STRANGERS ON A TRAIN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 658, 15 February 1952, Page 16

STRANGERS ON A TRAIN

(Hitchcock-Warner Bros.) HE persistent recurrence of the fairground or carnival as an element in moving pictures -the fascination which merry-go-rounds and their accompanying raucous gaiety seem to have for the best film directors-has intrigued me for so long that I have probably spoken of it several times before in this column. But since Hitchcock has provided us with another good example of the phenomenon, I have no compunc-

tion in drawing attention to it once again. I still hope that someone with more time, and more extensive intellectual resources, will give us a short monograph on the subject. Then, perhaps, I won’t waste so much time in idle speculation. There are, of course, one or two fairly obvious ways in which a fairground can

be turned to advantage, if there is any excuse for including it in the script. The atmosphere of forced jollification, the air .of saturnalia, even the bizarre machinery of entertainment can by the simple process of juxtaposition powerfully reinforce a dramatic theme. As. the physicists found out, if you want to achieve a low temperature, apply pressure, then release it. Shakespeare, of course, knew this long ago--it is the porter scene in Macbeth which first induces an authentic chill. The other obvious advantage of the fairground to a film-maker is in the variety of movement it offers-jig-ging wooden horses moving vertically and _horizontally at one and the same time produce a sort of four-dimensional illusion, troller coasters (continued on next page)