Rope (US 1948)
Rope (US 1948)
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Adaptation: Hume Cronyn
Screenplay: Arthur Laurents
Cinematography: Joseph Valentine, William V. Skall
Art director: Perry Ferguson
Music: Leo F. Forbstein
Production company: Transatlantic Pictures Corp.
Cast: James Stewart, John Dall, Farley Granger, Joan Chandler, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Constance Collier, Douglas Dick, Edith Evanson, Dick Hogan
Sound, Technicolor, 80 min.
English language
Print Source: Library of Congress, Culpeper, VA
In 1947, finally free from producer David O. Selznick’s interference, Alfred Hitchcock was determined that his next picture be produced by his own Transatlantic Pictures Corp. The company’s inaugural production, Rope, would be an adaptation of a 1929 stage play inspired by infamous thrill-killers Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb.
The film opens with aspiring Übermenschen (John Dall, Farley Granger) strangling an old prep-school friend (Dick Hogan) in their apartment and hiding his body in a chest. They then host a party for the victim’s family and friends, serving a buffet dinner directly over the corpse in an act of psychotic audacity designed to prove the killers’ intellectual superiority. Among the guests is their adored former teacher (James Stewart, in his first Hitchcock role), who gradually unpacks their “perfect crime,” one slip-up at a time.
Hitchcock boldly conceived Rope as a series of continuous 10-minute takes that would show the action in real time.The exhaustive fifteen days of rehearsal—nearly as long as the shoot itself—was a triumph of preparation. As many as thirty camera movements were needed for each take, leaving Stewart to gripe that the cameras were rehearsing more than the actors. As the crane moved through the set space, a small army of grips, electricians, and camera operators worked in concert using silent hand signals while six boom-mic operators hovered overhead. To create a path for the camera and actors, slinking propmen cleared furniture as movable set walls slid quietly along greased tracks, receding and resetting as needed. Throughout, the actors had to be in sync with the dynamic set movements; any mistake compromised an entire 10-minute take.
Using color for the first time, Hitchcock passed on Technicolor’s bolder tones and opted for a muted, more realistic palette that he could punctuate with bursts of emotive color. These splendid hues are most noticeable in the sunset over the wondrous Cyclorama, a 12,000-square-foot replica of the New York skyline seen through the windows of the penthouse set. This massive panorama consisted of over 8,000 bulbs and 200 neon signs, intricately wired to independently controlled buildings and all humming beneath 500 pounds of spun-glass clouds.
Though the colors have been beautifully preserved, this original Technicolor IB release print required many edge and perforation repairs, with curling symptomatic of its 0.65% shrinkage rate. – Patrick Tiernan