|
|
Everything You Always Wanted To Know About 'Rope'
1948
Review: March 30, 2006
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: James Stewart, John Dall, Farley Granger
Can help you pay more close attention, but not needed.
THE SETUP:
Two guys murder a third and put his body in a chest, then have a party with the chest in the middle of the room.
DISCUSSION:
I had watched this movie a few years ago and found it unbearably tedious, more a stunt than anything. The whole deal here is that Hitchcock wanted to adapt the play “Rope’s End,” and wanted to do it AS a play, without any breaks in the action. So what he did was shoot it in incredibly long, unbroken takes that are sometimes as long as a reel of film will allow, ten minutes. This requires an incredible amount of discipline on the part of everybody, and there are fascinating tales [many of which I got from Charlotte Chandler’s fascinating Hitchcock biography It’s Only A Movie] about how the walls and furniture was on wheels, and would be rolled out of the way then rolled right back into place as the enormous camera moved around. This was Hitchcock’s first color film and at the time color cameras were as big as a refrigerator. So the whole place had to be lighted to look good from any angle, all the actors and cameramen had to have their positions down, and if somebody flubbed something they would have to do the entire, possibly 10 minute take over again. Many of the actors in the film exasperatedly complain that to Hitchcock “The ONLY thing that mattered was the camera.”
But now to the movie. We’ll come back to the technique. The movie is based on a play that was based on the Leopold and Loeb murder trial. It would seem that these two elite schoolboys set about to plan and execute “the perfect murder,” which, in their minds, they were entitled to do because they are the intellectual supermen of society, and everyone else is just useless chaff. In reality, both of the men were homosexual, and the writers of this movie explicitly acknowledge that the main characters here are homosexual, though they leave that conspicuously undiscussed in the script. Apparently the catholic league had their panties in a bunch [as they often do] about Hollywood, and would vet every single script for traces of immorality. This is why most married couples in films of the time are seen sleeping in separate beds. So the writers had to make Brandon and Phillip [the murderers] explicitly homosexual without ever saying so.
The movie begins with a shot outside the apartment building, which is one of the two places Alfred Hitchcock appears in the movie. He is seen walking down the street, though you can’t really tell that it’s him. I’ll tell you about his other appearance later. The camera pans over to a window, and we hear a scream. The first edit of the film shows us poor David dying, strangled by he rope of the title. His body is dumped in a wooden trunk in the middle of the room, where it will remain for the rest of the movie. We are introduced to our murderers, Brandon, a pompous intellectual who is played by John Dall, and Phillip, a dark and sensitive lad who is obviously a serious sub for Brandon, played by Farley Granger.
Phillip is made almost physically ill by the murder, whereas Brandon is exhilarated by it. Brandon exalts in the little details like the “last glass out of which David drank,” and things like that. He justifies the murder by saying that “people like David just occupy space,” and he opens the curtain to reveal a glorious panoramic view of New York outside the apartment.
This view was a giant 180-degree model three times the size of the set. It represents a striking vision of a dream New York, as it appears to have no relation to the actual layout and buildings of the city. There are working smokestacks and neon lights, one of which constitutes the second appearance of Hitchcock in the movie, which was actually the filmmaker’s first attempt to get him there. In the background there is a red neon sign showing the famous three-quarter profile drawing of Hitchcock. Under the sign is the word “Reducto,” which was the weight-loss product featured in Hitchcock’s appearance in an ad in Lifeboat. One wonders if that reference is because this movie, like Lifeboat, also features a number of characters in a space that we never leave. Anyway, it was decided that no one could make out the Hitchcock sign, and he ended up appearing in the opening shot.
Leopold and Loeb were 18 and 19 when they murdered a 14-year-old boy in Chicago, attempting to commit the “perfect crime,” for which they could never be caught. They justified their crime with misinterpretations of Nietzschean philosophy that claimed that the intellectually gifted have a superior “master” morality over the lesser classes, who have a “slave” morality. A large part of their plan was the random selection of the victim. They were soon caught after a series of seemingly stupid blunders. Under interrogation each blamed the other for the actual killing. They were defended by Clarence Darrow, who made one of the most famous legal speeches of all time as he argues against capital punishment for them. This case also inspired the films Compulsion, Swoon, and the hideous Murder By Numbers.
