Rope (1948)
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
It was his first Technicolor feature, first picture under
his new production company, and his first picture starring what would be one of
favorite actors to collaborate with in James Stewart. Yet with these series of
firsts for the famed filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock would produce the feature Rope, a picture that appears confined and
simple despite its experimental and impressively complicated nature in production.
The result was a film underrated by manner for a length of time only to be
rediscovered and appreciated by later generations. Shot and assembled in a
manner to give the illusion of nearly one long continuous shot from beginning
to end, Rope takes the confined
spaces more associated with a play and combines it with controlling what the audience
sees by way of the camera delivering a suspense chalk full of drama in a
masterfully choreographed manner that Hitchcock loved to produce.
Rope is a suspense
thriller about two young men who kill a friend to prove they can commit “the
perfect murder” as a form of art by immediately thereafter hosting a dinner
party for unknowing guests in the very room the fresh corpse is hidden in. The
picture immediately opens with the murder where Brandon (John Dall) and Phillip
(Farley Granger) strangle their old school pal, David (Dick Hogan), and stowing
his lifeless body in a trunk in their Manhattan penthouse apartment. The reason
for the murder was to practice an intellectual idea entertained to them by
their former prep school headmaster, Rupert Cadell (James Stewart), in murder
is a right of the intellectually elite as a form of weeding humanity when
needed. Philip immediately begins to regret the practice they cared out, but Brandon
takes the idea a bit further envisioning the murder as an art as he arranged only
moments later for he and Philip to host a dinner party consisting of people
close to David while his lifeless body lies within the room unbeknownst to the
guests.
Shot in a manner to give the illusion of a long continuous
shot, with minimal exceptions, the picture follows the actions surrounding
Brandon and Phillip’s dinner party in real time as evening falls upon
Manhattan. The nervous and guilt stricken Philip spends much of the evening attempting
to contain himself while Brandon’s attempts to relish the murder and its
following ironic party as a manifestation of their intellectual superiority as
he serves the guests the meal on top of the very chest that holds David’s corpse.
Of the guests invited are David’s father, Mr Kenley (Cedric Hardwicke), and
Aunt, Mrs. Atwater (Constance Collier), as well as David’s fiancée, Janet (Joan
Chandler), whom Brandon secretly toys with by inviting her former lover and
mutual friend, Kenneth (Douglas Dick), another seed of Brandon’s fondness for manipulation.
However, Brandon is most anxious with hosting Rupert, nervously reiterating the
idea which inspired the actions before the party, but without giving away the secret
death of David. Through the evening Rupert deduces hints of Brandon and
Phillip’s peculiarity as guests eventually departed the gathering worried that
David failed to show. Ultimately Rupert realizes they had done something awful
to David, uncovering the truth and the body. Mortified he scolds his former
pupils scolding his former pupils for the idea he never meant to be taken
seriously, prompting the arrival of the authorities as the movies closes.
The cinematic characteristic that prominently stands out the
most in Rope are the long, ever
moving takes and creative editing of the picture. The idea for Alfred Hitchcock
in the adaption of the play “Rope’s End” was to produce a film in one
continuous shot. Of coarse a motion picture camera’s film magazine could hold
only so much stock. In this case the Technicolor camera could only record up to
10 minutes at a time. To mask this cinematic limitation Hitchcock plotted out
the movement of the scenes and characters to that an object or character’s body
may overtake the frame of the camera allowing him to mask a cut in the film to
begin another lengthy shot. In total Rope
consists of only 10 separate shots, running in length from 4½-10 minutes and other
than the opening credits/establishing shot the entirety of the film takes place
within the apartment.
Hitchcock would keep the action going throughout the film,
having the camera follow characters as they walk across the apartment, through
entry ways in a setting that consisted of the living room, foyer, dinning room,
and the door leading to the kitchen. Due to the complexity of the director’s
long, complicated takes with the massively bulky Technicolor camera the set was
built with props and walls that could roll away smoothly and quietly allowing
for movement of the camera and its vast crew of grips, camera operators and
sound men completely unseen by the audience. Together the crew would execute a
form of cinematic off-screen dance to displace parts of the set to move the
camera equipment and/or replace the settings once the movement is completed.
