Being a Christian can sometimes be tricky, as the last scene in Strangers on a Train (1951) attests.  Guy Haines (Farley Granger) and Anne Morton (Ruth Roman) are on the eponymous transport when a member of the clergy recognizes Guy as the up-and-coming tennis player that he is, congratulating him on his career.  This bit of Christian kindness goes unreturned as Anne and Guy hurriedly rise to find seats in another compartment.  We will get to why this rudeness occurs in a moment.  Since this is the last shot of the film, we do not get to see how this man of the cloth fully reacts to his entreaty.  It came, though, from a place of friendliness, an approach to which God calls us to for all we meet.  Unfortunately, as we shall see, there are those who take advantage of such an attitude.

At first, the Strangers on a Train are unfamiliar to us, director Alfred Hitchcock only showing us the shoes of two men as they board a locomotive in New York bound for Washington, D.C.  They are finally revealed to us when they inadvertently bump feet with one another from across the aisle shortly after departing.  It is Bruno Antony (Robert Walker) who does the same thing to Guy as described in the previous paragraph.  Guy is flattered by the attention, but the amount of information Bruno seems to know about the athlete, and Guy’s forwardness, are off-putting.  Nonetheless, Bruno convinces Guy to lunch together in the former’s compartment.  Again, kindness is a virtue, and something to keep in mind about Guy.  To make their interaction more awkward, Bruno starts talking about murder.  One of the things that has been reported about Guy is the fact that he is filing for a divorce.  He wants to do this because he is now dating Anne, the daughter of a United States Senator, though their relationship is supposedly private.  Once more, Guy knows.  He has a situation of his own, namely Mr. Antony (Jonathan Hale), his father.  According to Bruno, Mr. Antony is domineering, and the son wishes to be free of this burden.  Hence, Bruno proposes that they take care of each other’s problems.  He claims it is the perfect crime, with neither of them previously being acquainted with one another.  Luckily, the train pulls into Metcalf at this juncture, and Guy quickly gets off since this is his stop, but leaves behind his lighter engraved with his and Anne’s initials.  He has come to this small town in order to finalize divorce proceedings with his wife, Miriam Joyce Haines (Kasey Rogers).  Though the idea had originally been hers, and she is pregnant with another man’s baby, she now refuses to end the marriage.  Guy sees all his plans, primarily with Anne, crumbling, and angrily shakes her before leaving her place of employment.  The confrontation is also witnessed by a number of people.  They, along with Anne later on the phone, also hear him say that he could break Miriam’s neck because of her obstinance.  Nonetheless, he leaves town to return to Washington, D.C. and Anne, but not before hanging up on an odd call from Bruno.  Speaking of him, he comes to Metcalf and begins stalking Miriam.  She goes out with two guys and he follows them to an amusement park.  After doing some of the typical things one does at these places, they go through the tunnel of love and onto the Magic Isle.  This seems to be a place where people go to make out, or more, God forbid.  In this case, Bruno does something different that God forbids, and that is strangles Miriam to death.  Before Guy can enter his home, he is met by Bruno.  With police knocking on his door, Bruno tells Guy that the former has killed Miriam, and that it is now the latter’s turn to off Mr. Antony.  Guy protests, saying he is going to talk to the authorities, but Bruno says that would make the young man an accessory to murder.  Shaken, Guy ends up going to Anne’s place where her father, Senator Morton (Leo G. Carroll), informs Guy of Miriam’s demise.  Guy feigns shock but does not tell them what he knows, hoping to keep the intact the good reputation of the politician’s family.  From here, Bruno keeps appearing in Guy’s life, either in person or by sending messages to the erstwhile accomplice.  Bruno steadily begins insinuating himself into Guy’s life, all the while threatening to bring evidence to the police that it had been Guy who had committed the crime.  Bruno is becoming a nuisance when he pretends to choke a woman at a social gathering, being set off by Anne’s sister, Barbara Morton (Patricia Hitchcock), who looks a bit like Anne.  Seeing Barbara in the process of his mock strangulation causes Bruno to apply more force than anticipated before fainting.  Upon coming to, Bruno makes it clear that Guy must fulfill his end, later sending him a gun.  That night, taking the map of the Antony estate Bruno provided, as well as the gun, Guy goes ostensibly to do the deed.  Yet, in the darkened bedroom, Guy instead warns Mr. Antony of Bruno’s intentions.  Unfortunately, it is Bruno who greets Guy.  Because of this betrayal, Bruno now vows to return to the amusement park to plant the evidence that will implicate Guy.  Hoping to maintain appearances but get to the location before Bruno, Guy attempts to defeat his opponent at his next tennis match as quickly as possible.  The contest goes longer than expected, but Guy is helped when Bruno accidentally drops the lighter in a sewer grate, wasting much time retrieving it.  Not long after his victory, Guy slips out of the stadium and gets a taxi to the train station.  He arrives at the amusement park as Bruno is in line for the Tunnel of Love.  There are also a number of police officers present, and the one man who identified Bruno the night of the murder.  Bruno loses his cool and tries to escape, but is cut off by Guy.  They end up on the merry-go-round, the operator felled by a stray bullet from a cop, causing it to spin wildly.  The ride is violently stopped by an ancient park employee.  Guy is thrown off though unhurt, but Bruno is mortally wounded.  Still, with his dying breath, he is trying to pin Miriam’s death on Guy.  What saves Guy is the witness and the lighter falling from Bruno’s dying hand.

This takes us back to the end of Strangers on a Train that I described in the introduction.  It is a good litmus test for us to ask whether we would do as Guy did at the beginning and engage in conversation with those unfamiliar to us. Increasingly, it seems to me that people assume that by doing so, you will end up in a situation like Guy.  That could, indeed, happen, but how likely is it?  God does not ask us to look at the world in such a negative manner.  Ultimately, if someone is plotting ill against us, there is little we can do to stop it outside of becoming a hermit.  That lifestyle, by the way, is still practiced by some in the Catholic Church, though even then you could have some sadly deranged individual come looking for you.  Instead, we must face the world in as Christ-like a manner as possible.  Guy exemplifies these traits, though he is by no means perfect.  Shaking Miriam as he does, and then talking about wishing her death did not help matters.  Had he remained calm instead of responding to her threats by making his own, he could have walked away from the situation with a clearer conscience.  Further, the better decision would have been to immediately go to the police and be open about Bruno.  He sort of does this when they bring him in for questioning, but leaves out knowing anything about Bruno, particularly when the one witness who could give him an alibi proved to be too drunk at the time to remember him.  One thing I was recently reminded of while listening to The Catechism in a Year podcast is how sin is something that does not hurt solely ourselves, but the entire body of Christ.  We can see this with the lengths to which Guy goes to conceal his involvement.  He does deserves some credit for wanting to protect the Morton’s good name.  Yet, they slowly become more involved in the scheme, much to their detriment.  Everything works out for Guy in the end, but he could have saved himself some trouble by avoiding sin.

In thinking about Strangers on a Train, I began wondering where it ranks in terms of my favorite Hitchcock movies.  It is certainly near the top.  In describing it to my sister after the fact, I admitted to the final scene with the merry-go-round literally making me sweat.  Normally, I would not recommend a film like this one, but its ending has me saying otherwise.