Rope Film Review

Rope

1948

Alfred Hitchcock

An enticing movie which draws the audience into the scene of a crime, Rope may not be as well known as The Birds or Psycho, however it is one of Hitchcock's most experimental and intriguing movies of his career. Released in 1948, Rope boasts a small yet effective cast as John Dall and Farley Granger play the the main characters of this piece bringing the eccentric yet risque pair to life.

The film is set around the scene of a crime where we a young man is murdered and the two culprits attempt to keep the body a secret whilst entertaining a group of avid dinner guests, however as the night progress one of the guests starts to piece together the events that unfolded shortly before their arrival. Leading to a remarkable series of tension and moments of extreme suspense.

Figure 1: Phillip and Brandon 

Rope does a remarkable job of drawing the audience into the events that are unfolding on the screen, a tactic that Hitchcock has mastered to a tee. By showing us the murder at the start of the film and placing the evidence right in front of us and the other characters has you constantly on the edge of your seat, wondering when one of the actors is going to find the gruesome scene that is sitting a short distance away from them. That's what stands out in this movie for me as the story unfolds we see the culprits starting to develop in two different ways. John Dall's character, Brandon starts to feel proud of himself and starts to flaunt what he has done in the faces of the other characters to see how far he can go without getting caught. After strangling David with the piece of rope, Brandon looks almost proud as he walks into the kitchen and drops it into the drawer and when he uses the same piece of rope to tie up books for the Father of the man he just murdered, its as if he takes delight in the idea of something so gruesome begin used for something so meaningless however later on it comes back to bite him.

Figure 2: Phillip and Brandon Arguing 

His partner Phillip takes on a different personality, he starts to become much more agitated and ashamed of what they have done and as Brandon continues to flaunt their actions in front of the guests and family he starts to break down and go on the offensive, becoming drunk in an attempt to remove what they have done. These kinds of personalities can be associated with the older stereotypes of Homosexual couples from that era, where there were frequent Sadist/masochist relationships with one person being the more dominant of the two "As the movie opens, Brandon, who easily dominates his homosexual lover, Philip"(Canby,1984), in this case Brandon, and one being more submissive, Phillip. Phillip is the only one that really come's to terms with what the two have done, yet Phillip controls him into keeping his mouth shut and avoiding the situation entirely. 

Rope is supposedly a one shot film: an early experiment by Hitchcock to create a movie entirely in one singular shot. "he arranged the screenplay in 10-minute sections, and at the end of each section he used an “invisible wipe” to get to the next magazine"(Ebert,1984)  Whilst this seems impressive in the movie there were in fact multiple cuts throughout the entire movie, generally when the camera zooms into a characters back. Apart from theses few moments the movie was entirely one shot. A lot of work went into the filming of this movie as around the time of the film being made there was no access to things like Steady cam and cameras were not very mobile. Leading to a less smooth shoot as furniture is moved around the room as the camera comes through and then placed back in the exact position. It must have required a huge amount of planning and ultimately makes the movie even more marvelous to watch.

"Hitchcock is torturing his audience, for sure, but he is also parading his own cleverness, and like Brandon, on some level he wants to be found out, too."(Hutchinson, 2012) By placing the box in front of us as the audience and having the different characters interact with object in many different ways, coming inches away from discovering the terrible secret that is being flaunted so obviously is what makes this movie a masterpiece. The scene with the maid clearing the table goes on for so long, bringing myself ans many people around me onto the edge of their seats. Just waiting for the lid to be lifted, however when it is Brandon is there to shut it and keep the secret hidden. 

In the end Hitchcock had succeed in making a movie where the audience has to sit and watch as a party of unsuspecting people are flaunted in front of and there is nothing we can do. Until a character comes along and pieces things together. A man called Rupert manages to piece together the story which is when the film really starts to get good, You can see that as he starts to interact with the two, mainly Phillip, the seed of though starts to grow. Turning the story into a sort of cat and mouse scenario where Rupert tries to uncover the truth whilst Brandon and Phillip try to throw him off the trail.

Figure 3: Rupert begins to piece the story together. 

Rope, not the best of Hitchcock movies, but definitely one of his most creative. 

Bibliography

Vincent Canby, The new york Times, http://www.nytimes.com/1984/06/03/movies/hitchcock-s-rope-a-stunt-to-behold.html, June 3 1984

Roger Ebert, Rogerebert.com, http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/rope-1948, June 15 1984

Pamela Hutchinson, The guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2012/jul/27/my-favourite-hitchcock-rope, July 27th 2012