Strangers on a Train (the two film versions)

Strangers on a Train, from 1951, is one of my favorite Alfred Hitchcock films.  It is the film that starts his classic late period that extends through his television show up to The Birds from 1963.  I recently showed this film in a film studies class, and was surprised at how much I still enjoyed this work despite having seen it several times.  Strangers on a Train is a film that provided the basis for another film, the comedy Throw Momma from the Train from 1987, and it consistently referenced in other media, the most recent example being The Simpson's "Treehouse of Horror XX" episode in the segment entitled "Dial M for Murder or Press # to Return to the Main Menu" (Mrs Krabappel's reaching for her lighter is more that a little reminiscent of Bruno Antony's attempt to rescue Guy Haine's lighter from the storm drain).  It is, as of this date, listed as the 125th most popular film by those who frequent the Internet Movie Database (IMDB.com), and has achieved an astounding 98% favorable rating on rottentomatoes.com.

And yet this film provides me with a dilemma.  First of all there are now two versions of this film, the edit that was officially released and a pre-release edit that has become known as the "British version" since it was discovered in England in 1991 (and released to theaters in 1996).  The "British version" is two minutes longer, and spends more time in the beginning of the film establishing Bruno's character and  implied homosexual attraction to Guy Haines.  While this does slow down the pace of the film somewhat at the beginning of the film, it adds extra dimensions to Bruno's character [spoilers ahead] which I find enhances the pleasurable sequences later in the film culminating in Marion's murder by Bruno, and the final conflict on the merry-go-round.  So for the most part I feel that Jack Warner (one of the Warner Brothers) suggestion that Hitchcock trim this from the released film was absolutely a mistake.

On the other hand, I found that having watched the "British version", I really missed the humor of last scene of the happy couple on the train found in the released version.  Despite being added against Hitchcock's initial misgivings, this is an exclamation mark (!) to the story that serves as an effective catharsis, and is sorely missing in the original edit.  This ending was also suggested by Jack Warner, and in this case the studio executive made the correct call.  At some point, it would be nice to have a third version of the film: one with all the extra footage found in the pre-release print plus the original ending.  Until then one has to watch one side of the DVD and flip it over to the other side to watch the ending (unless one has access to editing and ripping software and can make their own version).