STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (1951) (B+) - Alfred Hitchcock directs this juicy thriller, based on the Patricia Highsmith novel about two men who meet on a train and discuss helping each out with a murder that would ease each others' lives. The story drags on too long, but the two leads are worth the price of a ticket.
Farley Granger ("They Live by Night") steps up his game as tennis star Guy Haines, who needs a divorce from his frumpy wife so that he can marry the wealthy daughter of a U.S. senator. Bruno Antony (Robert Walker) is a smooth-talking sociopath who proposes the plan so that he can get out from under his oppressive father, who is denying Bruno his inheritance. Actually, this is all Bruno's concoction, and when Guy's wife turns up dead, what was proposed as dual crimes with perfect alibis becomes a new twist on blackmail that has Guy in a bind.
Hitchcock locks in on a durable MacGuffin -- Guy's monogrammed cigarette lighter -- and hammers away at it to great effect throughout the movie. Elsewhere, he traffics in noir tropes while offering fresh visual takes. An extended scene of a tennis match is wonderfully rendered, with the perfect use of body doubles (unless Granger was a tennis ace) and believable outcomes.
Bruno grows a bit tiring, and this should have been wrapped up in 90 minutes, but make sure to stick around for the climactic showdown that takes place on an out-of-control merry-go-round. It's hectic.
SPOTTED: Bruno's mother is played by Marion Lorne, who would go on to play dippy Aunt Clara on TV's "Bewitched."
THE SEARCHERS (1956) (B) - Even grading on a curve to account for the 1950s/1860s racism that should be long buried, this epic from John Ford is tonally inconsistent and a tad too long. It provides a forum for a gruff and grumpy John Wayne to rant about Indians and play out a revenge fantasy.
I have to say, the opening shot of the movie is gorgeous. We see the silhouette of Martha Edwards (Dorothy Jordan) stepping into the doorway of the family cabin, the colorful scrubland and mesas of Texas (actually Utah or Arizona, where the movie was filmed) sprawled out before her. It is the arrival of Wayne as Ethan Edwards, her brother-in-law, returning three years after the end of the Civil War, having done mop-up work for the Confederacy. It is suggested that she and Ethan have a history, but Martha and Ethan's brother, Aaron (Walter Coy), have two lovely daughters and a son. Soon, that family, except for the daughters, will be killed when that cabin is set aflame by Native Americans.
Ethan sets out on a years-long mission to rescue those girls, one of whom will grow up to be a teenage Natalie Wood. Wayne eventually teams up with Martin (Jeffrey Hunter), the girls' adopted older brother, to drive deep into Comanche country. Martin leaves behind Laurie (a histrionic Vera Miles), who pines for the handsome young man.
The putdowns of the Comanches are hard to abide, and enmity aside, the dialogue can be clunky and overwrought. Ford and writer Frank Nugent crafted a compelling version of "Moby Dick," but it's just too difficult to revert to that stagnant era of Cowboys & Indians from the Boomers' childhood.
SPOTTED: Ken Curtis, who would play deputy Festus Haggen in TV's "Gunsmoke" a decade later, plays plays goofy Charlie, who woos Vera Miles while her true love is away.
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