Merry Go Round Operator - Strangers on a Train (1951) Discussion

[–] jktomas 11 years ago

I loved the movie but the scene (or should I say the 2 seconds) of the death of the merry go round operator ruined it for me. It's so dumb. The movie makes such a big deal about killing people and how morally wrong it is, yet a policeman kills an innocent person and nobody talks about it ever again. I don't understand how possibly Hitchcock thought it was a good idea to put this into the movie. The death looks so unrealistic and almost has a comedic timing to it as if it was from a David Zucker or Mel Brooks film. It's so out of place and stupid I can't believe people don't talk about it everytime someone mentions this movie.
But why did the detective shoot anyway? Did Haines look so suspicious and dangerous that there was no other choice but to shoot him down? And how did the detective miss? The bullet went no where close to Haines.
Why wasn't the detective worried after doing so? He's in serious trouble now for sure. He's not going to jail if he's lucky, but he's definitely loosing his badge. Imagine policemen having a right to shoot anyone they feel like because they are chasing a man who may or may not killed someone (even if he did kill his wife, he had a strong motives to do so. He wasn't a maniac. Also he wasn't armed. There were zero resons for policeman to shoot and there were as many reasons to put this scene in the movie).
This two second long part of the film is so stupid I could talk about it forever. Why did it happen? I wish I blinked when it happen. I bet thousands of people did, that way this movie is still regarded as an excelent thriller and one of the best Hichcock's masterpieces...

reply

[–] dangus 11 years ago

They could have set that up better. What happened to the Luger? Perhaps it could have figured in the fight, someone shoots wildly and hits the ride operator.

The real WTF moment was when the guy goes to stop it, and does so in the worst possible way, so that it crashes and breaks apart, rather than just coasting to a stop.

reply

[–] Mkeydude 11 years ago

POSSIBLE SPOILER.

Its ridiculous that the cop shoots blindly into a crowded merry-go-round at someone he thinks may be guilty of murder but its my favorite scene in the entire movie.

I really didn't like the movie--don't like cat and mouse plots plus if Guy would have taken his chances and simply gone to the cops and gave his story after his wife was killed, he wouldn't have had so much trouble with Bruno but I don't direct or write scripts so what do I know.

How they did the wild carousel scene is a mystery to me. There were no computers when this movie was filmed so it had to be done with miniatures and editing tricks but it looked so real and scary.

Of course in reality the body count would have been horrific, i.e. children, adults, the carousel operator and the old man who stopped it so suddenly causing the axle to snap but its a thrill to watch that particular scene over and over.

"You may as well go to perdition in ermine; you're sure to come back in rags." Katharine Hepburn

reply

[–] rickyturner505 10 years ago

I was led to understand the the ride operator was felled by the shot but he received treatment and made a full recovery.

reply

[–] TheMociety 9 years ago

I don't remember them saying he officially died...so you could be right.

If you're not taking any steps forward, you're not moving at all.

reply

[–] CharlesTheBold 9 years ago

And what's weird is the scene didn't have to be there. Hitchcock didn't want to use the novel's ending ( where Guy's equivalent actually does kill the father) so he had to think of something else, and ended up copying a wild-carrousel scene from another movie.

reply

[–] macken74 (653) 3 years ago

Absolutely agree with everything you said , just watched the movie for the first time , and the cop shooting the merry go round operator in such a way and with no apparent comeuppance for that cop , was absolutely ludicrous

Dunno what Hitchcock was thinking in that scene !

reply

[–] telegonus (736) 2 years ago

This is a great movie, and it's often not only compelling but fun and exciting to watch. For all that, the business of the policeman shooting into a crowd,--a crowd on a fast moving carousel--strikes me as wholly unrealistic and, needless to say, unprofessional. It must surely be written in the policeman's manuel, or whatever their book of rules is called, that when pursuing a dangerous criminal, even a suspected murderer, one ought never to fire a gun into a crowd, as happened in the movie; to which it should be noted "especially when, if the crowd is riding on a merry-go-round,--absolutely forbidden". This is common sense. There was no rational excuse for what the officer did. I don't think it was mentioned in the film that his career would be over, though maybe this wasn't necessary. Even if Bruno was a serial killer, had murdered sixteen people, and all the witnesses were on hand, with the police, ready to identify him, this is no good reason to shoot into a crowd of innocent people, including many children, on a carnival ride. It's sheer madness! There were surely other ways to shut down the carousel without the ensuing trauma that occurred in the film.

reply

[–] vinidici 11 years ago

This has been the only real sour point for me in my viewing experience of this movie, which is otherwise a masterful and compelling excursion into the mind of psychopaths and the mind games that they, like Bruno, are known to engage in.

