I’ve seen Rope six or seven times, and I’d never even considered that the two protagonists might be gay. I pulled out my DVD and watched it again, and I still don’t see it. The bickering between the two freinds seems a lot like the Frasier-Niles relationship on the tv show Frasier (for those who aren’t fans, Frasier and Niles Crane are close knit brothers, both unambigously straight).
I’m not trying to argue that it isn’t there; Eve is clearly more knowledgeable on the subjcet than I am. But I do think it could just as easily be read as two close friends with one in the more dominant position in the relationship.
That’s how I’ve always interpereted it. I’ve seen Rope at least three seperate times that I can remember and it also never occured to me that they might be gay. I don’t think I’m showing my ignorance because I have several gay friends and I’m a people-watcher. Usually very quick to pick up on things like that.
Since Vertigo has also been mentioned, he taps into that dark side pretty hard there, too…I’m thinking of the line “you were a VERY APT PUPIL!” in that movie specifically. Wow. It’s the kind of emotional flash that makes one think of abusive, controlling husbands, and it’s downright frightening coming from Stewart.
Oh, and as long as it’s been brought up, add me to the “Doesn’t see what the big damn deal is about Vertigo” camp. Seen it three times, each time trying to be as open to it as possible knowing that it’s supposed to be such a masterpiece and I’m always “eh.”
I’m sure Hitchcock considered the characters to be gay (he also suggested it in "Strangers on a Train’), but, really, Rope was produced under the Production Code. Not a chance they’d portray the two characters as gay in any way that would be recognizable (especially today, when our impressions on what it means to be gay are quite different).
Still, this was never considered one of Hitchcock’s best. He was only really interested in the technical end, and the story kind of plods.
There were lots of little clues, including the use of the words “queer” and “gay,” which would have been understood by the “in crowd” of the late '40s. Even the “how did you feel when you did it?” lines in the beginning: " . . . then his body went limp . . . and I felt tremendously exhilarated. How did you feel?" Plus, Farley Granger is openly gay and has spoken in interviews how the couple was directed by Hitchcock to be a gay couple.
I don’t feel it was homophobic, though—Leopold and Loeb were presumed to be gay, and the plot is loosely based on them.
But I still find Jimmy Stewart shooting a gun out a window in a crowded city to attract the police hilarious!
I liked Rope because of the whole it’s-all-one-continuous-shot effect. I liked it a whole hell of a lot better than Vertigo.
If Rope aired again and I had nothing better to do, I’d watch it. If Vertigo aired again and I had nothing better to do, well, I’d find something better to do.
Despite having been typecast a great deal, Stewart was one of the best actors ever to work in Hollywood. He had a similar moment to the one you describe in one of his first, awesome performances in W.S. Van Dyke’s After The Thin Man. Rope? Eh. I liked the continuous shot aspect and some of John Dall (“Why Phillip! Sometimes I don’t think you appreciate me!”). Give me Notorious or Sabotage or The Birds any day.
The end of each shot is covered by one of the characters walking in front of the camera, if I remember right. I was not much impressed by Rope, either.
Words or actions indicating that they were sexually attracted to each other and/or had sex with each other. Many in this thread seem to see exactly that, and I don’t doubt their sincerity. If that was indeed the intent, the point was made too subtly for me to pick it up.
Thanks. I didn’t know that that usage was common at the time, and I still tend to interpret “queer” as meaning “strange” unless the context makes it very clear that “homosexual” is the intended meaning.
I’m afraid I still don’t see any implication other than sexual sadism in the “how did you feel” lines.
Wasn’t paying incredibly close attention (dozed in and out, actually) but IIRC at least one was covered by opening the chest.
Would never as has been noted, have explicitly happened in the era of the Production Code. I rather prefer to think of them as non-sexual anyway. They sublimate their sexual energy into piano and murder. Or something. Besides, they’re obviously both bottoms and that really just never works out well in the sack.
Yeah, I never really picked up that they were gay. Eve, is there something specific you are basing that call on?
I do like the film, but the character of the of the murderer certainly rubs me the wrong way, as I’m sure he does everyone else. I don’t thing the film is meant to be taken seriously as drama, but is more allegorical in nature. The idea of Jimmy Stewart’s character reappearing to read them the riot act, as the police sirens approach smacked a little too much of a symbolic Nemesis to be realistic.
I also watched Rope back when I was a film student and came across similar background info on the making of the movie. For “those in the know” (i.e./ people familiar with the GLBT scene of the time) it was more obvious, but it was supposed to be subtle enough to get past the more “naive” mainstream audience members so as not to draw the censors’ attention with overt behaviour.
Nowadays it’s just too subtle and gets lost in the slightly (IMHO) hammy acting style of the era, but it was intended to be clear to more savvy audiences of the times.
Hitchcock did deliberately set out to add some slight sexual twist to his cinema-portrayed crimes, though and Rope was designed with the two leads as a couple of gay men.
For a cite, it’s been awhile but you might find info about it in Vito Russo’s book The Celluloid Closet or in one of Richard Dyer’s books on the histroy of queer film. (I can’t gaurantee my cites though, it’s been awhile. I’ll check when I get home.)
Rope is mentioned, both in Russo’s book, and in the HBO documentary about the book (which is almost better than the book, because you get to see the scenes Russo refers to). It’s included in the “gay murderers” section, and while by today’s standards, the gay references are tame, by 1948 standards, those characters couldn’t be more gay.
Ah, I thought so. I have both the book and the video, but it really has been awhile so I was afraid I was conflating Russo’s book with some of Dyer’s work. I remember the film dealing with Rope a bit but I did not remember to what extent.
Russo’s book also has the “necrology” at the back to illustrate how often all the “degenerate” gay characters ended up getting killed in movies. He doens’t list the details though (other than "suicide, murder, castration…), but I remember the movie The Fox dropped a tree on the lesbian in wicked-witch-of-the-west style and… oh, what was that flick?.. it was kind of like Reefer Madness in that it was a hysteria-fueled “gay=dangerous” flcik, in which a “mannish” lesbian converts a girlie-girl, who gets “rescued” and “straightened out” by a man, and the bull dyke gets acid thrown in her face and she run screaming into the path of a bus – splat!
My (out of date edition of) Images in th Dark: An Encyclopedia of Gay and Lesbian Film and Video says the screenplay for Rope was written by gay writer Arthur Laurents (West Side Story, The Way We Were). Hm. That I didn’t remember.
So the West Side Story guy, eh? Looks like Eve’s musical wasn’t that far off after all…
This might be worth stressing for those that don’t see it. Viewers familiar with the Leopold and Loeb case would probably be looking for some suggestion that the main characters were homosexual. And plenty of people must have been familiar with it then – it was known as the “crime of the century” when it happened in 1924, and still well within living memory at the time of Rope’s release.
Hitchcock must have expected that any hint of “something queer” would be noticed and understood by many filmgoers. Whether Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb really were homosexual is a subject open to debate, but for the purposes of the film what matters is that they were widely believed to have been.
To clarify, there’s little room to doubt that L&L’s relationship involved sexual activity. What’s less clear is if they were both actually gay (or bisexual), if only one of them was and the other was going along with it for reasons of his own, or if they were both mostly straight but willing to relieve their tensions with each other.
The most popular theory seems to be that Leopold was genuinely sexually interested in Loeb and Loeb was exploiting this to get Leopold to go along with his plans. I think the truth is anyone’s guess, though.