Back in 1950, Alfred Hitchcock hired Oscar-nominated screenwriter Raymond Chandler to pen the script for his next project, Strangers on a Train — a thriller based on Patricia Highsmith's novel of the same name. Almost immediately their ideas clashed and before long their working relationship deteriorated beyond repair, apparently culminating with Chandler remarking loudly one day, within earshot of the director, "Look at the fat bastard trying to get out of his car!"

Soon Chandler was let go; his drafts largely discarded. He wrote the following angry letter to Hitchcock some time later, after reading the final script.

NotPhil: > What I cannot understand is your permitting a script which after all had some life and vitality to be reduced to such a flabby mass of clichés, a group of faceless characters, and the kind of dialogue every screen writer is taught not to write—the kind that says everything twice and leaves nothing to be implied by the actor or the camera.

I think Chandler just didn't "get" Hitchcock. Chandler wrote about tough guys, toughing it out in a corrupt world. Hitchcock showed us regular people stumbling into a world of hidden agendas and mistaken understandings. Chandler played with words. Hitchcock orchestrated images. Chandler likes confusion and obfuscation. Hitchcock loves irony and suspense.

There's plenty of creativity and subtext in Hitchcock's films, it's just not the sort of creativity or subtext Chandler would easily notice.

To quote Ebert:

> Hitchcock said that correct casting saved him a reel in storytelling time, since audiences would sense qualities in the actors that didn't need to be spelled out. ... "Strangers on a Train" is not a psychological study, however, but a first-rate thriller with odd little kinks now and then. ... Hitchcock was a classical technician in controlling his visuals, and his use of screen space underlined the tension in ways the audience is not always aware of. ... The movie is usually ranked among Hitchcock's best ... and its appeal is probably the linking of an ingenious plot with insinuating creepiness.


posted 4488 days ago