• Rope

8/16/20 (Sun)

Hitchcock’s 1948 classic, an updated version of the hit British stage show of 1929 that was loosely based on the then-contemporary Leopold and Loeb case. The director wanted to keep the feel of the theater and famously filmed this to look like it was shot in one cut. In fact, the technology only let him film 10 minutes at a time, meaning he had to sweep against walls or clothing to introduce inconspicuous edits. Nevertheless, it reportedly only had 10 cuts, and though there were evidently plenty of retakes, the results did feel theatrical, giving a nicely claustrophobic feel to the proceedings.

After a brief street view while the credits roll, the story opens with the two leads strangling a friend and throwing the dead body into a trunk for disposal later – no background, no introduction to the characters. It basically started in the middle. I would have preferred that the deed be revealed in dialogue, leaving this part to our imagination. The guys then share a champagne to celebrate their success, though one does have the decency to show some conscience. We learn that they killed the guy (1) for the thrill, (2) from a desire to commit the perfect crime, and (3) because of a supremacist belief that only superior beings (as judged by themselves, of course) should live. That all comes from the Leopold/Loeb case. They then have a dinner party around that very trunk. The guests include the friend’s father, aunt and fiancée, who become increasingly worried when the friend never shows. The father takes offense at the intellectualizing by one of the leads regarding the subject of murder, which he equated in this updated version with Nazi thinking. Then the murderers’ former professor – Jimmy Stewart, of all people – suspects from the situation that the boys have twisted his teachings and put them into action. That starts a cat-and-mouse game where he tries to find the truth.

It was all rather silly. The pseudo-intellectual dialogue didn’t feel real; it reminded me of Woody Allen’s New York party dialogues. There were hints at the characters’ homosexuality (the screenplay was by super-gay Arthur Laurents), but the director was more interested in the philosophical side. It’s interesting that Jimmy Stewart’s character should be naïve enough to be shocked that someone would actually act on his in-class ramblings. I usually love Stewart, but this was not a good role for him. He was supposedly chosen for his box office appeal, but it’s hard to take him seriously as a bad guy. Some actors that are mentioned in the script – Cary Grant, James Mason – would have been better choices, and it would not have been out of character for the playful Hitchcock to have chosen those particular names for the dialogue intentionally.

The film does have some innovative shots, as when we manage to see one guy hide the rope in the kitchen in brief snatches as the door swings back and forth. There are many cases of overlapping dialogue, sometimes overheard from the next room, giving a more vivid feel to the proceedings. There’s also a sequence focused on the maid quietly clearing the dinner off the trunk despite the main dialogue happening entirely off camera. She gradually removes the dishes, glasses, tablecloth and finally the candlesticks so that she can put the books inside the trunk – which would of course reveal the body. The suspense is well handled.

The one-shot idea is interesting and does make it feel like a stage show, for better or worse, in what amounted to a macabre drawing-room drama. (Hitchcock had similar restricted settings in Lifeboat and Rear Window, so it’s a concept he seemed to like.) The tightness of the setting helps build the tension. But the unnatural story and dialogue just don’t add up. I did enjoy the estimable Cedric Hardwicke as the father and Constance Collier as the chatty aunt. Laurents had some interesting things to say about the film in the Making Of section; for instance, he had wanted to make it ambiguous whether the body was actually in the trunk, which seems quite right, but was overruled by the director. He also discussed the technical difficulties in making the film. But when the technical issues are most interesting part of the film, there’s a problem. An interesting experiment that doesn’t quite work.