Rope is a 1948 thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring James Stewart, John Dall, Farley Granger, Douglas Dick, Cedric Hardwicke, Joan Chandler, Constance Collier, and Edith Evanson.
The movie opens with Brandon (Dall) and Philip (Granger) strangling their friend David (Dick Hogan) and putting his body into a chest. They have no particular reason to kill him, they (well, mostly Brandon) just wanted to do it for the thrill and to test his Nietzsche-inspired beliefs that murder isn't a problem for intellectually superior folks like them. They follow up the murder by having a dinner party to which they invite the victim's parents, his girlfriend, his best friend, and their old teacher. Again, all of this just for the thrill of it.
The rest of the evening gets weird very quickly. Their teacher, Rupert (Stewart) espouses his theories on why murder is fine and probably good population control, and Brandon goes along with it, but Brandon is pretty clearly serious and Rupert is (probably) joking, though he's hard to read. Meanwhile, Brandon mentions to the victim's buddy Kenneth (Dick) that he should soon have a shot with his ex, David's girl Joan (Chandler), and the two of them eventually grow suspicious that Brandon did something to prevent David from coming. After all, he's usually so punctual...
Philip gets drunk as the night progresses, and eventually Rupert comes back, finds them out, and reads them the riot act before summoning the police. He even has the good taste to be ashamed of his misanthropic BS.
So! It's a pretty simple story, all things considered. Only nine people in the cast (Hitchcock apparently had trouble fitting in his customary cameo), and it's adapted from a play. But within that simple story there's a lot going on.
For one thing, Brandon and Philip are a gay couple. Oh, this being 1948, they couldn't admit that, but it's pretty obvious and it's coded really heavily. The screenwriter talks about how, at the time in Hollywood, they referred to homosexuality as "it" and everyone involved knew this was a movie about "it", even if they couldn't be blatant about it.
But is it, really, a movie about "it"? I don't know. The relevant issues in the story have more to do with morality, philosophy, and maybe what responsibilities a teacher has to students, if you want to stretch. Additionally, Hitchcock decided to try and make the movie look like one continuous shot, but couldn't actually film it that way because reels at the time only held about 10 minutes. Some of the cuts are therefore disguised, but the whole experiment really annoyed the actors (as did the tight set).
For all of that, though, the movie is a lot of fun to watch. Hitchcock might have been a bastard to work with, but he knew how to build tension, and then scene in which the housekeeper Mrs. Wilson (Evanson) cleans off the chest in preparation to open it and put some books back in is amazing because the dialog is happening just off-camera, but we're focused on what she's doing. Likewise, a brief shot of Brandon putting the murder weapon (the titular rope) in a kitchen drawer as the swinging door reveals him is pretty classic stuff.
Performance-wise, everyone is pretty on point, except maybe Stewart. Oh, he does the role well and all, but he's missing an edge that I think the part needed (apparently some other actors refused to touch the role because of "it"). With that said, the dialog is fun, and there's a nice bit of discomfort that comes when the murder victim's mother calls on the phone, crying because she's starting to get really worried, and Brandon can barely contained his excitement while Philips hits the sauce even harder.
Like most Hitchcock movies, there's a lot going on, and it's almost a shame that he used the "one-take" gimmick because I think it kind of overshadowed things.
My Grade: B+
Rewatch Value: Medium
Next up: Rosemary's Baby
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