Rope

Movie Review: Rope

Year of Release: 1948
Country of Origin: USA
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: James Stewart, John Dall, Farley Granger

Plot outline: Two young men strangle their "inferior" classmate, hide his body in their apartment, and invite his friends and family to a dinner party as a means to challenge the "perfection" of their crime (IMDb).

Based on the play of the same name by Patrick Hamilton, Rope was conceived by Hitchcock as primarily a technical challenge. The intention was to shoot the movie in such a way that it appeared to be one continuous take, something that had never been attempted before (and has rarely been tried since). Shooting the movie in one take was a practical impossibility at the time, since the maximum length of an unbroken take was limited to how much film could be loaded in the camera, which was around ten minutes’ worth of footage. To get round this, the movie was shot in ten segments (of between five and ten minutes in duration), with each shot beginning and ending on a close up of either the jacket of one of the characters or the lid of the trunk containing the corpse, creating the illusion of one continuous take. This technical feat proved to be a logistic nightmare for all concerned on the production, cast and crew alike. The movements of all of the actors had to be meticulously worked out beforehand on a model and then rehearsed on the set many times before each take. The walls of the set and the furniture were mounted on castors so that they could be shifted during the recording to allow the huge cameras to move around the set on a specially constructed dolly. The actors not only had to hit their marks precisely and avoid fluffing lines, e.g. give the equivalent of a faultless theatrical performance, but had the additional problem of avoiding tripping over the mass of cables that festooned the set. And there were other challenges. This was Hitchcock’s first colour movie, made when Technicolor was still pretty much an experimental medium. The biggest problem this posed was getting the lighting right for the view of the New York skyline seen through the window of the apartment. In the course of the movie, the lighting had to change gradually to reflect the transition from afternoon to early evening and then night. Hitchcock was dissatisfied with the appearance of the sunset in the first shoot and so re-shot the last five segments of the movie.

Not only was the movie treading new ground technologically, it would also break the mould in other ways, with its unveiled allusions to homosexuality - an area which Hollywood had hitherto religiously avoided. Because of it, Rope was commercially unsuccessful (it was banned in some regions of the United States), and it is interesting that it fared much better in Europe than in America. Whilst Rope is without doubt a great technical achievement and is fascinating to watch, as a piece of drama is has one or two flaws that prevent it from being ranked alongside Hitchcock’s greater works. One notable deficiency is the miscasting of James Stewart, who fails to be convincing as an inspirational intellectual who might motivate two youngsters to kill someone; from his doddering performance, it seems far more probable that he would infect them with terminal narcolepsy or an urge to take up crochet. Part of the problem is that Stewart’s character is poorly developed. In the original play by Hamilton, it was implied that the character had a homosexual relationship with the two boys when they were under his care, which would explain the influence he had over them. In the movie, the character motivation is pretty well lacking and Stewart looks like a spare rib. Whilst James Stewart’s performance disappoints, the same cannot be said for his co-stars. Both Farley Granger and John Dall are excellent, portraying a pair of odious amoral characters in a way that retains the audience’s sympathy, allowing the suspense to function in the best Hitchcockian tradition. There are also notable contributions from the supporting cast - particularly Cedric Hardwicke and Constance Collier. (JT)

My judgement: ***1/2 out of 4 stars