Even when I first saw it as a youngster I was outraged at the very idea that a plain clothes, seasoned cop would be so irresponsible and reckless as to fire madly into a crowd that results in the shooting death of an innocent bystander (the carousel operator) and the casualties that resulted from the out-of-control ride.

I find it incredulous that Hitchcock allowed this point to go unaddressed and made it appear that the trigger-happy, idiot cop would suffer no repercussions whatsoever for shooting and killing an innocent man and putting the lives of a couple of dozen men, women and children at stake. It would have made more sense for the scene to have been written with Bruno firing his luger and missing Guy, hitting the operator instead, than it did the way this scene was actually played out.

Okay folks, show's over, nothing to see here!

reply

[–] Kanamit99 11 years ago

It makes absolutely no sense for the police to shoot at an unarmed man in a moving carousel full of children. How could you accurately shoot at a man on a moving platform full of people? Even the best sharp shooter in the world would have a hard time hitting such a target.

reply

[–] Jimothy3 11 years ago

Silly doesn't even begin to describe the whole carousel scene. I'm not big on remakes but if they ever remade this there's no doubt in my mind that however the rest of the film turned out in comparison, the ending couldn't possibly be done any worse - I take it they wouldn't remake it exactly scene for scene.

Aside from the operator getting shot mistakenly from an utterly reckless police officer with no thought for the law or for the safety of women and children, and some old man claiming he "can handle" the carousel only to then cause it to fall apart and endanger everyone on it or around it, I wondered about the carousel itself; is it possible for carousels to be made to go that quickly anyway?

reply

[–] vinidici 11 years ago

"...is it possible for carousels to be made that go that quickly anyway?"

Methinks definitely NOT. Hitch should have known better than this.

Okay folks, show's over, nothing to see here!

reply

[–] 11 years ago

[deleted]

[–] mussobrennon 10 years ago

I hated that, a cop fired into a crowd of mostly kids. and of course the guy at the end nearly killed everyone making it stop so suddenly.

reply

[–] JP_Shay 9 years ago

I came on here to discuss the same thing. Agree with what everyone is saying, it was a stupid choice by the police officer (and therefore by Hitchcock) to shoot into a crowd full of people. This scene almost ruined it for me. Of course, you have to suspend some belief because there is no way the merry-go-round would ever be made to operate that fast. Still, having the old man operator shot and killed seemed like a dumb convenience to make that happen. It could have been better, like somebody already said if Bruno had fired into the crowd and missed and hit the guy. That would have made more sense. But a police officer? Yeah, he's losing his badge.

reply

[–] truther 9 years ago

Ditto. Just watched it on TCM. The whole merry go round scene was one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen. From shooting the operator, to the machine going haywire, to the other old guy trying to stop the thing, to the general mayhem that resulted, it was absurd. And I realize that Hitchcock specialized in scenes like this but this went way over the top.

reply

[–] 9 years ago

[deleted]

[–] nomad472002 8 years ago

Another thing that caught my notice was the speed at which the old guy crawled under the rotating carousel. A turtle would have won that race. Once the old guy was clear of the rotating platform, the speed with which he got up would have put Bruce Lee to shame.

reply

[–] macken74 (653) 3 years ago

Hahaha brilliantly put !

It was ludicrous lol

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I think an even bigger "unstated" outrage to the scene is that...we don't find out what happened to the kids.

SPOILER

I mean, we see that the crash is bad enough to kill the villain(Robert Walker's exquisitely twisted Bruno Anthony.)
Who is to say that younger, smaller children weren't hurt, too?

Reversibly, if ONLY the villain was killed by this crash, you'd almost have to go to a religious interpretation of the climax(and Hollywood DID that back then): "God dropped the carousel on Bruno and killed him."

(There is another thriller from 1957 -- not directed by Hitchocck -- called The Bad Seed, in which a young girl gets away with several murders and looks to be free and clear...until she goes out in a storm to retrieve evidence and a lighting bolt hits her and kills her. God again.)

But Hitchcock elected to ignore such details as what happened to the operator who got shot, or to the kids. As Hitchcock said "I practice absurdity quite religiously."

Here is what I think happened: Hitchcock was coming into the 1950s with a four movie "slump" underway. After the success of Notorious in 1946, Hitchcock followed up with The Paradine Case, Rope, Under Capricorn and Stage Fright. Only Rope of those four has really stood the test of time as both a gripping thriller AND a great stunt(an entire movie "shot in one take.") But Rope wasn't much of a hit, because it was banned in many places(evidently due to the suggested gay angle.)

So Hitchcock needed a hit, and he wanted to "launch the 50's" with that hit(even though Stage Fright, an only moderately interesting vehicle for "chicks"-- Marlene Dietrich and Jane Wyman came out in 1950.)

