Enough "Rope"

Cafe Society
1

Just saw Rope for the first time in years, and lordy, what a stinker! It’s a striking idea: two gay men murder a third and give a dinner party with the body in a trunk. I don’t mind the “evil murdering gays” angle, had it been done well. But . . .

The script is ghastly, full of heart-attack subtle murder-related lines (“I could just strangle you!”), as well as having the words “gay” and “queer” used, which the right people would have understood in 1948. Generally, a very very bad drawing-room comedy; I don’t know whether the play was as clunkily written as the film adaptation.

No suspense: I don’t care if they get caught or not.

John Dall gives the kind of arch performance that would get you drummed out of your junior-high dramatic society. Farley Granger and Jimmy Stewart and everyone else struggle the best they can with an unactable script.

Alfred, Alfred: you should not have shown the face of the murder victim at the beginning; you leave that up to the audience’s imagination.

I dunno, maybe it could be remade, it’s a good idea, just so badly executed (get it, “executed,” hahahahaha? That’s what I mean).

2

I TiVo’d it last night not because I suspect it will be a good movie, but because it’s supposedly really visually unique. The whole movie is made up of 9 or so continuous shots all pieced together to look a lot like a single take? Or am I thinking of the wrong Hitchcock movie?

3

Well, the point of the film was as much a filmmaking exercise as anything else. Hitchcock did the entire film as a series of 10-minute takes with (other than the cut to get inside the apartment at the beginning) no visible cuts. Ten minutes because that’s how much film the camera held. Everything on the set (walls, furniture) was mobile to allow the camera complete range of movement. If someone blew a line the entire ten minutes had to be started over.

I kind of liked the archness of the acting. The only clunky note for me was Jimmy Stewart.

While Rope hasn’t been remade directly, Swoon was a more recent film based on the Leopold and Loeb case.

4

And for some reason, my local on-screen TV Guide has added an exclamation point to the title. So it’s according to them not Rope, it’s Rope! like Oklahoma! or Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!

5

It might have been better as a musical, with Donald O’Connor and Gene Kelly as the killers, Fred Astaire in Jimmy Stewart’s part, and Ann Miller as the fag hag.

6

I read the play while working on a research paper on misinterpretations of Nietzsche. I remember the play as being better than the movie. In the dramatic sense, that is; I think it was equally bad when it came to Nietzsche’s work.

Then again, I didn’t think the movie was all that bad in the first place…except for when Jimmy Stewart goes into lecture mode. Yawn. IIRC, that character in the play is rather different – he’s not a professor, he’s a former classmate of the murderers.

7

Yeah, Rope (sorry, Otto and TV Guide, but it just doesn’t warrant an exclamation point) was the one that made me think that this Hitchcock guy wasn’t all he was cracked up to be. At the time I’d just seen Rear Window!, The Birds!, Vertigo!, Psycho!, and Strangers on a Train, and he was on a winning streak.

I’d heard about the gimmick of the movie, but the way it’d been described made it sound as if the entire movie was just two takes. When I could see exactly where all the cuts were happening (because I was looking for it, granted), it just turned into what Eve describes: a bad drawing-room play. And it had a very real sense of not being quite as shocking as they were hoping for it to be.

And I didn’t get that the protagonists were supposed to be gay. But then, that should come as a surprise to no one.

8

They had to keep it really, really understated for the maintream cinema at the time or cenros would have been assahts about it. But there’s one bickering scene where they are bickering like an old married couple and then the “more manly” guy slaps the other. Between the dialogue and the wussiness of the slap, I remember nearly falling out of my chair laughing.

I did find the cinema technique to work, and that was suspenseful (the long shots of the maid cleaning up… going up and down the hall… I must admit I was at the edge of my seat.) By my, my was Jimmy Stewart a yawner. And the dialgoue was soooo painfully bad.

It really, really has NOT stood up well over time. Like, wow. It’s really dated and is ridiculous.

9

Damn this little laptop keyboard! “Censors”… “asshats”… I’m sure you can all figure it out.

10

I’m actually a little bit surprised to hear this. Rope is probably my favorite Hitchcock film. I thought the acting was acceptable and Stewart’s performance maybe even exceptional. I’m very rarely held in suspense by a movie but this one did it for me. I didn’t realize it was such a hated film.

Whatever blows your hair back I guess.

11

Same here. It’s probably better than 20 years since I saw it, but I remember enjoying it, including Stewart’s performance. I know, though, that it always takes a lot of grief as a failed experiment.

12

I actually did not hate it, and despite moments that I found to be dreadful shortcomings, I remember really enjoying the film. I saw it with my ex and we were both surprised at how suspenseful it got towards the end.

