When Hitchcock Went Gay: ‘Strangers On A Train’ And ‘Rope’

Alfred Hitchcock was born on August 13, 1899, and in honor of the famed auteur’s 115th birthday, we’ve declared it Hitchcock Week on Decider. Click here to follow our coverage.

Alfred Hitchcock knew what made audiences uncomfortable — stalking, birds, fires, toilets — and he often used those things with a heavy hand to create a general unease in both his films’ characters and in those who watched his movies in darkened movie houses. Very often these subjects were taboo — so much so that Hitchcock (and to be fair, other directors as well) went to great lengths to insert certain imagery and motifs into their films in ways that bypassed the puritanical production code forced upon Hollywood films in the first half of the 20th Century. One subtext that made American audiences particularly ill at ease? Homosexuality. And Hitchcock took advantage of that, making queerness a central theme in many of his films.

Rebecca, based on the wildly popular Daphne du Maurier novel, featured the fiendish Mrs. Danvers, a surly housekeeper whose obsession with her former employer (the never-seen Rebecca de Winter) has, without question, sapphic undertones. (One does not simply fondle the undergarments of a dead women without exhibiting some fiery passion.) In Hitchcock’s arguably most famous film, Psycho, the twist is that Norman Bates’ obsession with his domineering mother is so intense that he keeps her body stashed in his basement while dressing in her clothes upstairs — occasionally venturing out in drag to murder a motel guest.

But these characters’ psychosexual dysfunctions were not driving forces behind their respective films’ plots — Rebecca focused on the new Mrs. de Winter, and Psycho‘s third-act reveal comes a bit out of nowhere. There are two films, however, in which Hitchcock pushed those queer envelopes even more explicitly.

Strangers on a Train, which stars Farley Granger and Robert Walker, is one of Hitchcock’s most memorable thrillers because of its juicy premise. Tennis player Guy Haines wants to divorce his two-timing wife for the angelic Ann, the daughter of a senator. He meets Bruno Anthony, a sly, suave, and sophisticated man on the train who is quite taken with Guy — he recognizes him, after all, not only from the sports pages but also the society pages (to which we can assume Bruno pays more attention). Bruno knows about Guy’s complicated love life, and offers to murder his wife in return for Guy murdering Bruno’s father — a controlling man who does not approve of his son’s listless lifestyle. Guy assumes Bruno is joking about trading murders (which is quite a natural thing to assume!), but when his wife is found strangled and Bruno asserts himself into Guy’s Washington, DC, social circle, it becomes clear that Bruno’s plan wasn’t in jest.

Bruno’s obsession with Guy and his blatant sociopathy is reminiscent of the main character in another thriller, released years later: Tom Ripley in The Talented Mr. Ripley. It’s a common comparison; both Ripley and Strangers were based on novels by Patricia Highsmith. While Ripley‘s homosexual undertones are certainly more blatant , there’s something definitely there in Bruno’s interest in Guy — part of it may be social climbing, but part of it may very well be sexual. Bruno is, after all, very aggressive in his devotion to Guy from the start, saying things like, “I’m your friend. I like you. I’d do anything for you.” That, combined with his overly tailored suits and silk robes — not to mention his hatred for his father and devotion to his mother — are signs that point to a queer subtext.

But while that subtext Strangers on a Train is still debatable, it’s absolutely present in another Hitchcock film starring Farley Granger that was released three years earlier: Rope. Inspired by the famous Leopold and Loeb case, in which two University of Chicago students kidnapped and murdered a 14-year-old boy in order to complete the perfect murder, Rope‘s most famous gimmick is that it was filmed and edited to resemble one single shot. It begins with the murder, enacted by Brandon and Phillip (John Dall and Granger) on their former classmate, David. They place the body in a large chest upon which they decorate with a table cloth and candlesticks; they are planning a party, and Phillip seems to be entranced by the notion of serving his guests while David’s body rests below the food. (The guests include David’s father and girlfriend.)

The queer subtext runs rampant: it’s a film about keeping secrets, and the two men deal with that secret (the murder they’ve committed) in different ways. While Phillip expresses glee over committing the perfect crime and proving his own superiority, Brandon is distressed, nearly unable to maintain his composure throughout the party knowing that the evidence of his crime is right there in the room, dangerously close to being discovered. The men’s former prep-school headmaster, Rupert (James Stewart), arrives, and immediately notice the two are acting strange — particularly Brandon. When David does not arrive at the party and his father and girlfriend express their concern, Rupert begins to piece together what happened simply from Brandon’s erratic behavior.

The real story, of course, is the sexual undertones between Phillip and Brandon. The two are aesthetes, convinced of their moral and physical superiority to others (taking on the concepts of Nietzsche’s Übermensch), and there’s an incredible amount of tension between the two after they’ve committed the murder — a murder, by the way, that is most often associated as a crime of passion. Strangulation is an intimate act, and the camera’s first cut to the act resembles, in a sense, a sexual act: David’s head tilted back, his eyes closed and his mouth open with a gasp for air — it could easily be mistaken for a moment of ecstasy if his neck not wrapped with a rope.

The subtext isn’t an accident; the film’s screenwriter Authur Laurents was gay, as were both Granger and Dall. It’s likely that Hitchcock, seeing the opportunity to create an underlying tension in his audience, took advantage of his stars’ personal experience by heightening the sexuality — albeit with an attempt at subtlety in order to appease studio censors. Yet, with the sophistication that comes with decades’ worth of progress and understanding of queer identities and experience, the motif in Rope is, at times, hilariously obvious — especially when Rupert brings up Brandon’s youthful penchant for murdering chickens on an acquaintance’s farm. Brandon tries to deny he ever did such a thing, but Rupert announces that he knows he has not just once but multiple times. “You’re quite a good chicken-strangler, as I recall,” is an actual line of dialogue. (I mean, c’mon!)

What’s so fascinating about the queer subtext in Hitchcock’s films is that he knew, as a director and a provocateur, that making the simple suggestion of homosexuality was enough to create unease, to raise the stakes for both his characters and his audience. As a director, Hitchcock did not moralize; rather, he simply examined and portrayed what was common occurrence. It was up to his viewers to determine how his characters’ own neuroses, often dysfunctional behavior exhibited as a result of societal pressure and attitudes, affected their actions — for good or for ill. To ask that of an audience is not just a bold move; it’s also indicative of a thoughtful director who expected his viewers to reach their own conclusions.

Photos: Everett Collection