The Best Movie Of Each Year From 1925-2025
75. 1951 - Strangers On A Train
Honourable Mentions: Ace in the Hole, Scrooge, The Thing from Another World
Strangers on a Train tends to sit just outside of the all-timer Hitchcock bracket, but there's a strong argument that it shouldn't. The dynamite premise, for one - of a chance encounter with a stranger hatching a plan to commit the perfect murders - is among the best the Master of Suspense ever had to play with, while the fairground-set finale proves to be just as tense as those found in the likes of North by Northwest or Rear Window.
Hitchcock was also able to draw upon a wealth of collaborative experience for the production, with noir author Raymond Chandler adapting the script from a Patricia Highsmith thriller published the previous year. The resulting material couldn't have been better suited to Hitchcock's sensibilities, with happenstance horror by this point the director's bread and butter.