this book is underrated by many, as they inevitably compare it to Gone Girl and find it lacking. To some extent, this is understandable, as there is no doubt that Flynn’s writing ability has naturally progressed since she wrote her first novel, and while Sharp Objects has an outstanding emotional plot of its own, the mystery is not on par with the brilliance of Gone Girl.

It is much like reading Her Fearful Symmetry after having fallen in love with The Time Traveller’s Wife; the style is there, but the plot is lacking that ineffable quality that made Niffenegger’s debut so utterly delectable.

Unlike Her Fearful Symmetry, which genuinely is a literary travesty when compared to its predecessor, Sharp Objects holds its own and should be afforded the credit it deserves. It does not have a plot line as riveting and unpredictable as Gone Girl, yet it is not the plot for which the book should be praised, but the characters who populate a small town in Missouri named Wind Gap. The are all utterly, and without exception, the one thing that fiction writers tend to shy away from as much as possible:

Ugly.

Yet they are not ugly in a physical sense, but in a psychological sense, and ugly to such an alarming degree that there is not a single redeeming feature, in any anyone from this town. It is a town of hostile, judgemental, hypocritical, shallow mind people.

It is to this town that Camille Parker, the novel’s narrator, must return, and in Camille herself, we find the ugliest character of all. Her damage however is not entirely her own doing, but a result of circumstance, as we begin to discover as she returns to her family home. With an adored sister who died when Camille was 13, an incomprehensibly abominable mother, a step-father who never acknowledges her, and a disturbing half-sister she does not know, it is no wonder Camille is reticent about her return. Her editor however insists upon it, and so she finds herself reporting on what he believes to be the beginnings of a serial killing spree, and the killer is targeting children.

This book is not an easy read. The prose is well written, although not quite yet developed to Flynn’s later flawless standard, and the pace is good, but the subject matter quite simply makes you squirm. That is, however, the intention. This book was not written to be enjoyed. It is about some deeply serious psychology, and the ways in which mental illness affects not only the people who suffer from a condition, but those around them. Camille, we discover early on, is a cutter (hence the title). Yet Flynn is not simply portraying this aspect of her character as it has so often been seen in the past – an almost childish cry for attention, or a result of extreme depression – she has truly explored the root causes of Camille’s condition and fully demonstrated just how destructive it is to every aspect of her life. Further, Camille not only cuts, but cuts words. She has literally covered almost every inch of herself with words gouged into her own flesh, by her own hand. This happens in people who suffer from psychotic decomposition, and have a level of intelligence that focuses their attention and energy on words and writing as a means of coping.

Flynn has certainly taken this condition, as well as aspects of the crimes Camille is investigating, to the absolute extremes. At times this makes the plot somewhat less than plausible, however she has done so for a reason. The violence is not gratuitous; the abhorrent behaviour of most of the characters is not there for ‘shock value’, or even for the sake of entertainment. Even Camille is purposefully described in the ugliest way possible, but again this is not done as a deliberate attempt to make the reader dislike her.

This is a book about damage. The damage mental illness does to a person, the damage the mentally ill can do to those around them if their conditions go untreated and they go without help, and the damage that normal, everyday people do to each other in the course of living their normal, everyday lives. This is the sort of book that shows you a few unpleasant home truths, as you see yourself reflected in the occasional action and realise how it looks to other people. This is the sort of story that lets you inside the head of a person who, due their outer ‘ugliness’ you would likely never befriend, would perhaps even defriend, but once you catch a glimpse of the reasons for Camille’s ugliness, you no longer see them as ugly, but simply different. You empathise. You want other characters to empathise too and like her, help her.

Camille’s childhood shaped her whole life: her personality, her flaws, her damage, can all be traced back to events she had no control over, and actions that were not her own. She is a product of damaged people, and as such cannot be blamed for her damage. To some extent, you even grow to forgive her for actions that would otherwise be incomprehensible. She is not without fault, but she is suddenly understandable.

She is also tragic, and by the end you are rooting for her in a way you wouldn’t have thought possible. You end up outraged on her behalf at what people have done, and continue to do to her, and ultimately at the fact that the one character you thought all along was one of the good ones, turns away from her when they see the ugliness she tries so hard to hide. You come away indignant that they couldn’t see past her physical flaws, empathise with her experiences, understand her as you have come to understand her, and find a way to help her. To love her.

The plot may not be scintillating, in places it is downright predictable, the prose might not be perfect, the characters may be inordinately unpleasant, and the topic may be brutal, but the story is brave. It is a subject that many skirt and most will baulk at; Flynn however has explored it to its outer reaches and reveals not only the ugly truth of it, but also the depth to which most people remain ignorant of that truth.