Rope (1948)

Rope is famous for being a film which appears to be one continuous shot. Based on a 1929 stage play, which in turn was drawn from the infamous Leopold and Loeb murder case of 1924, Rope tells the story of two young, intelligent, collegiate students, Dall and Granger, who murder a weak-willed friend, Hogan, simply for the thrill of it. In their New York penthouse apartment, safely hidden behind the drawn window shades, Dall and Granger strangle the life out of Hogan with a length of rope and then stuff his corpse into an antique chest. After hiding the rope in a kitchen drawer, the pair celebrate their gruesome feat with champagne.

The apartment is then prepared for the evening's cocktail party; included among the guests are Hardwicke, the murdered boy's father, Chandler, the victim's fiancee, and Stewart, a college professor whose philosophical discussions of Friedrich Nietzsche's "superman" theory have inspired the murderers. Dall, the more arrogant of the killers, enjoys toying with the crime he just committed, insisting that dinner be served from the chest and making veiled references to the crime such as "I could kill you" and "Knock 'em dead." Granger, on the other hand, appears not to enjoy the game, reacting nervously to such purposely ironic comments. As the night wears on, the guests become concerned with Hogan's absence, fearing that something may have happened to him.

The dinner party begins to take on a more morbid tone when Dall pulls Stewart into a conversation about murder. Stewart speaks on an abstract level of man's right and moral duty to rid the world of the weak. This philosophy, which disgusts most of the guests, excites Dall, who tries to bring the conversation into more concrete terms. By this point, Granger has gotten himself quite drunk and becomes carelessly emotional, arousing Stewart's suspicions. Dall pushes the proceedings too far when he gives Hardwicke some books tied together with the piece of rope used in the murder. An hour after the party has begun, with Hogan still unaccounted for, the guests leave, and it looks as if Dall and Granger have succeeded.

Stewart, however, returns and presses the issue of their earlier conversation about murder. When he puts the facts together and finds the body, he calls the police. As the three wait, Stewart realizes that he taught his pupils too well and assumes a measure of the guilt for the murder. Although the story of the murder and its discovery is intriguing, it is not what people remember Rope for, nor is it top-drawer Hitchcock in terms of storytelling, complexity, and structure. Like Lifeboat (1944) before it, Rope is an experiment in overcoming technical barriers and restrictions--a task which always thrilled Hitchcock. Known for his deliberate and meticulous preproduction planning of a film, Hitchcock is widely believed to have thought of his actors in a secondary light. Here, this is most clear since all of his energies go into technique, but, paradoxically, Rope, with its long takes, can be seen as favorable to the actors since their performances are closer to theater than film.

The construction of Rope is simple--eight 10-minute takes cut together to appear as one continuous shot. Feature films have an average of about 600 shots. (Hitchcock's The Birds had over 1,300 and just the shower scene in Psycho had dozens.) Rope appears to be one continuous take, exclusive of a separate shot which opens the film and a couple of direct reverse angle cuts within the film, which are often forgotten. Since the maximum length for a reel of 35mm film is around ten minutes, the reels were joined inconspicuously by stopping the camera behind a character with his or her back filling the entire frame. Not surprisingly, there were many other hurdles for Hitchcock and his crew to overcome.

Together with cameraman Valentine, art director Ferguson, set designers Kuri and Bristol, and editor Ziegler, Hitchcock outlined specific plans for the production. Ziegler's job was to choreograph the actors' movements with a small scale model of the set. Valentine's camera needed the freedom to travel through the set without crashing into things, so breakaway walls were built, which were suspended from ceiling beams and rolled along by technicians to allow camera passage. The furniture and the chest which hid the corpse were also on rollers. Because dialogue was being recorded, the movement of the walls and the props had to be done silently, so the tracks on which they moved were coated with petroleum jelly. The floors of the sound stage were specially built with one-inch tongue-and-groove lumber, soundproofing, and felt-lined carpeting to prevent any creaking. Even a special camera dolly was invented (by head grip Morris Rosen) to allow for greater freedom of movement.

