Summary
Two men try to prove they’ve committed a perfect crime by hosting a dinner party after strangling their former classmate.
My Thoughts:
Watching an Alfred Hitchcock film in these modern days we're living is something of a treat, a blast from the past from one of Hollywood's biggest celebrity directors, the master of suspense, the king of horror. Hitchcock truly was something else, he knew exactly how to capture the audience, feeding them bits of information as the story progresses, all while making his intentions well known. While his movies may seem tame to our violent standards nowadays, back in the 40s and 50s these were high caliber, violent films, and while film violence has gotten increasingly more aberrant through the years, there seems to be a lack of charm in modern day thrillers. Hitchcock not only brought a sickly dark humor to the mix, but he also deeply focused on the characters, their flaws and emotions which makes a horror or mystery film much more engaging and rewarding, and that's something filmmakers have drifted away from in this CGI-filled world.
In 'Rope' we start right off with the inciting incident: two Harvard graduates Phillip (Farley Granger, “Strangers on a Train”) and Brandon (John Dall, “Spartacus”) murdering a mutual colleague of theirs, David, just for the sake of doing it. Both men (Brandon especially) have taken a special and perhaps obsessive liking towards Nietzsche’s philosophy. While Brandon is thrilled by the kill, Phillip is quite distraught by it, but they have a dinner party happening soon, and Brandon is sickly curious to see if they can get away with it, so they stick the body in a chest and arrange the dinner dishes on top of it. This is all in the first five minutes mind you. It's a simple set up, but one that weaves around the characters, slowly giving out information until finally an old professor (James Stewart, “Anatomy of a Murder”) catches onto their paranoia and starts to dig further, as he being the teacher has mastered and can control his Nietzsche fantasies, all while analyzing those lesser learned of others, it's a great dive into the characteristics of narcissism.
Hitchcock, the curator of the McGuffin, does some of his finest work in this small scale mystery, and that's also in part to an extremely well adapted script from the play of the same name. The story may be quite simple, but it's the way he traverses the characters, the way they interact as the night goes on and still no appearance from David, the worry from the guests, the paranoia from the two hosts, and we as the audience can only wait in anticipation, hanging on to the clues that James Stewart catches on to. There's times you'll want to yell at these characters because you know something they don't, it's a beautiful filmmaking choice, and one that Hitchcock uses in many of his films, as the great filmmaker once said, "always keep the audience suffering" and he never broke from that motto.
Rope is also a technical feat of filmmaking, at least back in 1948, the whole thing is presented as one continuous take, of course back then the film camera could only capture 10 minutes at a time before needing to be changed, so Hitchcock and gang set out to create the impossible with sleight of hand and some pretty obvious panning shots that act as the cut in the action, the camera with suddenly go into someone's back, making the screen black for a quick second, then it pulls back and everything is just as it was. It's pretty jarring watching it with today's technical standards, but back then this was an extreme experiment, and one for the most part that works, there are shots that hold on a pair of hands or an object in the room to achieve the cut, and those work much better than the panning ones. Keeping the actors moving and hitting their marks must have been a challenge as well, a lot of rehearsing goes into long takes such as the ones here, and Hitchcock is seemingly able to make it work with ease, of course it helps having a legend like James Stewart on the cast, who I've heard wasn't pleased with the long technical shots of the film, he said the camera is more of a performance than the actors, which of course turned out to not be true, rest easy James.
Overall Rope may not be the quintessential Alfred Hitchcock movie that everyone talks about, in my eyes it's an overlooked film in his extensive and impressive filmography, I wouldn't say overrated as reviews and time have been kind to this murder mystery, but it is overlooked by his more popular and shocking works like “Psycho” and “Vertigo”. Clocking in at only 82 minutes it is Hitchcock's shortest film, but also one of his most technical, an impressive seemingly one continuous take was quite the task to accomplish during those times of early filmmaking, but he is able to do it all while providing enticing characters and a layered script that keeps the tension at an all time high. If you're new to Hitchcock this is a perfect places for starters, Rope is lean, tense, and fun with a macabre sense of humor that fans have come to know and love from the master of suspense.
I give Rope 4.5 stars out of 5
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