Monday Night is... Shoes and Evil

Losing track of the days of the week, so here, instead of Sunday...



It all begins with shoes, then moves to faces. The beginning of Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train (1951). Robert Walker, nauseating yet plausible, plays one of the great evil roles opposite Farley Granger playing the clean cut tennis star. In terms of evil Walker's is a wonderful performance, rivalling Robert Mitchum in either in Night of the Hunter (1955) or Cape Fear (1962). But maybe Walker's Bruno Anthony is the best because he draws evil out of others.

Films the last three days. But the question of evil in the movies - I don't mean horror film evil, I mean proper nauseating, plausible evil - is an interesting question. Now who have I missed out?

Raymond Chandler, one of the two scriptwriters, for a start. And Patricia Highsmith, of course, who wrote the book. Thanks to Mark (in Comments). And I keep thinking that Walker looks like so much like a cross between Robert Vaughn and Bill Murray, that they might have been Walker split into two. Which then raises a further question about the typology of the iconic Hollywood face, male or female. One could move as on a spectrum from Cary Grant, Rock Hudson, Dean Martin through the Walker Three, or Monroe, Mansfield, Dors...etc. But that is not my agenda for Tuesday.