Rope (1948)

Rope, based on a play of the same name, which was in turn based on a real murder case in 1924, opens with two friends - played by John Dall and Farley Granger - strangling a classmate with a length of rope. The body is then stuffed in a trunk that the two use as a buffet table during an upcoming dinner party - a party partially in their murdered friend's honor.

As the movie progresses, the friends' professor - played exceedingly well by James Stewart in one of his best-acted roles - eventually begins to suspect the crime. As the two students engage him in a discussion about Nietzschian philosophy, and specifically philosophy of the ubermensch (overman or superman), Stewart's character puts two and two together. The tension is so tight you hold your breath for the last half-hour, wondering if Stewart knows, and if he does, what he's going to do about it - and, more importantly, if he's in danger, too.

Much has been made of the technical side of the film - Hitch wanted it as close to a stage play as possible, and the entire movie has only nine (well-hidden) breaks - as well as the homosexual overtones, but the real genius in Rope comes from the acting and direction. As opposed to today's "roller-coaster ride" action movies, Rope builds slowly, layering tension upon tension until the viewer just can't wait anymore to find out what happens. Anyone can toy with an audience, using special effects, explosions, and fast cars to create action, but true suspense - that hourglass feeling of grains of sand building a mountain - takes talent, and Rope readily uses that effect, thanks largely to the preformances of the three main characters.

In addition, Stewart's ultimate conclusions on Nietzschian philosophy offer a refreshing step away from those who would indict it solely on the basis of notions (and books) like the Will to Power - people who can see no further than the two murderers. Like Hitler and Dall and Granger's characters, some people cannot see past these passages, often taken out of context from the rest of Nietzsche's thought. Thankfully, Arthur Laurentis' screenplay ultimately deals with these ideas in a mature manner - and shows the horrifying effects of the hubris so many undergraduate-level students get when they don't bother to read and conside Nietzsche in context.

Universal's DVD is excellent - the picture and sound quality are top-notch, especially considering it's been more than 50 years since Rope was filmed. The full-frame presentation isn't a problem, since widescreen movies didn't exist at the time. The half-hour long featurette offers some interesting insights and interviews with a couple members of the cast and crew, and isn't your usual "so-and-so was great" pieces. Hume Cronyn offers some genuine - and well-founded - criticisms of both Hitch and the finished product. Also included is Rope's unique theatrical trailer, a kind of "mini-short" featuring the soon-to-be-murdered lad discussing a marriage proposal with his girlfriend in Central Park, in surprisingly decent quality considering the film's age.

If you are a fan of Alfred Hitchcock, or just like great acting and pianowire-tight tension, then you can't go wrong with Rope.


A Play? A Movie? Doesn't Matter, it's Hitchcock!   March 4, 2004
Greg Perry (Oklahoma)
20 out of 29 found this review helpful

Oh this one's another good one. The only thing that makes a Hitchcock story better is when Jimmy Steward stars in it!

The setting for this is an apartment. This movie is also a play. Unlike most Hitchcock movies, you won't be taken to the far corners of the globe. You stay right there in the apartment. And for VERY good reason.... You, the audience, must watch that nothing changes in the apartment and yet the murder slowly un-ravels....

The one-room setting does kind of make the movie itself feel like a play. I'm not a big fan of plays and I suppose it's because of the limited scenery possible for a play versus a movie or novel. And yet, this works for me very well. I suppose it's because I know about that rope... and just wait until you know too!


Hitchcock Experimenting   August 19, 2006
John Austin (Kangaroo Ground, Australia)
18 out of 19 found this review helpful

Following the success of the film "Gaslight", based on a play written by Englishman Patrick Hamilton, Alfred Hitchcock, who had no hand in the making of that film, scheduled a film adaptation of a 1929 play by the same author, "Rope". In each of the plays, suspense is the chief element. In "Rope" we watch a dinner party held in a New York apartment. Two university students, prompted by self-justifying bravado, murder a third. They hide his body in a large chest upon which they then set the food for the guests, all family and friends of the murdered student, to partake.

