CO-PICKS OF THE WEEK: CLASSICS

STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (Also Blu-ray) (Four Stars)

U.S.: Alfred Hitchcock: 1951 (Warner Bros. Home Video).

Two strangers meet on a train: handsome social-climbing star tennis pro Guy Haines (Farley Granger) and charming rich-kid psychopath Bruno Antony (Robert Walker). Since they both have someone “ruining” their lives — Guy’s slutty wife Miriam (Laura Elliot), who’s balking at his divorce and remarriage plans, and Bruno’s stern, exasperated father (Jonathan Hale), who’s fed up with his crazy son’s dangerous antics — Bruno proposes, seemingly playfully, that he and Guy swap murders. Each will kill the other’s nemesis while establishing unshakable alibis for the deaths of their “real” victims. Guy thinks he’s kidding, but Bruno is dead serious.

Soon one victim is dead and the two men have become unlikely (and in Guy’s case, unwilling) partners-in- crime, protagonist and antagonist in a stunning visual narrative that includes such classic Hitchcockian suspense set-pieces as Bruno’s deadly stalking of all-too-willing Miriam in the nocturnal carnival (with the murder eerily reflected in the victim’s glasses), Bruno’s desperate retrieval of the tell-tale lighter in the storm drain, and the film’s final explosive fight and wild climax on the out-of-control merry-go-round.

This classic portrayal of murder, guilt, transference and homoeroticism is one of Hitchcock‘s best: a superb film noir adapted from Patricia Highsmith’s classic literary thriller, with an amazing performance — blood-chilling, hilarious and strangely moving — by Walker as Bruno, that charmingly twisted rich boy who won’t take “no” for an answer. The supporting cast includes Ruth Roman as Guy’s disturbed ed new fiancee Anne, Leo G. Carroll as Anne‘s patrician U.S. Senator father, Marion Lorne, priceless as Bruno’s dotty mother,  Robert Gist as Guy’s policeman pal Hennessy, and Hitch’s daughter Patricia Hitchcock as Anne’s spunky sister Barbara, who thinks murder is an entertainment. Raymond Chandler was one of  the screenwriters, and, as in his collaboration with Billy Wilder on Double Indemnity, Chandler didn‘t get along with Hitchcock. The exemplary black and white cinematography is by Hitchcock‘s ‘50s mainstay, Robert Burks. It’s true that Hitchcock’s Strangers ona Train is not as dark, nor as truthful, as Highsmith’s book. But it’s a great entertainment all the same; Walker’s performance alone makes it a classic. And Hitch probably would have made it darker if the system had let him.

This is the shorter 101 minute original  American release version of Strangers on a Train; the package also has fewer extras than the 2004 DVD release.

CO-PICK: WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? 50^th Anniversary Edition (Blu-ray) (Four Stars)

U.S.: Robert Aldrich, 1962 (Warner Bros.)

Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, bitter rivals for most of their careers, got two of their best roles when they were cast opposite each other by director Robert Aldrich as the house-bound Hudson Sisters, Blanche (Crawford) and Baby Jane (Davis) —  two ex-movie stars turned eccentric L. A. recluses — in this scary, mesmerizing, darkly funny, sometimes deeply touching suspense classic.

Together with Billy Wilder’s Sunset Blvd., it’s the cinematic sine qua non of Hollywood grand guignol,  both sharply observant of the seedy, more cynical side of the Hollywood Golden Age, and a nightmare comedy deliciously drenched in its pop mythos. When Bette’s character, the washed up one-time child star Baby Jane, starts her ferocious campaign against her wheelchair bound sister Blanche (who was an MGM romantic goddess when Jane’s career fell apart), it’s the start of one of Hollywood’s great movie diva feuds, onstage as well as off.

The rest of the cast supports them with style. Rotund (and then some)  Victor Buono is perfect as the fat mama’s boy pianist. So are Marjorie Bennett  as his gargoyle of a mama, Wesley Addy and Bert Freed as wised-up studio guys, Maidie Norman as the good housekeeper and Anna Lee as the Hudson sisters’ kind neighbor. Adapted from Henry Farrell’s novel by screenwriter Lukas Heller; shot and edited by two masters, Ernest Haller (Gone With the Wind) and Michael Luciano (Kiss Me Deadly) this is a grisly, poignant masterpiece. If you aren’t both chilled and moved by Baby Jane’s line on the beach toward the end (“You mean all these years we could have been friends?”), your heart is hard indeed. But that’s Hollywood.

Extras: Commentary by Charles Busch and John Epperson; Three documentary profiles on Davis and Crawford; Behind the Scenes Featurette; TV Excerpt from The Andy Williams Show, with Davis; Trailer.

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