Rope (1948)

Two young men strangle their "inferior" classmate, hide his body in their apartment, and invite his friends and family to a dinner party as a means to challenge the "perfection" of their crime.

Director:

Alfred Hitchcock

Writers:

Hume Cronyn (adapted by), Patrick Hamilton (from the play by),

Stars:

Dick Hogan, John Dall, Farley Granger

Top 250 #206 | 3 nominations.

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Dick Hogan	...	David Kentley
John Dall	...	Brandon - His Friend
Farley Granger	...	Phillip - His Friend
Edith Evanson	...	Mrs. Wilson - Their Housekeeper
Douglas Dick	...	Kenneth - Their Rival
Joan Chandler	...	Janet - David's Girl
Cedric Hardwicke	...	Mr. Kentley - David's Father (as Sir Cedric Hardwicke)
Constance Collier	...	Mrs. Atwater - David's Mother
James Stewart	...	Rupert Cadell

Storyline

Brandon and Philip are two young men who share a New York apartment. They consider themselves intellectually superior to their friend David Kentley and as a consequence decide to murder him. Together they strangle David with a rope and placing the body in an old chest, they proceed to hold a small party. The guests include David's father, his fiancée Janet and their old schoolteacher Rupert from whom they mistakenly took their ideas. As Brandon becomes increasingly more daring, Rupert begins to suspect.

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Plot Keywords:

party | friend | murder | apartment | chest | 

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Taglines:

It's his most nerve-stretching thriller!

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Genres:

Crime | Drama | Thriller

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Certificate:

Approved

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

28 August 1948 (USA)

Also Known As:

Alfred Hitchcock's Rope

Filming Locations:

Warner Brothers Burbank Studios - 4000 Warner Boulevard, Burbank, California, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$1,500,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Warner Bros, Transatlantic Pictures

Technical Specs

Runtime:

80 min

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Filmed January 12-February 21 1948. There are 10 shots within the film overall, running 9:34, 7:51, 7:18, 7:09, 9:59, 8:35, 7:50, 10:06, 4:37 and 5:40 minutes:seconds each.

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Goofs

During the tussle between Philip and Rupert, the gun fires and injures Rupert's hand. Following which Rupert takes his handkerchief to tie his wound. But he only manages to loosely hold it in his left arm. Then, when he walks over to the chest and opens it, shot the handkerchief is perfectly wrapped around Rupert's wounded arm.

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Quotes

Rupert Cadell: By what right do you dare to say that there's a superior few to which you belong?

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Crazy Credits

Most of the characters in the movie are listed in their relation to David, a character who is only seen for a couple of seconds, and has no lines in movie. The only person who isn't listed in reference to David is James Stewart's character.

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Connections

Featured in Vito (2011)

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Soundtracks

"I'm Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover"
(1928) (uncredited)
Music by Harry M. Woods
Played on the radio by The Three Suns when Rupert is talking to Mrs. Wilson

User Reviews

The birth of an "eye"

I place this one in my list of films anyone should watch. That is, in order to understand some fundamental issues on film-making and films in the last 50 years.

What i'm least interested in here are the technical innovations. Those represent today a curiosity, a museum fact, worth being remembered and credited to those who worked for them, but just it.

I'm also not so interested in the underlying taboo subjects, namely those regarding the homosexuality issue. In respect to that, i even think the whole film construction, from casting to scene writing threw away many things. I'll get morecontroversial. I think Hitchcock in fact despised those messages (the writers were worried in exploring them, not Hitch), he was not after meanings or controversies, he was after something far more ingenious and influential. I'm talking about his camera eye.

Before this one, all Hitch's work was something between a classical construction and some exploration of the camera as carrier of a character's (and the audience's) emotion/feeling/sensation. The library scene in 'Shadow of a doubt', for example, is the perfect example of what i'm talking about. Anyway, that will Hitch had of making the camera follow around characters, sets, and reveal what a character (or "god") had to reveal was already notable. In here, he made that the theme of the picture. One single set, very few characters, a clear as water story (which he made even clearer by not throwing any doubt about the destiny of the murdered boy). The sexual issues also go to second importance issues. The apartment is at once simple enough to solve the technical difficulties of filming it, and large and divided enough to allow the camera to explore it, searching for elements, for dialogues or for actions. The camera has curiosity, it is almost a character, a character called audience. Years later, in different molds, Hitch would place Stewart behind the camera and definitely assume it as a physical character in the plot (Rear Window). In here what we get is fully a camera that moves to the whishes of the director. The curious, ever searching camera that dePalma would reinvent and Polanski master shows up here.

I believe the work of dePalma, in a way Polanski, Chabrol and even some Godard (Le mépris is filled with this) all derive from what happened here. Hitchcock would probably hit the top with Rear Window, but here is where he becomes an inventor.

My evaluation: 5/5 . one of the cinematic manifestos