First, Hitchcock found a book with a great plot("Criss cross murders") and a psycho villain. (Psycho villains would also launch the 60's and the 70s for Hitchcock -- with Psycho and Frenzy, respectively.)

CONT

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Second, Hitchcock CHANGED a lot in that book -- Guy does NOT kill the father in the flim -- and then -- seeking big box office and a hit , he threw that big ol' action sequence on at the end. There had not been a good action sequence in Hitchcock since Lifeboat, maybe Foreign Correspondent.

Somewhat ridiculous it may have been, but this was an action packed climax in an era that didn't always have them. Hero and villain duked it out and wrestled on the spinning maching (and hey, the bad guy is WINNING the fight before the carousel crashes), you can't deny that the sequence had a great deal of speed and energy to it.

And it worked. Strangers on a Train was the third biggest grosser of 1951(a year with more movies than today), Hitchcock's biggest hit in years.

Hitchcock kind of knew this: over time, he knew to make "one for them"(an action climaxed movie like Strangers on a Train) and one for himself(brooding films like I Confess and The Wrong Man, women's melodrama like Under Capricorn.)

Hitch would do this again in 1959. After the downbeat Wrong Man and Vertigo underperformed at the box office, he put together an action lollapalooza (for its time) in North by Northwest, with a climax to beat a berserk carousel: a chase across Mount Rushmore. ALSO a bit ridiculous, but audiences loved it.

Thus you might say that Hitchcock KNEW that certain elements of Strangers on a Train and its carousel climax were over the top and unbelievable. And there was something a bit sinister, I think, to his refusing to confirm that no kids got hurt or killed. He leaves that dark possibility open.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Aside from the operator getting shot mistakenly from an utterly reckless police officer with no thought for the law or for the safety of women and children, and some old man claiming he "can handle" the carousel only to then cause it to fall apart and endanger everyone on it or around it, I wondered about the carousel itself; is it possible for carousels to be made to go that quickly anyway

---

In his time alive and giving interviews -- most famously to another director named Francois Truffaut -- Hitchcock often complained about people in the audience whom he called "the plausibles." I'm not defending Hitchcock on this, but it seems that his feeling was "let it go, the plays the thing." He often said that he could have filmed scenes or had lines written to explain anything that happened in one of his movies, but "better to just let it go, let the story flow, forget the plausibles." Oh, he TRIED to meet plausibles concerns sometimes -- both Shadow of a Doubt and Psycho unfold in a very plausible way -- but other times he just sort of declared his movies " a fantasy" and asked us to ride along. This worked with Strangers on a Train -- the third biggest hit of 1951.

We must also remember that this was a simpler time in America and the world, audiences were evidently more naive and far more forgiving of a fake move world. In 1951, that carousel climax may have been the most exciting thing people ever saw.

Still, Hitchocck would have gone crazy over Moviechat -- it is a GATHERING of "plausibles" --most posts are nothing BUT picking apart the logic or scenes of movies. He either would have quit, or made more logical movies, I guess.

By the way(just as Hitchcock said) SURE you could explain away much of the carousel scene. Hitchcock felt that cops were a dangerous element in this world, they DO shoot innocent bystanders and they WERE trying to shoot an "escaping suspect" (Guy.) And yes, maybe the operator who got shot DID survive.

CONT

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

The old guy who volunteered was their only real hope -- "Do YOU want to do it?" asked one cop of the other -- and they THOUGHT he knew what he was doing, but he didn't -- or the superspeed of the carousel overcame the old man's effort. Plus, carnival workers aren't the most dependable people in the world.

Trivia: Hitchocck said that that old man actor almost got killed when he pulll up under the spinning platform. You can see on film how close he came.

And can a carousel go that fast? Who knows? Is there a mansion on the top of Mount Rushmore? When Hitchcock was in a "playful" mode, he just didn't care. He wanted THIS carousel to go that fast; he wanted THAT house on Mount Rushmore(in North by Northwest.)

The berserk carousel climax of Strangers on a Train may not have been logical but it was exiting and it got Hitchcock his first hit in years. He celebrated by immediately going out and making a sober art film about a priest: I Confess.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

How they did the wild carousel scene is a mystery to me. There were no computers when this movie was filmed so it had to be done with miniatures and editing tricks but it looked so real and scary.

--

Whatever one thinks of this scene, it was a technical marvel for its time. Here are some points.

There were TWO full sized carousels built, each one put in a separate soundstage. This allowed Hitchcock and crew to film ONE part of the carousel scene(which took days) on one carousel while another crew SET UP the other carousel for filming. Back and forth between the soundstages, over and over.

A minature was used for the crash.

Process footage of "the world flying by" were shot and then put on screens at some sort of angle to the "close up carousel set" (where Guy and Bruno would fight.)

