Michael Schramm’s Reviews > Criss-Cross: The Making of Hitchcock's Dazzling, Subversive Masterpiece Strangers on a Train > Status Update

That film does have the proper disturbing edge to its characters. One of his lesser known movies from his most productive period.

I hope you are enjoying it, Michael. The film does make some changes from the book of the same name by Patricia Highsmith but it is still Hitchcock at his finest.

C. G. — The author relays how this was Hitchcock’s comeback after several misfires. His first real hit since “Notorious” and “Spellbound” in the mid-1940s. This is my second favorite film of the director’s after “Vertigo” (1958).

Jill—I have a soft spot for books about the production of vintage films, having read several by now. The author alludes to how the final script deviated from Highsmith’s novel and it makes for fascinating reading.

This is one of my favorite Hitchcock movies. I am looking forward to your review.

I shall do my best to not keep you “in suspense”, Mike!

I think Vertigo has faded for me. I still adore Rear Window as a nearly flawless film.

Interestingly enough a book on “Rear Window” was also recently published.

OK well I might take a peek at that. I read a bio of Hitchcock waaaaaaay back when by Donald Spoto. At the time I thought he was the greatest director to ever stride the Earth. It feels extremely difficult for a director to make mark for himself in this new century. And film making has become ever more difficult.

Hitchcock for me is the very personification of the auteur director. In “Cross Cross”, It’s mentioned by a long time colleague of Hitch that no one else he worked with, be it Howard Hawks, John Ford, William Wyler and others had such tight and completely engaged artistic control as he.