Rope
USA, 1948
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Screenwriter: Arthur Laurents (adaptation of Patrick Hamilton’s play), with the collaboration of Hume Cronyn
Genre: Psychological thriller, suspense
Soundtrack composer: Leo Forbstein
Editing: William H. Ziegler
Production company: Alfred Hitchcock, Sidney Bernstein (Transatlantic Pictures)
Cast:
Dick Hogan (David Kentley)
James Stewart (Rupert Cadell)
John Dall (Brandon Shaw)
Farley Granger (Phillip Morgan)
Joan Chandler (Janet Walker)
Cedric Hardwicke (Henry Kentley)
Constance Collier (Anita Atwater)
Douglas Dick (Kenneth Lawrence)
Edith Evanson (Wilson)
Plot
Brandon and Phillip, two college students, strangle their former roommate David with a rope. This occurs in the apartment they share in Manhattan. There is no motive for the murder: it is an “experiment”, as Brandon is convinced that he is capable of committing the “perfect crime”. His friend Phillip has participated in the murder, though he soon regrets it. While Phillip has a sense of morality and the crime perpetrated pricks his conscience, Brandon is completely unscrupulous; he is satisfied and proud of his “achievement”…
The two hide David’s body in a trunk, shortly before Mrs. Wilson, the maid, arrives. She had gone out to do the shopping for the party that Brandon has called for at the apartment – as he considers a crime scene party to be “the signature of the artist”. To make matters worse, Brandon decides to have the food placed on top of the trunk in which the body is hidden. As if that weren’t enough, the guests include Mr. Kentley and Janet – the victim’s father and girlfriend.
Soon the summoned friends start arriving. Among them are Brandon and Phillip’s (and David’s) fellow students, including Kenneth and Janet. She, who was recently in a relationship with David, had an affair with Kenneth in the past (for which they are respectively uncomfortable) and before that she was still Brandon’s girlfriend. Mrs. Atwater, an astrology buff, also arrives, as does Rupert Cadell, the doorman at the dorm where the young people lived.
As time goes by, the guests become concerned about the absence of David (who was also supposed to be there). Phillip, increasingly nervous, is on the verge of breaking down on several occasions, while Brandon (always cynical) keeps his composure. Rupert, on the other hand, has an innate detective intuition, and begins to suspect that there is a “cat in the bag”…
Commentary
Using an apartment as the only location, Alfred Hitchcock succeeded in creating an extremely effective atmosphere of suspense. Although from the very first scene we know who the killers are, intrigue accompanies the entire film. Everything is a perverse game engineered by the psychopath Brandon, an individual obsessed with being a “superman” – for he considers murder as an “art for superior beings”, and the victims as inferior creatures who didn’t deserve to live anyway. During the film there are some moral and philosophical disquisitions in this regard. Brandon’s ideology is a gross corruption, a malignant adulteration, of the Nitzschean concept of the “Übermensch”.
Rupert gradually realizes that Brandon and Phillip are hiding something from him, and will take advantage of the latter’s nervous attitude to pull the thread. James Stewart, who stars in other Hitchcock masterpieces such as “Rear Window” (1955) and “Vertigo” (1958), plays the shrewd Rupert.
Farley Granger, the actor who brings Phillip to life, participated during the seventies in several Italian gialli, including “Revelations of a Sex Maniac” (Roberto Bianchi Montero, 1972) and “La polizia chiede aiuto” (Massimo Dallamano, 1974).
The film is based on a play of the same name, premiered by the English playwright Patrick Hamilton in 1929.
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