Furthermore, the story takes place in the early evening
prompting lighting changes with the progression of the twilight hour in the
sweeping Manhattan views from the apartment windows. Slow lighting cues would
be carried out through the picture to mimic and real-time change in time of
day, complete with a series of clouds constructed from fiberglass that moves to
manifest the passage of time. With a 21 day shooting schedule and a ballet of
crew members working off the frame throughout the picture, the result is a
carefully and well executed piece of filmmaking that comes off so effortless
that most would not even give the quiet complicated nature of the the
filmmaking a thought. The production in itself is a work of cinematic art.
Beyond the difficulty of the shooting was the difficulty of
the screenplay. The major underlying story of the picture is unspoken
homosexuality nature of the characters. It may not appear so blatant that the
two bachelors Brandon and Phillip, whom share a rather nice Manhattan penthouse
apartment with a lavish view of the city skyline, are in a deeper relationship
than portrayed on the surface, but upon further contemplation it is rather obvious.
Brandon being the dominate partner while his doting Phillip share similar
interests until the moment when the deadly idea becomes real. Furthermore Rupert
is implied to have had a close relationship with Brandon, or perhaps both of
them in the past.
Ideas of homosexuality in the 1940s was purely taboo for any
and all Hollywood productions and it was the work of screenwriter Arthur
Laurents to mask the outright tones to help focus of the murderous plot. Laurents,
himself a closeted homosexual, omits any mention or hint of homosexuality, but the
idea remains buried in the undertones in a manner where censors and most
viewers would never discover it in a casual screening. Worries did arise in preproduction
that James Stewart would disapprove of his character if he knew of the true
background of the story, but it would go unnoticed as well.
Rope would mark
the first casting of Jimmy Stewart in a Hitchcock picture, the first of four
such collaborations that resulted in many of the the actor’s most famous roles.
However, Stewart would not be too fond of Rope
upon its completion. It is said he was not particularly happy with the plot or
the outcome of the feature. Perhaps it was because the picture eventually did
not do well with critics, but in any case Stewart shines in this crime thriller
as a man that pieces together the dark truth of a crime he had accidentally inspired.
He shines as the true star in a picture that surrounds John Dall and Farley
Granger as the lead characters, who both do a fine job in their particular
roles as the proud murderer and the nervous partner in crime.
The remained of the supporting cast all perform well,
adapting to the stage-like production for this rather small, yet cumbersome production.
Cedric Hardwicke and Constance Collier, bother were long time veterans of
motion picture and the stage, easily slide right into the roles that helped
flesh out the picture, Collier specifically as a form of comedy in an
absentminded way. Edith Evanson appears as the housekeeper Mrs. Wilson who also picks up of the two lads' peculiar attitudes through the evening, serving as a foil to Rupert's ultimate conclusion. It would be amazing we do not see much more of Joan Chandler,
who appears to have a natural way in her acting style, a skill she shared as a
founding member of the famed Actor’s Studio. She would see plenty of work
outside of movies as she performed on Broadway and in television through much
of her career. Douglas Dick was perhaps the most forgettable of the supporting
cast as Kenneth, playing the ex-lover of Janet, but never giving a great reason
as to why they split or reason for any rivalry. The story does not go very far
anyways as the focus is on Brandon’s manipulation of evening.
Rope ultimately
ended up being a flop at the box office for Hitchcock and his new production
company, Transatlantic, receiving mixed reviews by critics of the day. Viewers
found it mostly interesting, but lacking in the spectacle some came to assume
with Hitchcock pictures. Many critics recognized the intelligence of the story
and the filmmaking, but that would not save the film from its low box office
numbers. For years the picture would nearly disappear form public consciousness
as the film was kept out of circulation by Hitchcock only to have the feature reappear
in the mid-1980s to an ever growing appreciation from film scholars and
enthusiasts for the experimental nature of the picture.
Now Rope is hailed
as a bold use of the technology of filmmaking form the late 1940s, becoming one
of the best “underrated” picture of the Hitchcock library. For any fan of the
filmmaking process Rope is a feature
worth viewing as another one of Hitchcock’s pictures centered on confinement as
the director utilizes creative measures of filmmaking to attempt to make a
continuous single shot full length motion picture, a feat that would not be successful
accomplished until Russian Ark (2002)
with HD video technology.
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