Countless lights were hung overhead, as were microphones. On some occasions there were as many as five boom operators recording sound at the same time, adding to the already crowded sound stage. Because of the number of people and the number of things that could go wrong, many takes were needed for each scene. One perfectly good take was ruined when, after the ten-minute reel was nearly done, an electrician was spotted in the background. Valentine, in a 1948 interview with American Cinematographer magazine, said: "My biggest problem was the lighting, especially the job of eliminating mike and camera shadows. In the reel in which we had 10 mikes in operation we had to have electricians operating five dimmer panels." This was Hitchcock's first film in color, and Valentine was experienced only with black-and-white photography, so he was unable to capture the color Hitchcock needed. Technicolor advisor Skall was brought in and, after Valentine left the production due to illness, reshot the final five reels (over half of the film).

Special care was also taken on the New York City skyline which is seen outside the penthouse window. Since the film took place in real time, night had to fall over the city. A set was built which encompassed 35 square miles of skyline, including such landmarks as the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building. Six thousand flashing miniature lights, 200 miniature neon signs, 26,000 feet of wire, 150 transformers, and 126,000 watts of electricity were controlled by an electrician operating 47 different switches. (The skyline included a neon sign which advertised a product called Reduco, featuring a before and after silhouette of Hitchcock.) Everything outside the window was constructed in diminishing perspective and in a semicircle to keep the constantly mobile camera from accidentally photographing part of a bare set. Technically correct cloud formations were constructed from spun glass and chickenwire, under the expert instructions of a specially hired advisor.

Budgeted at $1.5 million, Rope was scripted first by Hitchcock's friend, actor Hume Cronyn, from Hamilton's play. Playwright Laurents was then brought in to improve on Cronyn. Even Ben Hecht (who had previously written Spellbound, 1945 and Notorious, 1946) added some uncredited lines to the final climactic scene. Rehearsals began on January 12, 1948, to perfect the interplay between camera, cast, and crew. Numbers were placed on the floor marking everyone's specific spots, each of which corresponded with the actors' dialog cues. Filming commenced on January 22 and finished on February 21. Hitchcock later said, "I undertook ROPE as a stunt; that's the only way I know how to describe it." As a result, ROPE is chiefly of interest to filmmakers curious to learn how things were achieved; it lacks much of the flair and audience manipulation that Hitchcock has become famous for.

Stewart's performance is competent, but never reaches the level of disturbance or authority that it should have. Dall and Granger are both superb. Their characters were based on the murderous exploits of Richard A. Leopold, the 18-year-old son of a multi-millionaire shipping magnate, and Nathan F. Loeb, the 17-year-old son of a wealthy Sears, Roebuck and Company vice president. Together, in 1924, they kidnaped and killed 14-year-old Bobbie Franks of Chicago just for the thrill of trying to get away with murder. Because of the underlying homosexuality in ROPE, the film was initially banned in Chicago (perhaps as a reaction to the raking up of the memory of the real murder case), Spokane, Memphis, Seattle, and morally condemned in many other towns. Only after an "adults only" policy was enacted in Chicago, and the opening murder scene deleted in Sioux City, Iowa, could the film be shown in those cities.

Cast:

Performer, Character

James Stewart, Rupert Cadell

John Dall, Shaw Brandon

Farley Granger, Philip

Joan Chandler, Janet Walker

Cedric Hardwicke, Mr. David Kentley's Father

Constance Collier, Mrs. Atwater

Edith Evanson, Mrs. Wilson the Governess

Douglas Dick, Kenneth Lawrence

Dick Hogan, David Kentley

Production Credits:

Producers, Sidney Bernstein and Alfred Hitchcock

Director, Alfred Hitchcock

Screenwriters, Arthur Laurents, Hume Cronyn, and Ben Hecht (based on the play Rope's End by Patrick Hamilton

Editor, William Ziegler

Cinematographer, Joseph Valentine

Music Director, Leo F. Forbstein

Composer, David Buttolph