purpose of scene with blind old man xing the street

IMO the blind man was introduced to show the contrasts in Hugos thought patterns.

Almost right after murdering a young lady, he helps a blind man to cross the street, which doesn't seem to make much sense. Should the blind man been involved in the 'criss cross' senario, he would have murdered the blind man, and helped the young lady across the street. Hugo steps out of the real world for a moment, but can step right back into it, as if nothing had happened....but

....I'm not doing a great job on this so wait for someone else to come along :)

Vesele Vianoce!!!! http://www.iarelative.com/czech/xmas/index.html

i'm pretty sure helping the blind man cross the street was a successful attempt to blend in and not look suspicious. instead of looking like he's fleeing the scene (he had already been spotted), he looks like he's just a good samaritan.

It was an irony in Bruno's character. One minute he murders, the next he helps a blind man across the road.

Strangers on a Train exhibits a very dark sense of humour (as all Hitchcock's films did, to one degree or another).

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I kinda thought the blind man would testify or something, too. For another movie with a blind man testifying against a serial killer, check out "M".

It seems to me that he chose the old blind man to deflect attention from himself. The murder has just been committed and all around are looking for a murderer fleeing the scene, not a good samaritan helping an old blind man accross the street. Yes Bruno was very clever, but ultimately not quite clever enough. He was after all a psychopath who let his emotions get the better of him.

I tend to think that Bruno helped the old man cross the street more out of self-interest than out of kindness. As a few posters have mentioned, he probably just wanted to blend in and not look suspicious. He also could have figured that performing such a kind act in public would help him on the off chance that somebody recognized him from the crime scene and alerted the police. He probably thought that the police would never think that a man kind enough to help a blind man cross the street could commit cold blooded murder.

"well, I remembered wrong, I must have mingled another movie's story into this one."

You might be thinking of the Peter Lorre movie "M" which has an old blind man testifying against an evil child predator.

It just adds to the complexity of Bruno’s character, an ironic touch and another reference to eyeglasses ("the murder on the fairground island, reflected in Miriam's glasses").