Rope
Rope
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Photographed by Joseph A. Valentine & William V. Skall
1948
Starring: James Stewart, Farley Granger, John Dall
There is no doubt in anyone's mind that Sir Alfred Hitchcock is one of the most influential, innovative, visual, and risk taking directors of all time. He pushed his vision as far as he could, challenging everyone on set from the grip boy to the director of photography. And when it comes to challenging, Hitchcock's Rope definitely takes the laurel. The movie is a cinematic and technical accomplishment, Hitchcock's vision contained no cuts, and the movie didn't either. The story is about two friends, from the higher class, who commit a murder for simple sport and the satisfaction of getting away with it, the perfect crime. The story doesn't stop there, they decide to put the corpse inside of a trunk in the living room and host a party with mutual friends and the family of the murder victim in that same room. Hitchcock thought the best way to represent the narrative would be in a single take, or at least creating the illusion of a single take, and this is where the challenge comes in. It is virtually impossible to shoot a movie in one single take, specially back then, when film stock price was beyond excessive. Hitchcock had to get creative and come up with ways to make seamless cuts, an example would be dollying into the back of the character's black or dark colored sports jacket until it fills the screen and taking advantage of that split second to make the cut. There are a couple of cuts scattered throughout the picture. It's this innovative thinking that makes Hitchcock's one of the greats, if not the GREATEST. Because of it's victorious execution, Alfred Hitchcock's Rope paved the way for great visionaries like Iñárritu and Lubezki to create masterpieces like Birdman or The Revenant or like Sokurov, whose film Russian Ark is a single 90-minute unedited take. I became fascinated with the auteur because of Brian De Palma. De Palma is my all time favorite Film Director and Hitchcockian influence in his work is undeniable. A Hitchcock film will teach everything you should know bout cinema, if watched correctly, and Rope is no exception. Like I mentioned before, this is one of his most accomplished films. Packed with elegant camera movements and outstanding performances, this is one movie that can be watched over and over again, each time picking something new up.