As the action of the movie takes place at sunset [from 7:30 to 9:15, Hitchcock says in the Hitchcock/Truffaut book], we watch the light outside the apartment fade and the lights of the city come up. The passage of time was accomplished by clouds of spun glass hanging on wires in front of the backdrop, which would be slightly moved in between shots and when the camera was looking away from the window. The change in lighting was accomplished in the same way. One of the pleasures of the movie, aside from the fabulousness of this dream New York, is watching the clouds slowly move across the horizon.
John Dall’s Brandon has several speeches that express the thrill he got from the killing and the excitement he feels at the threat of being caught. This is another shout-out to the Leopold and Loeb case, wherein both of whom ascribed their interest in the murder to the ‘thrill’ of it. He has obviously masterminded many aspects of the party to get a perverse thrill from flaunting the murder in the face of the guests. He has invited the murdered man’s mother, father and fiancé, Janet, as well as a guy recently and acrimoniously separated from Janet, whom he hopes to manipulate back together with David’s death. He has the notion to serve them all dinner [looks like quite sensible portions, btw] from the chest containing David’s body. He brings out a stack of books tied with the rope they killed him with, and says things like “all the better, that’ll make it much more dangerous.”
The perversity of the act and the unnatural and nearly sexual thrill he gets from it, in addition to the way Brandon manipulates others’ emotional lives is, I believe, supposed to convey a lot of the homosexual content of the film. [By the way, we also find out that Brandon used to date Janet, adding a ‘vengeful queen’ aspect to his character.] Sure it’s not exactly advancing the cause and is in fact homophobic, but dude, it’s 1948 and reflects the prevailing ideas of the time [homos are sickos who get thrills out of perverse things], and as such I’m not too upset about it. It also soon becomes obvious that Brandon and Phillip are in a pretty strict Dom / Sub relationship that appears to be souring badly. Phillip speculates that he might have preferred to kill someone else, maybe Brandon. “You scare me,” he says to Brandon. “You always have, since I first met you,” and then quickly, “I’m only kidding Brandon.” Uh-huh, typical conflicted bottom. Later he says things like “I appreciate you and can’t do without you, Brandon.” To hop on the meta-train, it happens that both actors who play the gays are gay themselves, the screenwriter is gay, and the piece Phillip constantly plays on the piano (Mouvement Perpétuel No. 1 by Francis Poulenc) is by a gay composer. Other than these touches and the general structure of the relationship [the way they talk about visiting Brandon’s mother a few years ago, etc.] the homosexuality is, as it were, the pink elephant in the room. In an amusing side note, a great deal of dialogue had to be altered from the original British dialogue, as it was understood to read as explicitly gay in an American context. The most obvious example of this is Brandon’s constantly referring to Phillip as “my dear boy.” Apparently every instance of this phrase drew notes of “Homosexual!” from the Catholic censor. The homosexuality here is something that might not be completely explicit to modern audiences, though apparently at the time it was abundantly obvious, and it is absolutely crucial to understanding the real content of the movie.
Another guest is Brandon and Phillip’s former professor, Rupert Cadell, played by James Stewart. The screenplay relocates the Nietzschean philosophy of the master and slave morality into Stewart’s character [negotiations for Nietzsche to appear and defend his own theories fell apart at the last minute. I’m kidding], and as such offers a character that the murderers can discuss their philosophy with. In the original play, Rupert is also homosexual, and we are to understand that he has an affair with one of the killers [my guess is Phillip]. Obviously James Stewart was not going to play no fuckin’ homo, and I’m sure the censors weren’t thrilled about it anyway [professors? With students?] that the whole thing was taken out. Anyway, it doesn’t take much prodding to get Stewart to lay out his whole philosophy about how murder can be an art form and the higher beings have the intellectual freedom that gives then the right to totally waste the lowly douchebag should they so choose. Brandon had previously said that Rupert was the only one who would understand [and admire] what they had done, and he wonders if they should have invited him to go in on it with them.