When the carousel is flying so fast that Guy's legs float up into the air as the carousel leaves the ground -- invisible WIRES pulled actor Farley Granger's legs into the air.

So...a technical marvel.

reply

[–] telegonus (736) 2 years ago

Truly, EC. A movie to cherish, yet largely unrealistic at the climax, even as it's so exciting. The first time I saw Strangers On A Train, on the late movie, senior year in high school, I was wholly charmed, totally involved in its story. The shooting into the carousel was the icing on the cake, although I did enjoy the comical bit on the train, with the minister, in the movie's final scene.

Not for nothing was Alfred Hitchcock called the Master.

reply

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Test.

reply

[–] roger1 (3626) a year ago

Truly, EC. A movie to cherish, yet largely unrealistic at the climax, even as it's so exciting.

--

I probably "buried this point" elsewhere in this thread, but I think we have to consider Hitchcock himself KNOWING that this climax was unrealistic -- but very exciting -- and he did it almost as "self parody."

He suggested some years later that "North by Northwest" was somewhat self-parody and I say that Strangers on a Train and North by Northwest play similar roles in the Hitchcock canon.

They both come after two or more "too serious" Hitchcock films that didn't do well at the box office.

NXNW first: it followed the flop of The Wrong Man and the near-flop of Vertigo...both very downbeat movies. So Hitchocck "pulled out all the stops" and gave his audience all the thrills and action he could under 1959 terms -- including a fantasy climax on Mount Rushmore!

Strangers on a Train: Notorious (a rather action-free movie) had been Hitchcock's last hit, in 1946. Then came The Paradine Case(a disaster), Rope(good but banned over its gay material), Under Capricorn(a costume picture) and Stage Fright(an OK British mystery film.) The 50's had arrived and Hitchcock needed a BIG HIT. So he converted Patricia Highsmith's novel into a fast paced thriller with a great psychpath villain and a climax not in the book -- that berserk carousel.

---

The first time I saw Strangers On A Train, on the late movie, senior year in high school, I was wholly charmed, totally involved in its story.

---

Me, too, on the late movie. The first time I watched it alone. When they showed it again a year later, I gathered some friends to watch -- I thought it was that good. There is a certain hormone-driven innocent excitement to youth as a movie fan. And remember, back then, Hitchcock was just about the only game in town for action and suspense movies.

CONT

reply

[–] roger1 (3626) a year ago

The shooting into the carousel was the icing on the cake, although I did enjoy the comical bit on the train, with the minister, in the movie's final scene.

--

That's a great ending with the minister -- a perfect "bookend" to the beginning -- but weirdly enough, today(2023) this is NOT considered the ending. At least not to "the American version of Strangers on a Train."

Its the "British version ending." This is insane.

The American version ends with the so-so scene right BEFORE the minister scene. Ruth Roman hangs up the phone on an unseen Farley Granger and tells sister Pat Hitchcock that Granger is coming home to change clothes or something. Just a NOTHING scene -- for an ending. OK for a scene BEFORE the ending.

No matter. The minister ending is PERFECT, one of the best Hitchcock endings. I choose it.

---

Not for nothing was Alfred Hitchcock called the Master.

---

Incredibly dominant "in his time." He was followed by decades of followers who may have made "more violent movies" (DePalma, Scorsese, Tarantino) but Hitchcock WAS the man back then and he remains popular today. I think historian Camille Paglia called it: Hitchcock -- what with his giant TV stardom to go along with his movie career -- was "above his Hollywood peers." On a level of his own, alongside the great artists of all time. And showmen.

reply

[–] liscarkat (18373) 2 years ago

Carousels don't have the proper gear ratio in their drive train to spin that fast, even if the motor is running at maximum RPMs. There would be no reason for them to be set up that way. The scene is fantasy, but it's still one of Hitchcock's most entertaining movies. A little suspension of disbelief is a great aid toward the enjoyment of most movies.

reply

[–] roger1 (3626) a year ago

The scene is fantasy, but it's still one of Hitchcock's most entertaining movies. A little suspension of disbelief is a great aid toward the enjoyment of most movies.

---

As Hitchcock told Truffaut "Other people's movies are a slice of life. Mine are a slice of cake."

Hitch didn't always go for super-entertaining fantasy. He was very "serious" in movies like Lifeboat, Notorious, Under Capricorn, I Confess, The Wrong Man, and Topaz.

But when he WANTED to pull out all the fantastic movie stops, he did: Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, North by Northwest, Psycho, The Birds.

reply

[–] telegonus (736) a year ago

In real life, of course, however in "movie life", perhaps not.

It's not like Hitch wrapped the plot points up at the end, as he would later do on his TV show, as host, leaving the viewer in the dark where Strangers On A Train is concerned.

reply