Highsmith, wary of being pigeonholed or discriminated as a writer of lesbian pulp fiction, initially published the book under the pseudonym Claire Morgan, It was re-issued with her real name and the title, Carol, in 1989. Centering on the obsessive romance that develops between Therese Belivet, a set designer whose day job is working a department store, and Carol Aird, a wealthy housewife trapped in an unhappy marriage, the book has been heralded as a groundbreaking work of queer literature, particularly because its relatively happy ending was a rarity in work about lesbians. While Highsmith is best known for cold-blooded crime novels filled with murders and deception, her 1952 romance novel The Price of Salt, about a forbidden love affair between a housewife and a shopgirl, is regarded as one of her masterpieces. Hitchcock’s adaptation wasn’t the only reworking of Highsmith’s novel for film-director Robert Sparr’s 1969 thriller Once You Kiss a Stranger, took liberal inspiration from Strangers on a Train, with a gender flip for its main characters, while a 2022 Netflix adaptation of the film, Do Revenge, starring Riverdale‘s Camila Mendes and Stranger Things‘ Maya Hawke, reinterprets the classic for a pair of scheming teenage girls.
The high-octane drama of Highsmith’s novel provided rich fodder for Hitchcock’s now-iconic film adaptation ( the film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in 2021), with a few key changes for the two main characters: in the movie, Haines is a celebrity tennis star who is incapable of murder, instead of an architect who kills to keep his secrets Bruno Antony, meanwhile, was renamed by Hitchcock as Charles Bruno Anthony, whose homoerotic tendencies were heightened for the film. After Antony murders Miriam, it sets off a chain of events that involves blackmail, homoerotic obsession, an investigation, and more murder. Antony suggests that the men “swap” murders-Antony killing Miriam and Haines killing Antony’s father-since neither would have a motive, freeing them both from becoming suspects, while Haines considers the proposition nothing more than a joke. In Highsmith’s novel, a fateful chance encounter between two disgruntled strangers on a train has deadly consequences architect Guy Haines wants to leave his cheating wife Miriam for his new love, Anne, while Bruno Antony, a wealthy psychopath wants to be rid of his overbearing father.
This reputation was bolstered the next year, when Alfred Hitchcock, known as the “Master of Suspense,” adapted the book to screen. Highsmith’s debut novel, Strangers on a Train, was published in 1950, marking the start of her notable career.
0 kommentar(er)
