MARCH 7, 2008 - VOL. 1, ISSUE 5

Rope begins with a scream. The camera is positioned on the balcony looking into the apartment. Much like if a theater's curtains were drawn, we can only hear the scream, and then the camera cuts to a rope around a man's neck. The main characters, Philip and Brandon, in suits, are strangling their friend to death, and, as soon as David Kentley goes limp, they dump him into an antique chest in the living room. Brandon smiles, sighs, and lights up a cigarette. Now the party has officially started. The struggle between social morals and norms, and desire grasps each character around the throat and controls their every action.

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Rope gives the act of murder sexuality. Hitchcock is obsessed with the act of killing, and Rope is his most cynical character study on why someone would want to end another human's life. People seem to forget to mention it when discussing his other murder movies. It's always Vertigo this, Psycho that. The story is sick and twisted, but based in a worse reality. Why can't committing the perfect murder be reason enough to kill? Why can't murder be an art? This power struggle between primal lust and human elitism is then juxtaposed with a style that is more theater than film. The characters are exaggerated, and the actors are feeding off of each other. Rope is a genuine piece of filmmaking. There is a level of craft in the final edit, like Hitchcock cradled the film through the entire shooting. It is a representation of one man's desire to reevaluate why humans murder.

The story is about two superior Manhattan socialites, who plan the perfect murder and then throw a party for the occasion. They invite David's parents and girlfriend, a mutual friend, and Rupert Cadell, played by James Stewart, to the party. Rupert is the boys' ex-prep school instructor, who, while in school, talked to Brandon and Philip about Nietzsche's theory on uebermensch and the art of killing. As the guests arrive, they continually ask where David is and when will he be joining the party.

While dining with the other guests, Brandon and Rupert have an intercourse about how a superior human should have the right to choose a person of the lower class and then eradicate them from the earth. Rupert banters on in a joking manner, much like pillow talk, saying that it would be nice to slit the throats of people waiting in line at a movie theater. Brandon maintains a social want to be recognized as superior and this makes him expel, "And the victims: inferior beings whose lives are unimportant anyway."

The movie escalates as Rupert chips away at Philip. Eventually Philip hides enough from Rupert for him to leave with the rest of the family, who are worried about David's strange behavior, but then Rupert, suspicious, comes back to the finished party. After Rupert discovers that the boys have killed David, he then delivers a speech about the equality of humans. "By what right do you dare to say that there's a superior few to which you belong?" he yells at them. Every character's dominance is hacked into bits as soon as Rupert finds out what is the chest. With this line, Rupert establishes himself as the alpha male in the pack. After Brandon's authority is thwarted, he sinks into Philip's quivering position. Everyone in the pack reestablishes their previous dominate and submissive school house roles. It isn't about the sanctity of human life, it never was, but about society's social structure forcing us into the roles we occupy.

To keep the murder and its reaction the center of attention, Hitchcock wanted the chest to always be in the characters' focus, which is similar to the play, where the chest is on stage at all times. He positioned his set perfectly to match this. The chest is at center of the living room, so that when the actors are parading around, the dead body is always in front of them. Then as the characters move into the foyer, dining room, and kitchen, the camera stays with the dead body's point of view. As the characters move down the hallway, it as if the chest is pulling on them with a rope.

There are only ten cuts, which means there are ten continuous segments instead of, like most films, a series of cuts where the camera is repositioned. In Rope, the actors are actually acting with each other as if they were doing the stage production. This creates an ensemble of characters worth watching. The emotions in the film are natural because the actors are allowed to create. Half of his cuts are straight cuts, and the other half he tried to hide by zooming in on a character's back or an object, and then in that spilt second the rolls of film were changed. This comes across as awkward, but not clumsy.

Hitchcock spins the conception of murder from an act of deviance to a refined art form. Brandon's murder is an art in power. He needs to be dominant over Philip, David, and his guests. He drops hints about the murder to Rupert so that he can be equal in Rupert's eyes. It's like having sex in public. Part of the enjoyment is getting caught. The chest feeds into his crave to be the man. He needs his power, his dominant behavior, his action to be appreciated. Philip is the partner in this dance of superiority. He leeches to Brandon's side. Both men need each other; it is a symbiotic relationship. Brandon gets someone to oppress, and control. Philip, being emotionally weak, gets a master who makes life safe. He never has to leave the clutches of Brandon to face the world on his own. He has his master's protection in return for free will.

The murder is as pure and raw as sex. After the killing, Brandon smokes next to Philip so that he can sustain his nirvana. Later, both men have to work to get the cork off of a bottle of Champaign, and then as it erupts, their emotions calm. Both men are in this dirty dance. The murder could be replaced with a homosexual act of lust, where Brandon forced Philip into submission, and the movie would still make sense. Their relationship is fantastic to watch. Both men are pulling on each other for support. Brandon needs to be in charge, and Philip needs to be led. Combine this with the actors playing off of each other, and it makes for a film that just barely passed through the censorship of early McCarthy.

Hitchcock's fascination with death seems odd, but familiar. When reading the newspaper, I often wonder what would drive a person to destroy life. Passion, rage, jealousy, money, or, in the case of Rope, to plot the perfect crime. Hitchcock, with his cynical perspective on human nature, must have wanted to exam the ideology behind the Leopold and Loeb case. Nathan Leopold, Jr. and Richard Loeb were sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Bobby Franks, who was 14 years-old. They thought they planned the perfect caper, but they were eventually caught. What perplexed the jury and judge was that Leopold and Loeb's motive was to kill for the sake of killing well. I think Hitchcock wanted to make this lust for the perfect murder more human, and thus this relationship between Brandon, Philip, and Rupert was born.

Rope is fantastic. I can't believe that Hitchcock would risk so much in his transition from black and white to color by making a film that questions the perception of life and death. At the middle of career, he shows his superiority and chokes traditional murder movies to death. Filmmaking is the art of love making to him.