Comments on: Rope (1948)

By: Joe Valdez

Joe Valdez — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 19:05:52 +0000

Damian: Thanks! I appreciate you mentioning Timecode. That was a fascinating experiment as well, but a failure because Mike Figgis essentially let his cast improvise the entire movie, from what I recall. If a director ever uses the single-take technique to shoot a good script, weâ€™re in for a masterpiece.

Hedwig: I agree with you, the John Dall character is a top notch villain who like any terrorist, has given himself the moral authority to kill anyone he deems inferior. Maybe I am a willy-nilly critic, but I like Rope the more comments I get praising it. Thanks!

Pat: Rope is classic Hitchcock and that’s great that your professor became upset over this. There’s no violence in the film at all. What’s disturbing is the moral superiority projected by this good looking, wholesome American lad that seems inspired by Hitler or Stalin.

By: Piper

Piper — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 16:47:04 +0000

Joe,

I can tell you that I have seen this once and it was in my film class. Much like you reported our talk was mostly centered around the long takes. I do however remember my film professor being very upset with the homosexual undertones (saying that they were unfair) and the arrogance of John Dall and how sinister it was that they killed this man and then were gloating over it. He was a bit emotional at times and although I don’t remember a lot of this, I remember it being classic Hitchcock.

By: Hedwig

Hedwig — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 07:58:15 +0000

I also like this film a lot, because of the experimentation but also because it’s the best film made based on the Leopold & Loeb story: Hitchcock understands that more than being about bloodlust or even the homoerotic subtext (though it is definitely present), the scary part is that John Dall’s character in particular is feeling by a feeling of intellectual superiority.

It plugs into the danger of the ubermensch thinking, and that’s what makes it so shocking: their not psychopathic monsters, they’re not motivated by things we can understand like jealousy or anger: they’re the kind of people we generally trust to run companies and countries, the kind of people we like to trust our civilization to.

By: Damian

Damian — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 01:51:59 +0000

One of the things I’ve always admired about Hitchcock was his willingness to experiment with the mechanics of cinema. In today’s digital age an extended single-take feature film (like Russian Ark or Timecode), while still difficult to accomplish smoothly is actually conceivable. In Hitch’s day, when film reels came in sections no longer than 10 minutes each, such a thing would be not only be extremely difficult to achieve, it would be technically impossible. Thus, Hitch’s ability to even think in such terms is remarkable.

Why Hitch wanted to attempt that with the film I’m not sure. Maybe he wanted to sustain the “real-time” theatrical nature of the original play. Maybe not. I don’t know. At any rate, it has become known more or less the “gimmick” of Rope, but aside from its innovative technique, I still find the film an intriguing and engaging work; in fact, one of the director’s most–Oh God, how I hate this word–underrated efforts.

At the very least, the theme of an individual actually living by his/her bizarre philosophical inclinations (making him/her, in a sense, more “honest” than those who don’t really practice what they preach) has always been interesting to me.

Good piece, Joe.