Rope (1948)

Rope
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Written by Arthur Laurents; adapted by Hume Cronyn from a play by Patrick Hamilton
1948/USA
Warner Bros./Transatlantic Pictures
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental
#221 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Rupert Cadell: Brandon’s spoken of you.

Janet Walker: Did he do me justice?

Rupert Cadell: Do you deserve justice?[/box]

I can’t help thinking that this one doesn’t take itself seriously enough to rank with one of the Master’s better films. Still, it’s lots of malicious fun.

The entire film takes place in real time in Brandon’s (John Dall) apartment.  It begins with Brandon and his close friend Phillip (Farley Granger) strangling a prep school classmate with a rope. Both apparently conceived the crime as a lark designed to highlight their superiority over mere mortals and their artistry in carrying out the perfect murder.  But Phillip gets cold feet immediately after the deed is done and is a nervous wreck for the rest of the story.

Brandon is so confident that he has invited the victim’s parents and fiancee, and the fiancee’s ex-boyfriend, to a party that very evening.  He relishes the prospect of serving supper from the very chest in which they have stashed the body.  Brandon also has gleefully invited Rupert Cadell (James Stewart) , the boy’s headmaster at prep school, to covertly gloat that he has brought Cadell’s Nietzschian philosophy to its ultimate triumph.  But the party takes several turns that Brandon could not anticipate.

Hitchcock certainly had a lot of fun meeting the technical challenges of filming in a single location in what looks like a single take.  This fun is transmitted to the audience along with several sly self-referential winks.  (I especially like the dialogue about Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman appearing together in a movie called Something Something — or was that just Something?)  The whole thing is just a little too gimmicky for me to give my heart to, however.

Rope was Hitchcock’s first color film.

Trailer