: Study Questions: Week Two

Family Secrets and Murderous Desires

Rope (1948)

Strangers on a Train (1946)

Although all Hitchcock films are stamped with his distinctive style, he was always borrowing both subjects and techniques from other film makers. Both Rope and Strangers on a Train reflect the developments taking place in American films in the years after World War II. Rope is an experiment in creating a new narrative point of view by using the camera as a character who observes the action from a single perspective (as in the "third person" or "central intelligence" point of view found in novels and short fiction as in Portrait of a Lady and other fiction by Henry James or as in John Updike's short story "A&P". Other directors were also using the camera to manipulate point of view. Robert Montgomery's adaptation of Raymond Chandler's Lady in the Lake (1947) created a "first person point of view by having the camera take the place of the film's narrator and central character, Philip Marlowe. The audience sees him only when he looks in a mirror. These experiments were not very successful, and never established themselves as part of the filmic narrative language.

Strangers on a Train, on the other hand draws on one of the most important film genres to evolve during the 1940s in Hollywood: the film noir. These films which focussed on character caught up in webs of intrigue and unable to understand or control their fates suited the themes of Hitchcock's films where characters find themselves under the influence of malevolent adversaries and sinister institutions. The use of dark, constricted settings and unusual, disorienting camera angles which characteris noir films can be found in most of Hitchcock's work (particularly the black and white films) during the 1940s and 1950s.

Rope: Apprentice Supermen.

1. How does Hitchcock achieve the illusion that the film is one long shot? How effective wuold you say it is as a narrative device? Does the technique create a sense of narrative unity, or does it distract the audience from the flow of the narrative?

2. What, exactly is the motive for the murder? It is made explicit, or does the film hint at reasons that are never explicitly mentioned?

3. What is the thematic significance of the lighting, especially the light from outside as darkness falls?

4. How effective is Jimmy Stewart as the philosophy professor and mentor?

5. In what ways do the camera angles, mise-en-scene, and character types identify Rope as a Hitchcock film?

6. How does the use of a single setting add to the tension that builds during the film?

7. Is the resolution of the action too easy? Why? Why not?

Strangers on a Train: You're a Free Man Now.

1. How does the idea of "criss-cross" (Bruno's description of his murder plans) appear in the images of the film's opening sequence at the train station?

2. How does Bruno's manner of speech and his expression (often at odds with what he is saying) serve to characterize him?

3. Why does Bruno want to kill his father?

4. This film, perhaps more than any other, develops the idea of the double. Bruno and Guy, Miriam and Ann's sister are the most obvious. How many other pairs can you find?

5. To what degree could Bruno be seen as a manifestation of Guy's repressed fears and desires?

6. What explanation does the film offer for Bruno's behavior? What particular scenes, images, actions support this explanation? Is this explanation satisfactory?

7. How does Hitchcock use familiar settings to build suspense? Consider the music store, the amusement park, the merry-go-round. What is the significance of the murder taking place on "Magic Isle" that is approached through the tunnel of love in boats named Styx (Miriam's) and Pluto (Bruno's)?

8. In what ways is sexual desire an underlying cause of the protagonist's troubles?

9. What is the significance of Bruno's helping the blind man across the road?

10. In what ways do Miriam and Ann represent rather stereotyped images of women as they appear in our popular culture?

11. What does Guy's alliance with Ann promise besides love? In what way is she the symbolic prize of someone who achieves the American Dream?

12. How does the clever editing of the tennis match and Bruno's struggle to retrieve Guy's lighter contribute to the film's suspense?

13. Can you identify shots in which a film noir style (the use of off-center camera angles, patterns of shadows, and images of entrapment) is used to advance the film's themes? Why, for instance, does Bruno so often emerge from a shadow to haunt Guy?

14. What is suggested by also having Bruno appear against the background of Washington's most familiar architecture (the Jefferson Memorial, the National Gallery, Union Station)?

15. Why does Hitchcock have Bruno attend the Morton's party?

16. What is the significance of Bruno dying with a lie on his lips? How does it negate the idea of the death-bed confession? Or that Bruno is weak?

17. Why is it a clergyman whose foot crosses Guy's in the final scene repeating the gesture which brought Guy and Bruno together in the opening scene?