Rope (1948)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Film Review

Just like Lifeboat (1944) before it, Rope was conceived by its director, Alfred Hitchcock, as primarily a technical challenge.  The intention was to shoot the film 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 film 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 film 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 (i.e. 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 film, 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 film, 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 film.

Not only was the film 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.  This stemmed from the play Rope's End on which the film was based.  Although the play's author, Patrick Hamilton, denied it, it appears to have been inspired by the case of Richard Leopold and Nathan Loeb, two rich Chicago adolescents who cold-bloodedly murdered a 14 year old boy in the 1920s simply to prove to themselves that they could kill.  The same case inspired two later films: Richard Fleischer's Compulsion (1959) and Tom Kalin's Swoon (1992).

The most notable thing about Hamilton's 1929 play is that the protagonists (two Oxford undergraduates) are implied homosexuals.  This allows the play to be interpreted as an allegory on the fear of discovery by those who indulged in homosexual acts (a criminal offence at the time).   The dead body in the trunk represents either the guilt-ridden aftermath of illicit love-making or the repressed sex drive of the covert homosexual - in either case the prospect of discovery is a cause of fear and anxiety, similar to what might be felt by someone who has murdered in cold blood.  One of the characters in the play shows the thrill of a gambler risking his entire fortune in a casino, the other is paralysed with terror once the euphoria of the moment has passed.  Surprisingly, many of the homosexual themes present in the original play emerge in Hitchcock's film, making it the first American film to treat the subject in so blatant a manner.

Rope is significant in that it was the first film that Hitchcock made for Transatlantic Pictures, the film production company that he founded with Sidney Bernstein.  The company made just two films (Rope and Hitchcock's next film, Under Capricorn) before folding as a result of poor box office returns.  The commercial failure of Rope was attributed to its apparent homosexual connotations (which led to an outright ban 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 film, 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 (the same Constance Collier who co-wrote the play Downhill with Ivor Novello, which Hitchcock adapted in 1927).  Granger developed a particularly good working relationship with Hitchcock and would star in his subsequent film, Strangers on a Train (1951), which shows many thematic similarities to Rope.

© James Travers 2008

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Next Alfred Hitchcock film:
Under Capricorn (1949)

Film Synopsis

In their top floor New York apartment, two well-heeled students, Brandon Shaw and Phillip Morgan, have just strangled one of their college chums, David Kentley, with a rope.  They place the body in an old chest, intending to dispose of it later that evening.  Their motivation for the killing?   To prove that they had the superior intellect and will to accomplish such an act.   Phillip is shaken by what he has done and his friend's bravado, which smacks of recklessness.   Brandon has arranged a cocktail party, to take place in the apartment within a few minutes.   The guests include not only the dead boy's girlfriend and father, but also the killers' former prep school housemaster, Rupert Cadell, whose lectures on Nietzschen philosophy were the inspiration for the murder.  As the party begins, Phillip becomes increasingly agitated, and this, together with David's mysterious absence, arouses Cadell's suspicions that something may be wrong...