Strangers On A Train (1951)

A famous tennis player (Farley Granger) meets an elegant stranger (Robert Walker) on a train. The stranger recognizes the tennis star and knowing something of his personal life proposes that since each of them has someone they want to get rid of, that they exchange murders. He would kill the tennis star's slutty wife (Kasey Rogers) and the athlete would kill the father (Jonathan Hale) he despises. The tennis player takes it as a bizarre joke but when his wife is murdered and he is implicated, it's a race against time to prove his innocence. Based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith and directed by Alfred Hitchcock. One of Hitch's greatest films, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN is a clever (Raymond Chandler co-wrote the script) intense thriller that pulls you in right from the beginning and never lets go until its spectacular finale. The film contains three of Hitchcock's best set pieces: the murder of the wife, the cross cutting of the tennis game with Walker desperately trying to retrieve the cigarette lighter and, of course, the out of control carousel. It's Walker's best performance, he would go on to make only one more film before his premature death. Witty, suspenseful, well acted, everything one could ask for in a thriller. Dimitri Tiomkin contributes one of his very best scores. With Ruth Roman, Leo G. Carroll, Patricia Hitchcock (very good), Norma Varden, Robert Gist and in a marvelous turn, Marion Lorne as Walker's dotty mother proving the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.