Poster from very useful website on the film ~

http://students.washington.edu/kylaw/strangers/index.html

What kind of adaptation?

'Within [the critical context of intertextuality], the issue is not whether the adapted film is faithful to its source, but rather how the choice of a specific source and how the approach to that source serve the film's ideology' (Christopher Orr, 'The Discourse on Adaptation')

Critics who think in terms of classifying film adaptations suggest categories ranging from the faithful to the very free. So, eg, one useful model separates out the following kinds of adaptation: (1) transposition, where the novel 'is given directly on the screen' with a minimum of 'apparent interference'; (2) commentary, where the original is altered or re-interpreted in some respect; and (3) analogy, where there's a 'considerable departure', and where the source in a sense just acts as raw material, 'simply the occasion for an original work of art'. Hitchcock is a director who often used novels as a starting point (so, e.g., Vertigo, as well as Strangers on a Train, is adapted from a novel). His tendency, however, was always to regard these novels as raw material to be substantially reworked in the process of creating his films (as Brian McFarlane says in Novel to Film, in spite of his frequent adaptation of novels, ''Who, indeed, ever thinks of Hitchcock as primarily an adaptor of other people's fictions?').

It is illuminating to think about the ways in which Hitchcock chose to transform Highsmith's novel. Should you want to analyse the changes in depth, you would find it useful to look at McFarlane's Novel to Film, which offers very precise ways of talking about transferring the novel's narrative basis to film, helpfully considering the opposition between the novel's linearity and the film's spatiality, and so on. In a brief seminar discussion we won't have time to master these formalized ways of talking about adaptation, but we can still think fruitfully about some of the film's key departures from Highsmith's novel. So -

First, make a list of as many important changes as you can think of, and then consider how these alter our responses - and how the changes might be said to 'serve the film's ideology'.

As a starting point, here are a couple of significant alterations you might think about:

(1) the shift in setting to Washington, D.C. Several critics have noted the use Hitchcock makes of images of the federal government. Freedman and Millington (Hitchcock's America) make a persuasive case for linking this shift to 50s cold-war politics - to the anti-Communist witch-hunts of the period. In McCarthyite investigations of the time, there was also hysteria generated by revelations that 'sexual deviates' were employed by the federal government - men and women who had 'passed' as heterosexuals and could thereby infiltrate the government in the same way that communist spies were thought to be infiltrating the American power structure. Freedman and Millington suggest: 'Hitchcock's film, then, invokes the homophobic categories of cold-war political discourse to secure its representation of Bruno as the emotionally unstable homosexual who threatens national security.' Does this seem to you a plausible reading of the film? (think about scenes and images that would support such a reading). What are the implications in terms of our understanding of Guy?

(2) the sequence of scenes that takes Guy to Bruno's house: first, with respect to the novel, identify the major 'hinge-points' of the narrative (as McFarlane notes, these are actions that 'open up alternatives of consequence to the development of the story' - 'risky' moments at which the reader recognises the possibility of alternative consequences); then think about the ways in which Hitchcock has transformed the sequence. What are the various reasons he might have made these changes? What are the effects in terms of audience response? Think closely about the sequence after Guy enters Mr Anthony's house: Robin Wood (Hitchcock's Films) argues that a key moment in Hitchcock's film is when Guy hesitates outside Mr Anthony's bedroom door ('either the decisive moment of the scene [indeed, the major turning point in the film] or a very cheap trick indeed'). Wood says he has eventually come to think of this scene (its failure to really convey a sense of Guy's uncertainty) as a lapse in artistic integrity (caused by worry about the effect on the box-office of too morally dubious a hero). What's your view?

Affinities between Hitchcock and Highsmith

Having thought through the ways in which Hitchcock's film transforms Highsmith's novel, it would also be worthwhile thinking about why the novel appealed to him in the first place - that is, why he chose to direct it. This might lead you to consider both writers in relation to what we've already said about literary and film noir. Remind yourselves of some of the main characteristics of noir. Then think, e.g., about some of the following aspects of both film and novel:

(1) a preoccupation with doubling. If neither Hitchcock nor Highsmith see Guy as guiltless, what means do they use to create a sense of his guilt? What elements in his own character lead to his entrapment? (obviously there are differences here between film and text - but are there also similarities?) How do both underscore the theme of doubling - of an exchange between different but parallel personalities? (so think, e.g., about examples of formal, visual symmetries in Hitchcock's film; of the way Highsmith represents the thought processes of each man; etc.)

(2) the representation of the psychopath as what Foster Hirsch (Film Noir) calls 'the underside of the noir victim'. In what senses is Bruno represented as a victim? How far is it the case that both Hitchcock and Highsmith encourage us to feel sympathy for Bruno? Do we, e.g., respond positively to his 'temptation' scenes? (when he is encouraging the overthrowing of responsibility, the admission of one's destructive desires, etc.). How about our reaction to scenes in which Bruno is under extreme pressure (e.g., the 'retrieving the lighter' sequence in the film)?

(3) the theme of complicity: the sense that there is criminal potential in everyone. Both Hitchcock and Highsmith set ordered life against potential chaos; both would seem to see the sources of possible disturbance as inherent in the ordinary, day-time world (i.e., not as some alien intrusion). Find key scenes in both the novel and film that prompt audience or reader to think in terms of our own complicity with those responsible for breaches in 'normality'.