Strangles in the Night

I had thought that many years ago, I'd actually watched Alfred Hitchcock's movie Rope. It's a much-talked about movie in film geek circles, the movie Hitchcock made "all in one take" (more on that later). Perhaps all that talk convinced me I had actually seen the movie when I hadn't, because when I sat down recently to watch it, I quickly concluded "there's no way I would have forgotten this movie if I had seen it." (More on that later too.)

But I have to start by giving a summary of the plot to those who haven't seen it. Rope opens with two men strangling a third to death, dumping his body into a big chest in their living room, and then proceeding (in "real time") to host a dinner party with the body right there in the room, possibly to be discovered at any moment. More shocking than their bold flirting with disaster is their motive for the crime: they essentially have none at all. These two men believe themselves to be "superior" individuals, and are thus entitled to murder any "inferior" individual they desire. They've picked this particular victim, but might have just as easily picked anyone else. Choke on that.

Rope was based on a stage play, and perhaps as an homage to that, Alfred Hitchcock decided to create the illusion of filming all 85 minutes of it in a single take, a "one-er," as it's now known in the business. But practical considerations compromised this concept right out of the gate. First of all, a camera could hold only about 10 minutes of film; that's all that Hitchcock could actually film before having to cut. Hitchcock tricked his way around this problem by disguising some of the cuts. He'd have the camera zoom in tight on something (usually a person's back), filling the screen and blacking it out, then switching film and pulling off that zoom to continue the scene. Technically speaking, these changes aren't executed very well; you know the cuts are happening there, if you're looking for them. But narratively, they work just fine. It serves the purpose of carrying the story along without interruption.

The second problem is the "change-over" (which any fan of the movie Fight Club will understand). A reel of film in the theater could hold only about 20 minutes of footage before running out. The illusion of a two-hour film was exactly that -- an illusion. As one projector wound down after 20 minutes, the projectionist at a movie theater would have to start up a second projector to present the next 20 minutes of the film. Knowing that he could not rely on any consistent precision from projectionists anyway, Hitchcock opted not to disguise "every other cut," the one that would fall on the change-over. Thus, there are three visible cuts in Rope, where the angle simply changes from one person to another. The action remains in real time, so once again, the feeling of uninterrupted flow is preserved, but the myth of "Hitchcock's one take film" is again simply not true.

But set aside the technique, and let me talk about how it plays. Sometimes, it's brilliant. There's a prolonged two-minute sequence at one point where an entire conversation happens off camera, as we watch the housekeeper clean up at the party, and come ever closer to discovering the body. Watching her and only her as we hear the conversation continue is a very effective way to ratchet up the tension. It totally works. But then other times, there are moments where you definitely want to see the reaction's on the killers' faces as people at the party say "just the right thing," but you don't because the unbreaking camera doesn't take you there. In moments like that, possible tension is lost. So ultimately, I'd call this aspect of Rope a cool experiment. It works sometimes, and not others. It's a useful tool for Hitchcock to have put in the filmmakers' toolbox, the idea of the "one-er," but it should be used in moderation, like any other tool.

I said at the beginning that I'm sure I would have remembered seeing Rope before, and here's why: within about two minutes, it is abundantly clear that the two main characters -- the men who commit the murder -- are a gay couple. Upon realizing this, I immediately thought, "when was this movie made?" The answer: 1948, which seems impossibly early for a movie to include such content in so overt a manner. I then decided that I must be imagining it, that I was just reading too much into the film. But the longer the film kept rolling, the more it seemed clear I wasn't imagining anything; Hitchcock and screenwriter Arthur Laurents had built a film around a gay couple -- and not a stereotypical one -- in the late 1940s. After the end credits had rolled, I had to do some research.

I quickly discovered that I wasn't imagining anything. The writer and both actors (John Dall and Farley Granger) publicly acknowledged later that, oh yes, the characters were most definitely a gay couple. What's more, their former prep-school teacher, played by James Stewart, was also meant to have had an affair with one or both of them at some point in the past. Well, okay, I totally didn't see that in the movie, but still -- my mind is officially blown. Reading about how they got away with this was informative and entertaining. It was forbidden by the Production Code censors of the time to include any reference to homosexuality, so Hitchcock apparently instructed Arthur Laurents to "over-write" it. The original play was British, and filled with British-isms that Laurents had removed in his American screenplay treatment. Hitchcock had him put back in all the "my dear boy"s and so forth, which the censors flagged as "homosexual dialogue" that had to be removed. As he knew they would. The rest of the innuendo, plain to see but never mentioned aloud, was left alone.

I wonder if the clever cat-and-mouse game with the censors actually helped the script. Because the script couldn't play the stereotypes, the main characters had to be rounded and believable characters; they didn't kill because they were gay and depraved, they were simply depraved, and also happened to be gay. Again, it's just amazing to think that they got away with this in 1948. My continued research quickly found that the inspiration for all this was the Leopold and Loeb murder case. Their killing was similarly motivated -- they picked a random victim they thought they could get away with killing. Still, Rope brings plenty of original ideas to supplement its "ripped from the headlines" origins.

But Rope isn't a triumph, either. I mentioned earlier that technical limitations sometimes mar the narrative conceit. Another problem is the character played by James Stewart. Oh, Stewart himself is fine enough in the role -- though to hear the lead actors and screenwriter tell it, they don't think Stewart was ever aware his character was suppose to be gay (and perhaps that's why that bit of subtext in the plot isn't apparent). No, the problem is with the character as written on the page. And I'm going to have to spoil the end of the movie here to explain myself, so if you've never seen it and want to without knowing the ending, you should skip the next paragraph.

This character is supposed to be the teacher who first professed the theory embraced by the killers -- that the "superior" are entitled to murder the "inferior." He's challenged on this theory in the movie, and defends it staunchly and seriously. And yet, once he confronts the reality of that actually having happened, he's outraged and shocked. He claims that he never thought to see his words "twisted" like this. How else can his words possibly be taken, if not literally? (And he says point blank in the movie that yes, he means literally.) It feels like a major inconsistency that no actor could reconcile in a performance. Neither is it convincing that the character is suddenly realizing the horror of something that was formerly just a theory. Put simply, this character just does not work, and as he's key to the unraveling of the whole murder, the climax of the film just does not work either.

With so much going on both in the movie and behind-the-scenes, it's hard to know just how to rank it. I think it works out to about a B- in my book. It's not perfect, but I do think it one of the better Hitchcock movies I've seen. And it's about as old a film I can think of that I've actually enjoyed. On that basis, I think I have to give it a strong recommendation.