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Just what I expected

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

I'm delighted to read these many user reviews that revealed the same impression I had after first seeing this jewel. It's a magnificent exhibition of all the best Hitchock; tricks from the utterly absurd but nonetheless believable (by the time we near the end of the film) story, through complex interacting scenarios to brilliant and complex scene settings (check out that amusement park), fabulous directing (menacing hands everywhere), moody cinematography etc. etc. This is clearly one of Hitchcock's best films.

Alfred Hitchcock induced Chandler to break his self-imposed exile from Hollywood for Strangers on a Train (1951). Here we have another screen classic - like Double Indemnity - for which Chandler is not given due credit. Part of this lapse is due to Hitchcock himself who, in later interviews, constantly derided Chandler's contribution. "The work he did was no good," good old Hitch complained to many a celebrated critic. But despite the Chandler script's supposed lack of quality, super-indulgent old Hitch had used it anyway. Adapted from a Patricia Highsmith story, the Chandler hand is evident not only in the inward-twisting plot and contrastingly classy and gaudy atmosphere, but in the tensely nervy and often cynical dialogue, - and even more particularly in the characterization of the festeringly bizarre but remarkably personable psychopath so brilliantly played here by Robert Walker.

A very good Hitchcock with one of my very favourite sequences at the end. The film starts at a great pace, all feet and shoes and rapid movement. The we are rattling along in the train, point of view, tracks and points disappearing beneath the wheels. The best dialogue in the film then ensues as Robert Walker beguiles us as he tries to do the same with Farley Granger. Its a great notion at the heart of the film but the fine dialogue is not kept up. Raymond Chandler purportedly thought the film rather 'silly' and seems to have given up writing the script. Indeed the middle section does flop about a bit, as we contemplate just how clever or mad Walker's character is and get rather fed up of Granger's indecision. I'm sure there are tennis fans that will describe the sporting scenes as some of the best in cinema, but really, the prolonged match is surely carrying the notion of 'suspense' just a little too far. Take nothing away from the final act, however, once Walker sets off once more for the fairground, dropping the lighter on the way, and leading on to the sensational carrousel scene, there is no stopping the director as we whoop with delight at the same time falling off the edge of our seat.

There are intellectual thrillers and then there are Alfred Hitchcock's intellectual thrillers! Being the guy that invented the entire genre, the famous director tries and produces one of his best works in a intertwined story about a perfect murder scheme created by the random meeting in a train. Basic plot so simple that it's genius will go on to produce some of the genre's best concepts and a dramatic finale that will justify the director's reputation for making immaculate crime stories for the big screen. „Strangers on a train" is a great movie in any era, a perfect crime story that stood the test of time and a homework for the generations of movie creators that followed it.