The Story Archive

Strangers on a Train

Alfred Hitchcock · 1951 CE · Film · Modern / American · Contemporary

A tennis player is recognised in a club car by a talkative stranger who knows all about his marriage and proposes an exchange: each will remove the other's inconvenient person, and neither will have a motive. The player laughs it off and leaves his lighter behind, and days later the stranger reports his half done. Hitchcock hired Raymond Chandler and discarded his script, then built the carousel over live machinery.

Open Strangers on a Train in the archive — filters, lineage graph and full facet browsing.

Lineage

Attributes

Genre
ThrillerCrime / NoirPsychological
Theme
Guilt & ConscienceTemptationObsessionAppearance vs Reality
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
EverymanThe DoubleShadow
Plot structure
Ironic ReversalThe Chase
Symbol / motif
The TrainThe Fair / CarnivalBlindness / The Eye
Conflict
vs Personvs Self
Mode / tone
NoirIronic
Culture / tradition
Modern / American

Closest analogues