Hitchcock’s British ‘Strangers’ to Open

Alfred Hitchcock’s “Strangers on a Train” (1951) will premiere Thursday at the Nuart in its British release version, two minutes longer than the American cut. In either form, it’s a suspense classic, capable of making you anxious even if you’ve seen it several times.

This Patricia Highsmith tale turns on an encounter between an insinuating psychopath, Bruno (Robert Walker), and a tennis champion, Guy (Farley Granger). Bruno proposes that they swap murders: He’ll get rid of Guy’s sluttish wife, who stands in the way of his marriage to a senator’s daughter (Ruth Roman), and Guy in turn will rub out Bruno’s hated tycoon father. Guy, of course, doesn’t take Bruno seriously--until his inconvenient wife winds up dead.

In this version, the effete, dissolute Bruno’s homosexuality and his attraction to Guy are considerably more pronounced, making the film seem stronger, more audacious and honest. But Hitchcock also snipped off his film’s delightful coda, which brings the story full circle, for the British release. One change is a plus, the other a minus and neither is profoundly crucial. It makes sense that Hitchcock would tone down homosexual implications for the American market in the profoundly homophobic McCarthy era, but the variation in the endings remains a mystery.

In either form, “Strangers on a Train” remains a timeless treat, a marvelous display of Hitchcock’s absolute mastery of his medium and a deliciously dark comedy as well. (310) 478-6379.

The American Cinematheque’s Alternative Screen series presents Thursday at 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. E. Elias Merhige’s “Begotten” (1978), which is no less impressive for being awesomely grueling. Merhige has taken black-and-white reversal film and used a process that has the effect of producing images that resemble high-contrast etchings, a process that took four years to complete. The resulting gritty look is appropriate for Merhige’s brutally primitive tale, which the filmmaker says is inspired by Greek tragedy, yet also parallels, in admittedly bizarre form, the biblical stories of creation and of Christ.

It opens with God (Brian Salzberg) disemboweling himself, then Mother Earth (Donna Dempsey) emerging from the folds of his robes and in turn, giving birth to Son of Earth/Flesh on Bone (Stephen Charles Barry); mother and son then struggle for survival in a barren land, overrun by savage nomadic tribes. “Begotten’s” extremely harsh view of existence unfolds with a compelling pace accompanied effectively by Evan Albam’s eerie, grinding sound design.

LACMA’s French Film and Society series of classic works presents Friday at 7:30 p.m. in Bing Theater Andre Antoine’s “La Terre” (1921), a stunning film of raw, bleak power from the Emile Zola novel and a milestone (as was Antoine’s 1922 “The Swallow and the Titmouse”) in the development of a vibrant naturalistic style in the French cinema.

Filmed entirely on location, it is a “King Lear”-like parable of greed and deception centering on an elderly landowner (Armand Bour, superb) who turns over his property to his three children only to have them turn on him viciously. Zola’s point is that the landowner’s lack of reverence for nature translated into a brutal lack of respect for him by his children. With live musical accompaniment by Robert Israel. (213) 857-6010.

The Midnight Special Bookstore, 1318 Third Street Promenade, Santa Monica, continues its Documental series Saturday with two programs of documentary and experimental films old and new at 7 and 9 p.m. Among the highly varied offerings is Fredric Shore, Juliusz Kossakowski and Maggi Carson’s 25-minute “Punking Out” (1978), a terrifically to-the-point record of some key punk groups--Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Stiv Bators and the Dead Boys and the Ramones--in performance in the spring of 1977 at the Bowery’s famous CBGB.

That footage is intercut with interviews with the musicians and their fans, who resist labels and intellectualizing and instead simply say that the music makes them feel alive. “No show biz, pure guts, pure stamina” is how one man sums up his reaction to the music. (310) 393-2923.