Patricia Highsmith's The Strangers On A Train
Based on a Patricia Highsmith novel The Strangers on a Train (1951) revolves around the inexplicable and unnatural link between Bruno Antony (Robert Walker) and Guy Haines (Farley Granger) which is established from the very first shot. Hitchcock draws parallel between the two. The opening shots introduce us to two pairs of men’s feet as their owners arrive at the station, the shoes characterise the two-one showy, vulgar, brown-and-white brogues and the other plain, unadorned walking shoes. Visual parallel is established through editing, otherwise it would have been a mere contrast. It is Guy’s foot that accidently knocks Bruno and it is not Bruno who has engineered the meeting. But he knows all about Guy and his private life & already has a plan rather contrived ready at hand for swaping
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In his book Wylie claims that “of any civilization except ours in which an tire division of men has been used, during wartime . . . to spell out the word ‘mom’ on a drill field” (184). Wylie’s book is the most vitriolic attack ever launched on the American way of living-from politicians to professors to businessmen to Mom to sexual mores to religion. The book ranks with the works of De Tocqueville and Emerson in defining the American character and malaise. It wages war on all forms of American hypocrisy. Mom, mother, motherhood, maternity, eternity these were the charming words that echoed the American countryside during the 1950s. According to Erik H.Erikson in the psychosexual development of American character the centrality of “momism” has its own significance and he describes it as “a stereotyped caricature of existing contradictions which have emerged from intense, rapid, and as yet unintegrated changes in American history” (291). He continues his discussion
In his book Wylie claims that “of any civilization except ours in which an tire division of men has been used, during wartime . . . to spell out the word ‘mom’ on a drill field” (184). Wylie’s book is the most vitriolic attack ever launched on the American way of living-from politicians to professors to businessmen to Mom to sexual mores to religion. The book ranks with the works of De Tocqueville and Emerson in defining the American character and malaise. It wages war on all forms of American hypocrisy. Mom, mother, motherhood, maternity, eternity these were the charming words that echoed the American countryside during the 1950s. According to Erik H.Erikson in the psychosexual development of American character the centrality of “momism” has its own significance and he describes it as “a stereotyped caricature of existing contradictions which have emerged from intense, rapid, and as yet unintegrated changes in American history” (291). He continues his discussion