Film Forum

U.S., 1951
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Starring Farley Granger, Robert Walker, Ruth Roman, Leo G. Carroll, Patricia Hitchcock
Screenplay by Raymond Chandler, Whitfield Cook, Czenzi Ormonde
DCP. Approx. 101 min.
 
“Your wife. My father. Criss cross.” Cheerful psycho Robert Walker makes fellow train passenger/tennis pro Farley Granger an interesting proposition: quid pro quo murders. Just a joke, but… Tour de force sequences include a tennis match intercut with a fairground stalking and a carousel gone haywire.

Reviews

“A FIRST-RATE THRILLER with odd little kinks now and then… Usually ranked among Hitchcock’s best, its appeal is probably the linking of an ingenious plot with insinuating creepiness.”
– Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

“A GRIPPING, PALM-SWEATING PIECE OF SUSPENSE!”
– Variety

“Hitchcock’s bizarre, malicious comedy, in which the late Robert Walker brought sportive originality to the role of the chilling wit, dear degenerate Bruno; it’s intensely enjoyable – in some ways the best of Hitchcock’s American films… the high point of excitement and amusement is Bruno trying to recover his cigarette lighter while Guy plays a fantastically nerve-racking tennis match. Even this high point isn’t what we remember best – which is Robert Walker.  It isn’t often that people think about a performance in a Hitchcock movie; usually what we recall are bits of ‘business’ – the stump finger in THE 39 STEPS, the windmill turning the wrong way in FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, etc. But Walker’s performance is what gives this movie much of its character and its peculiar charm.”
– Pauline Kael