Hitchcock and Lighters

7/28/2019 Hitchcock and Lighters

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Flaming Desires: Interpreting the Symbolismof the Cigarette Lighter in Strangers on a Train

By Joel Gunz

[email protected]

Movie critic Anthony Lane says that great companions to new movies are old books.1

Which is why, upon spotting me at a Regal Cinema, you might see a copy of Proust

tucked under my arm. I use it to divert attention away from the 40 ouncer of Colt 45 Im

trying to sneak in. Michener works well for that, too.

By Lanes algebra, the older the movie is, the older the book should be to go with it.

Alfred Hitchcocks vintage Strangers on a Train(1951), Ive discovered, goes quite

well withBibliotheke, Apollodorus 2nd century B.C.E. guide to Greek mythology.

Strangers on a Train is about a materially privileged yet morally ordinary joe named,

well, Guy (Farley Granger) who encounters his evil doppelganger, the likewise aptly

named Bruno (Robert Walker) on a train. The two make a tentative criss-cross pact to

trade murders: Ill do one for you and you do one for me. Brunos father was cramping

his style, and therefore needed to be put out of the way, and Guy had an ex-girlfriend

who had become inconveniently pregnant by another man and was threatening to

sabotage his plans to move on with his life and pursue a political career. Since they are

otherwise strangers, each man could supply the other with a perfect alibi for murder.

Bruno keeps his promise by following Miriam (Kasey Rogers), Guys Inconvenient Ex-

Girlfriend, into an amusement park and strangling her to death. But when Guy welches

out on his end of the deal, Bruno seizes Guys personalized cigarette lighter to use as

blackmail evidence against him.2

And sometimes a Zippo is not just a Zippo.

Guy was the sort of Ivy-League-tennis-star-dating-the-senators-hoochie-daughter that

everyone loves to hate. And the fascinatingly squeamy Bruno wanted with all of his

heart to have what Guy had: physical grace, charm, and the ability to tie his own bow tie


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for a formal dress party.3 It seems he also wanted to have more of Guy than social

conventions of the time would allow him to say. The cigarette lightera gift from Anne

(Ruth Roman), Guys new fiance, engraved with his initials and a pair of crossed tennis

racketsspeaks of that world of privilege while hinting at the crossed paths of the two

men.4

Cigarette aficionados point out that Guys lighter was made by Ronson, manufacturers of

what have been dubbed the Cadillac of lighters. This particular Ronson lighter was an

Adonis model. Enter Apollodorus.

The mythological Adonis was so handsome that a feud arose between Aphrodite, goddess

of love, and Persephone, goddess of the underworld, as to who would get custody of the

hero. As the ambivalent hero of Strangers on a Train, Guy was likewise handsome,

athletic, and sophisticateda modern Adonis. And, similarly, Guy was caught in sort of

triangle between the rather-too-good Anne and the very bad Miriam. The attempt on his

life by the animalistic Bruno reminds me of the fate of Adonis who was likewise killed

by a wild beast.5 Just a thought.6,7,8

Thats why Bruno clutched that lighter like a talisman. It was his only tangible

connection to Guy. And when Guy spurned him, Bruno used the lighter to frame him for

murder. In Brunos rush to plant the lighter at the scene of the crime, he lost the thing

down a storm drain. But in reality, Bruno had long since dragged Guy down into the

sewer with him. When Bruno stretched with all of his being to retrieve the Adonis lighter

from the gutter, it was as if, in his weird way, he was trying to seize all that Guy stood

for.

To Bruno, Guy was a model of perfection, an unattainable Adonis. The best he could do

was to hold a demigods tchotchke for a few fateful moments. Come to think of it, Bruno

kind of reminds me of Tolkiens Smeagle, who likewise fixated on a gold trinket. Not

that Ive actually read Lord of the Rings. Once, though, I used it to hide a pastrami

sandwich I was sneaking into a matinee of Delicatessen.


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1 From A writer's life: Anthony Lane at arts.telegraph.co.uk, filed: 14/12/2003.

2 For a full plot synopsisand some very good readingcheck out Roger Eberts coverage of the movie here:http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/greatmovies/strangersonatrain.html

3 It helps to remember that Strangers on a Train was a novel written by Patricia Highsmith as a sort of warm-up to her

classic The Talented Mr. Ripley. If youve seen the Matt Damon/Jude Law movie, youve seen a bit of Strangers Better

yet, go rent the French Plein Soleil (1960), Alain Delons Tom Ripley is oh-so-much ickier then Damons.

4 The movie abounds with doubling and crossing images: close-ups of merging train rails crossing and uncrossing; an

impressionistic portrayal of the murder scene reflected in the dual lenses of a pair of eyeglasses, etc.

5 The Greek hero Adonis was so beautiful that each goddess wanted to possess Adonis for themselves. Zeus settled the

matter by requiring the hero to spend one third of the year with Aphrodite and one third of the year with Persephone.

Adonis got to choose the goddess with whom he would spend the final four months, and he always chose Aphrodite. This

arrangement continued until Adonis death when he was attacked by a wild boar.

6 Dont hold me too close to the fire on the mythological parallels here. I quit writing recondite essays long ago (right

around the time I quit sucking in my gut) and only whip out my former interest in the classics long enough to remember the

extent to which I was once a sophomoric snot, back in the day. Still, although Hitchcock might have shied away from

arcane symbolism (although I wouldnt put it past himPsycho can easily be read as a meditation on Miltons poem On

Blindness), Highsmith was a sophisticated writer who might have included just those bits of business in her work, andwhich would have naturally made their way into the film. C.f. Anthony Lane, who once remarked about those who make

fanciful interpretations of the greatest of all allusionists, T. S. Eliot: Many will scoff at the idea, but we should never

undersell the happy misreading.The New Yorker, March 10, 1997, T. S. Eliot Revealed.

7 Come to think of, though, while Guy was competing in a tennis match, Bruno was racing across town with Guys lighter.

The resemblance to the Greek Olympic tradition of running with the flame would not have been lost on Hitchcock, who

loved visual puns. Case in point: in keeping with the doubling motifs in the movie, the chubby director made his traditional

cameo appearance while carrying a double bass fiddle.

8 Oh! One other thing. Just like Adonis, who reluctantly spent four months of the year in Hades, Guy likewise was pulledinto Brunos evil vortex against his will and displays guilty behavior. Midway through the film he complains, now youve

got me acting like a criminal! Like a clean dinner jacket fouled by a night spent in a smoky bar, the Adonis-like Guy

begins to take on the brackish scent of the river Styx._________________
http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/greatmovies/strangersonatrain.htmlhttp://www.suntimes.com/ebert/greatmovies/strangersonatrain.html

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