Strangers on a Train (1951)

This week on The Spectator Film Podcast… Strangers on a Train (1951) 12.7.18Featuring: Austin, Maxx Commentary starts at 28:35 — Notes — Hitchcock’s Films Revisited by Robin Wood — There are several iterations of this book, the first in 1965 and the latest in 2002 – I reckon they’re all worth reading, but I’m linking to the one I happen to own. I highly recommend this book. I’m always struck by the clarity and sincerity of Robin Wood’s criticism, and this book is no exception. I think it works incredibly well as both an introduction to Hitchcock’s work and as a critical counterweight, as Hitchcock scholarship often feels dominated by Lacan and psychoanalysis.  “‘Strangers on a Train’: A Technically Perfect Psychological Carousel as One of Hitchcock’s Best” from Cinephilia & Beyond — A typically exhaustive and incredible blog post on Strangers on a Train from Cinephilia & Beyond. I don’t believe we’ve linked to this website before, but it’s absolutely one of the best film study resources on the internet and I highly recommend it to any listeners. (They’re also asking for donations to keep the site up. Just sayin’…) Hitchcock by François Truffaut — Essential reading for any cinephile, this famous book doesn’t interrogate Hitchcock’s work to the same degree as some of the other resources we’ve listed, but it’s a wonderful read and lots of fun.  Here’s a link to Raymond Chandler’s amusingly grumpy letter chiding Hitchcock for his dismissal from the film. Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Lacan (But Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock) edited by Slavoj Žižek — Here’s some of the better Lacanian criticism of Hitchcock, of which you can a lot. I’d recommend this as a decent entry point for this type of scholarship – at least, as decent as you might find with Lacanian psychoanalysis. “The Strange, Difficult History of Queer Coding” by Tricia Ennis — Here’s a very thorough and thoughtful article from Syfy WIRE on the practice of “Queer Coding,” which we discuss in reference to the way Hitchcock tends to establish character. Corrections John Steinbeck, Dashiell Hammett, and Thornton Wilder never actually worked on the script, but were simply asked to work on the film and rejected the offer. Barbara Keon is the name of the associate producer who aided Alma Reville and Czenzi Ormonde in writing the final screenplay.