The more ridiculous scenes between the two murderers we were able to forgive as just being dated in a bad way. I always thought that Hitchcock either should have committed unapologetically to having the characters be gay (although it probably would have been yucky stereoypes) or just leave them as a pair of straight guys. The trying to portray them as gay without making them gay just made them silly.

I did hate Jimmy Stewart in it though. And I agree with Eve that the whole thing would have been more effective if we’d never seen the victim.

13

Thrill Me.

Didn’t know if it had actually been done but given that there’s a musical about The Weekly World News’ Batboy I figured the odds were pretty good.

I’ve not read the play but I do have an ancient and battered Dell paperback novelization of the movie, with Hitch credited as the author and including CRIME MAP ON BACK COVER! The map, though, doesn’t match up with the layout of the movie set. Rupert comes off like a prick in the book too. Oh well yes, I taught you boys that there were superior and inferior people and that the superior people ought to be allowed to decide whether the inferiors live or die, but you weren’t supposed to take me seriously. Rupert is IMHO very culpable in David’s death and his last-minute conversion and denunciation of his own philosophy doesn’t absolve him.

And you know, thinking about it the arch acting of the rest of the cast is even cleverer than I initially thought and Stewart’s acting choices much better than I initially gave him credit for. Brandon stage-managed everything about the evening, so everyone he was stage managing acted like, well, actors. He couldn’t stage manage Stewart, so Stewart’s acting had to be different stylistically from everyone else’s.

14

I do love the bit where Jimmy Stewart fires three shots out the window. I imagine the police ignoring John Dall and Farley Granger, and arresting Jimmy for the three deaths in the high-rise across the street.

But yes, I did enjoy it, in a “this is gloriously awful, here’s how they should have done it” way.

15

Now, I haven’t seen it in about ten years, but doesn’t the one guy, when he tries to act “queeny” sound like he’s trying (and failing miserably) to do a Kate Hepburn imitation?

16

I’m now going to argue with Eve about a movie. Presumably I’ll next be challenging Mike Tyson to go bareknuckle.

What made this movie for me was Jimmy Stewart’s performance and character, Rupert Cadell.

Stewart is a great actor, especially when he taps into his dark side. (Before you laugh at that last sentence, watch his performance in It’s a Wonderful Life, where he realizes this isn’t a dream, that he never lived. Holy Christ almighty, that’s a scary moment).

In Rope, he’s an charmingly elitist, sarcastic, cynical jerk who left teaching to go into publishing. He makes no bones about how little he thinks of people – he jokes that murdering a waiter should be legal if you’re kept waiting over a certain time.

But as the events unfold, and as Cadell gradually realizes what these two spoiled, evil brats have done, he starts to face an awful truth: he may have influenced them, with his smarmy elitism. He was their teacher.

It’s a moment we all face, where we wonder if we’ve helped something horrible happen.

But Cadell does the right thing – he admits that he was wrong to espouse his Nietschean philosophy to young minds, but also holds the adult murderers responsible for their actions.

And firing the gun to summon police wasn’t just an act of self-interest – imagine the high-priced defense attorney summoning Cadell to testify at the trial (“Mr. Cadell, you were their teacher… Did you ever teach them the works of Frederick Nietschke?”).

(I offer my usual disdain for Hitchcock’s homophobia and admit my total lack of knowledge about acting and moviemaking. I’m just offering how it spoke to me).

17

I wrote a paper once about this movie, along with Compulsion and Swoon, since they were all based on the Leopold and Loeb case.

I think the last one was best in terms of both production and accuracy.

18

The last one was the only one that actually named the characters “Leopold” and “Loeb.” I have all three on tape and I may when I have the time have myself a triple feature. I didn’t make it all the way through Compulsion when I tried to watch it (fell asleep from exhaustion; was liking the movie). I did not like Swoon in the slightest.

19

I think you’re a little hard on the movie. The script has it’s weak moments, but overall I found the movie totally absorbing and well-paced. Compare Rope to other Hitchcock films there’s plenty of overacting and high melodrama to be found in all of them. (By the way, am I the only person that loathes Vertigo?)

Also, the homophobia (as I recall) is subtle enough that a film-maker could probably get away with it even today. Certainly five to ten years ago. For the times I suspect it was downright open-minded. In fact, I’d say the critique of the characters is consciously focused on their elitism, avoiding implicating their sexuality, except inasmuch as one of the characters is a sexual sadist. Reasonable people could argue that point forever though.

20

I agree. I don’t exactly loathe Vertigo but I thought Rope was much better paced. It’s more engrossing from beginning to end, whereas Vertigo almost feels too long to be a single movie, and too short to be two movies. I think that story would’ve done better as a book or a series of 2-3 books.