Many of the edits attempt to be seamless by closing in on a character’s back, blacking out the entire frame, switching the reels, then having the character walk away from the camera. In many cases this serves only to highlight the edit, and one wishes Hitchcock had just used his few edits to high effect. There is a wonderful, very effective edit at around 34:30, when Rupert first becomes suspicious of Brandon and Phillip. After an unusual outburst of Phillip’s, we see Stewart turn his head as though newly noticing something. His lengthy, penetrating stare at Phillip shows us that he is starting to have suspicions, and his suspicious face is used to great effect through the next half hour.
Meanwhile, there is some sly comedy concerning Janet, who we have learned was interested in David primarily for his money. We are told that she makes her career writing “on how to keep the body beautiful,” after which she is asked “For whom, this time?” The question is ostensibly about who is hiring her to write the article, but the implication is whom is she trying to keep her body beautiful for—this time? There is also a hilarious moment around 32:55 when the housekeeper comes by and says “If I were you I’d stay away from the paté,” then hisses “Caloriessss….” But Hitchcock treating his women as either sex objects or yucky old maids is nothing new, and those are the only types that appear here.
Music also plays an interesting role in the film. There is a curious jazzy pop song that can’t quite be made out as Janet talks to Kenneth, the guy she broke up with to be with David. It created such a discordant sound that I actually wondered if they had created some strange amalgam of a number of songs, or a repeating section of one song. Then we have a wonderful scene played while Phillip plays the aforementioned Poulenc piece [which Granger actually learned to play for the role]. He plays as he is interrogated by Stewart, and we can follow his rising tension as the pitch of the piece rises higher and becomes less structurally intact. It’s obvious—but it works brilliantly.
What amazes about the one-camera technique is how brilliantly Hitchcock makes it work. For the most part, one doesn’t notice it, and enjoys a fully-covered film without any feeling of being hemmed in by the technical stunt. One also eventually forgets about it, and often remembers a few minutes later, thinking “but how did we get here from there?” It’s genius, and becomes quite seamless—in fact, the edits Hitchcock is trying to hide end up being the most conspicuous.
SPOILERS > > >
So Stewart knows something is up, and the tension of the movie is the “Cat and mouse! Cat and mouse!” [as Phillip says] as he tries to worm it out of them. He makes an excuse to come back to the apartment after everyone else has left, and is soon invited by Brandon to piece together how he would have murdered David, had he done it. Meanwhile Phillip, who has been drinking all night to calm his nerves, is now fully wasted and given to amusing outbursts like “He SAID you could have it!” after Stewart asks if they’re SURE they don’t mind if he stays for another drink.
The murder quickly unravels, and Stewart chastises the killers for completely misunderstanding his philosophy, but never really explains WHAT they really misunderstood, and what he said earlier in the movie sort of supports the killer’s point. Stewart fires the gun out the window to attract attention, and in a charmingly quaint development, it does. We hear people gathering outside and sirens arriving. This is clearly in contrast to the New York of today, where if you hear a gunshot you turn up the TV and get away from the windows! To get the right sound, Hitchcock rigged the microphone high up on a building and had real people gather on the street below and had sirens drive toward the microphone from blocks away.
The trailer for this film includes what is essentially an extra scene, in which we see David alive, proposing to Janet. He promises to meet her that night, then Stewart comes on and says “That’s the last time anyone saw David alive, and that’s the last time YOU'LL see David alive.”
In the end, a good movie, probably more interesting for the way in which it was made than for what actually ends up on screen. Even Hitchcock did not consider it entirely a success. It was an experiment, and a terribly interesting one, if not the very best of Hitchcock’s achievements.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
Yes. It is a decent movie in itself, but one that can be enjoyed much more upon knowing how meticulously it was put together.