How to create an 80 minute film set entirely in one New York apartment was challenging. Hitchcock decided to film it in color (his first color film), to present the action in an apparently seamless series of 10 minute "takes", and to start the film with the murder (it had not been included in the play).

Seeing his film in this excellent DVD restoration, it is some of these filming decisions that I have found most interesting. The dialogue may be unnatural, and the cast members uneasy, but the man in charge of filming certainly knew how to build suspense. Especially effective is the ending, when the illuminated advertising signs and the noises from the streets below begin to infiltrate through the windows.

Included in the extras are comments from scriptwriters, a cast member, and Hitchcock's daughter.



ROPED IN   October 13, 2001
newtonbosswell (Winter Park, FL United States)
14 out of 15 found this review helpful

Based on an actual murder case and directed by legendary director Alfred Hitchcock, Rope tells the story of two very close, well to do roommates Phillip and Brandon who strangle David, an old school chum, just for kicks. To further increase the exhilaration of their dastardly deed, the duo deem it delicious to desecrate the dead by placing his body into a chest and serving their dinner party guests a banquet on its decorated top. The guests of honor at this most perverse soiree include their former prep school professor Rupert Cadell (James Stewart), the murder victim's parents, his fiance, and her former boyfriend. This tapestry provides tension for Phillip as he is nervous about being caught and questions abound as to David's whereabouts. Interestingly, Brandon feels smug even justified as he views the act of murder to be relegated to a select superior few.

Rope explores Nietzsche's concept of the "uebermensch" or "superman" in which society's people are divided into two groups. Those who believe in the concepts of right and wrong and behave accordingly are deemed inferior beings and therefore unnecessary. While those who are enlightened enough to realize that one is free to act according to their own volition because there are no such primitive or external constraints on behavior are deemed superior. In this worldview, homicide is justifiable because the intellectually superior are actually bettering society by eliminating the inferior and their drain on its resources. The story comes to a head when Professor Cadell who taught Phillip and Brandon these nihilistic concepts begins to suspect that they practiced what he preached by killing David.

Rope was shot with eight; 10-minute reels to give the illusion of one seamless, continuous take. This forces the viewer to pay attention to every word and provides an eerie feeling that he/she is a witness to the murder and is a guest at the dinner party. What also drives the film is its witty if not macabre dialogue that is punctuated with puns, innuendoes and double entendre. It is also interesting to watch the professor engage Phillip and Brandon in the proverbial game of cat and mouse. Likewise, the characters are richly developed and deep.

Rope is Hitchcock's most underrated and unappreciated film. Which is a shame because I believe Rope poses some very provocative questions. Is there sanctity to human life? Are all human beings equal? Is murder ever justifiable? Is there right and wrong? Is moral absolutism an outmoded idea in which only the weak and dumb subscribe? Is a teacher responsible for his/her students' actions? Ultimately, the viewer must decide.


"Rope" - - A Hitchcock Classic   January 13, 1999
11 out of 13 found this review helpful

"Rope" - - an Alfred Hitchcock film with a unique style and plotline, with unusual yet effective cinematography and some of the best actors to play the leading roles. Adapted from a theatre piece, the one-set, appox. 80 minute long movie was simply ahead of its time. The premise is as follows: Two men strangle a fellow classmate for intellectual thrills, and continue to flaunt their macabre working at a dinner party held after the murder. The party is made up of the dead man's friends and family, the maid, and the dead man's former teacher. While one of the murderers is daring and proud, dropping subtle hints to the partygoers of what was actually happening, the other becomes more and more nervous as the deceased's teacher becomes ever-so-close to discovering the horrible truth, and the fact that the chest that the body is stuffed in is the very buffet table they all had been eating off of. Based on the Leopold/Loeb murder case, "Rope" is a probing psychological thriller. May not be a "Scream" or "I Know What You Did Last Summer", but it is definately a nail-biter that ranks with some of Hitchcock's best.