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| Poster |
- Title Rope
- Directed byAlfred Hitchcock
- Release date 1948
- Running time 80 Minutes
Rope is a 1948 thriller film based on a play also titled Rope (1929) by Patrick Hamilton. The Play was adapted to a be feature film by Hume Cronyn and Arthur Laurents which then went on to be directed by Alfred Hitchcock and was to be the first of Hitchcock’s Technicolor films. Rope is famous for being filmed and edited together so it seems like one long continuous take rather than multiple shots edited together.
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| Figure one: Rope |
“Rope is not merely a stunt that is justified by the extraordinary
career that contains it, but one of the movies that makes that career extraordinary.” (Vincent Canby, June 3, 1984) Rope
has often been considered one of Hitchcock's most experimental movies because
of his choice to ignore many of the standard film techniques available in 1948.
This allowed him to have the long unbroken scenes in the film giving the viewer
the sense of it being one long take. Each shot ran continuously for up to ten
minutes without any interruption. It was filmed on a single set aside from the
opening street scene shown during the credits.
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| Figure two: The Arrogant |
The ingenious design of the set
helped greatly in the filming process allowing the long unbroken shots to
happen. The walls of the building were on rollers and could silently be moved
out of the way to make way for the camera and then be replaced when they were
to come back into the cameras view. A team of sound men and camera operators
kept the camera and microphones in constant motion as the actors kept to a
carefully choreographed set of cues. Prop men had to constantly move the
furniture and other props out of the way to allow the large Technicolor camera
to move in around the room for a more seamless experience, they then had to
ensure they were replaced in the correct location when the camera had made way. “The novelty of the picture is not in the
drama itself, it being a plainly deliberate and rather thin exercise in
suspense, but merely in the method which Mr. Hitchcock has used to stretch the
intended tension for the length of the little stunt.” (Bosley Crowther, August
17, 1948)
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| Figure three: The Guilty |
Rope has many suggestions
revolving around the subject of homosexuality, for instance, Brandon, who dominates his homosexual
lover, Philip, strangles David with an ordinary piece of Rope. David's only crime seems to be that he
is ordinary, for being engaged to his
fiancée, and is about to be married. It is OK to be “normal” but not “ordinary,”
because to be ordinary means to be boring and average in the two friends eyes. “Constrained by the enforced morality of the decency codes of the time,
the film cannot come out and say explicitly what is obvious to anyone watching
the film.” ( Paul McElligott, 18
October 2005) Rope was created in a time when any suggestions of
homosexuality were strictly forbidden, but the filming and script was done in
such a way that it didn’t actually commit any offence that could get Hitchcock
into trouble with the Production team.
Bibliography
Quotes
Quote 1: Vincent Canby, June 3, 1984 - http://www.nytimes.com/library/film/060384hitch-rope-reflection.html
Quote 2: Bosley Crowther, August 17, 1948 - http://www.nytimes.com/library/film/081748hitch-rope-review.html
Quote 3: Paul
McElligott 18 October 2005 - http://www.celluloidheroreviews.com/2005/10/18/rope-1948/
Images
Fig 2 – The arrogant: http://s3.imgimg.de/uploads/R35cd16c97jpg.jpg
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