Chris Daddy Cool
06-13-2005, 03:29 AM
Alfred Hitchcock and James Stewart team up once again to bring you this often overlooked 1948 thriller, Rope. While not quite in the same calibur as Rear Window or Vertigo, Rope certainly has its own style and scores extra points for it's delivery and originality.
The movie begins with a scream heard outside an appartment and we're shown inside where two men, Brandon and Phillip, strangle another man to death with a rope. The reason? Because they can, because they believe they can perform the perfect murder and make it an art, that their superiority allows them to play this little game of life and death.
They hide the body in a chest in the middle of the living room where they are to throw a little party with the chest in plain sight. In fact, Brandon, ever so confident and clever, decides to use the chest as a table for the guests to eat on. Then the guests come and the party ensues in the apartment and then the movie really picks up.
The entire movie is actually dialouge driven, so all the action and all the tension is built up through the casual conversations of the party and little visual clues. Eventually it is learned that David, the man Brandon and Phillip murdered, is running unusually late and people are afraid he's gone missing. Rupert (Stewart), Brandon's and Phillip's intellectual mentor, begins to suspect something as he listens to the party's conversations and asks his own little questions...
So basically throughout the movie you are constantly wondering, what will happen next? What will Brandon and Phillip say that Rupert might pick up on? Will he find out? And how will he find out?
Aside from the terrific acting of the actors, this movie has another element working for it, the camera work. Other than the initial cut from the outside of the apartment to the inside showing the murder, the entire movie is shown in "one" shot, with no cuts or shot changes. Hitchcock intended it this way to give the perception of a "real-time" movie, where the entire movie takes place in the 80 minutes after the murder.
Filming the movie in such a matter was no easy task. Actors had to be on their A games, as any error would require retaking an entire shot which might have been 10 minutes long of pure dialouge. It is little surprise then that Rope's screenplay was originally used as a stage play. What results in this though is very good acting performances, especially from Brandon (played by John Dall) and the always good Stewart.
An interesting tiblit about filming in "one" shot is that you actually can't do it. For one, it would be incredibly difficult to film an entire 81 minute shot without any errors and secondly, Hitchcock wasn't physically able to do so. Camera reels back then only had maybe eight or twelve minutes of film. This is usually never a problem as typical movie scenes only last several minutes and a director could simply use another roll for another scene and edit it together later. However, since Hiitchock wanted the an entire movie done on one camera with one continous shot, he had to do a little trick to hide the changing of the reels. So if you're watching this movie, notice how every ten minutes or so the camera will pan or do a close up on something (often an actor walking in front of the camera during a close up and taking up the whole shot) and the entire screen will momentarily go black. That is Hitchock setting up a new reel to film the next chunk of the movie. Very interesting stuff.
This movie may not be for everyone and people expecting to see a repeat of Hitchcock-Stewart classics Rear Window and Vertigo may be disappointed, but Rope is certainly worth watching.
SCORE: 8/10
The movie begins with a scream heard outside an appartment and we're shown inside where two men, Brandon and Phillip, strangle another man to death with a rope. The reason? Because they can, because they believe they can perform the perfect murder and make it an art, that their superiority allows them to play this little game of life and death.
They hide the body in a chest in the middle of the living room where they are to throw a little party with the chest in plain sight. In fact, Brandon, ever so confident and clever, decides to use the chest as a table for the guests to eat on. Then the guests come and the party ensues in the apartment and then the movie really picks up.
The entire movie is actually dialouge driven, so all the action and all the tension is built up through the casual conversations of the party and little visual clues. Eventually it is learned that David, the man Brandon and Phillip murdered, is running unusually late and people are afraid he's gone missing. Rupert (Stewart), Brandon's and Phillip's intellectual mentor, begins to suspect something as he listens to the party's conversations and asks his own little questions...
So basically throughout the movie you are constantly wondering, what will happen next? What will Brandon and Phillip say that Rupert might pick up on? Will he find out? And how will he find out?
Aside from the terrific acting of the actors, this movie has another element working for it, the camera work. Other than the initial cut from the outside of the apartment to the inside showing the murder, the entire movie is shown in "one" shot, with no cuts or shot changes. Hitchcock intended it this way to give the perception of a "real-time" movie, where the entire movie takes place in the 80 minutes after the murder.
Filming the movie in such a matter was no easy task. Actors had to be on their A games, as any error would require retaking an entire shot which might have been 10 minutes long of pure dialouge. It is little surprise then that Rope's screenplay was originally used as a stage play. What results in this though is very good acting performances, especially from Brandon (played by John Dall) and the always good Stewart.
An interesting tiblit about filming in "one" shot is that you actually can't do it. For one, it would be incredibly difficult to film an entire 81 minute shot without any errors and secondly, Hitchcock wasn't physically able to do so. Camera reels back then only had maybe eight or twelve minutes of film. This is usually never a problem as typical movie scenes only last several minutes and a director could simply use another roll for another scene and edit it together later. However, since Hiitchock wanted the an entire movie done on one camera with one continous shot, he had to do a little trick to hide the changing of the reels. So if you're watching this movie, notice how every ten minutes or so the camera will pan or do a close up on something (often an actor walking in front of the camera during a close up and taking up the whole shot) and the entire screen will momentarily go black. That is Hitchock setting up a new reel to film the next chunk of the movie. Very interesting stuff.
This movie may not be for everyone and people expecting to see a repeat of Hitchcock-Stewart classics Rear Window and Vertigo may be disappointed, but Rope is certainly worth watching.
SCORE: 8/10