This movie is always brushed aside as "minor", and "an experiment that failed", EVEN by Hitchcock himself. I can't let that mistaken judgment stand.
I have seen it many times over the years and always found it moving and disturbing but never analyzed why it had this effect. On viewing it again tonight immediately after watching To Catch a Thief, I became aware that Rope remains brilliant whereas the other movie was merely a pretty and lightweight, average 50's period piece.
The really strange thing is that Hitchcock's movies fall into certain distinct periods which have been written about at length (from early British to late Hollywood; from suspenseful dramas to macabre comedies), but this does not fit into any of them. It is a forties movie, like Saboteur, yet it is shot in colour so it looks like a much later film. To everyone, forties equals black and white. This is a stage play and takes place all in a one room set, but there is the remarkable effect of the huge window which shows the sun going down in real time over the course of the movie, over Manhattan buildings. This is of course done carefully with special lighting effects, but it gives the perfect illusion of the sun setting. It is just that there are fewer skyscrapers there than we would see today.
Some of the slang is dated (but charming), and such elements as a cigarette case could never play a part in a movie made today, but even with these few period references it seems to be a very modern film. The subject matter was horrifying and shocking for 1948, but is rather less so now, as we are unfortunately used to seeing gore and mindless violence. The homosexual subtext would now be played overtly, but the way it is filmed gives it a more ominous atmosphere than movies which have everything spelled out.
This is a movie filled with suspense from the first frame, without any extraneous footage. All the dialogue sounds genuine, not "stagey" as most plays generally do when made into movies. Examples: Glengarry Glen Ross, Oleanna, Boys in the Band etc. All good movies, but all scream out "filmed stage play - actors emoting!" whereas this movie simply draws you into its scenes of gradually dawning horror. I doubt if any Hitchcock film contains more pure tragedy and pathos, or a stronger moral message.
It is a powerfully modern film and yet it is 52 years old. Even the dinner party repartee is filled with wry comments that would not be out of place at a dinner party today - about such topics as the astrological signs of movie stars.
Yet under the witty dialogue is an undertone of tragic irony as the two hosts play an elaborate and secret prank on their guests, simply for their own smug satisfaction.
But it isn't simply the two hosts being in on it together; they are at odds, they bicker, and we are kept on edge because (as Hitchcock wants us to) we are forced to empathize with them to a degree, as well as hating them; we are fascinated by their quirks, played out in subtle nervousness. In taking us into the minds of the criminals as well as the minds of the innocent bystanders, we are left in torment for the horrifying state of humanity, until finally we are forced to take sides.
There are so many brilliant touches in this movie that I can only list a few (without giving anything away). Jimmy Stewart idly setting the metronome in motion as Farley Granger plays the piano, making him play faster and faster while he questions him. The preoccupied worrying of Sir Cedric Hardwicke as he looks out the window hoping to see his son, who is late, as the others chatter; the gradual coming together of the estranged couple who were hostile about each other's presence at the beginning; the unbearable tension as the plates and candles are being cleared away by the housekeeper while the guests and hosts are heard conversing off camera.
The devastation in Jimmy Stewart's face as he realizes that his careless armchair philosophy has fed the imagination of two unstable minds and therefore he too is guilty.
I can't say enough good about this film. It is underappreciated, never on any list of Hitchcock's greatest, but the time is long overdue for it to be appreciated as a masterpiece of suspense and art.
It has none of the irritating Hollywood production glossiness of otherwise great movies such as Vertigo and North by Northwest, none of the blatant psychological mood shots of films such as Marnie. It doesn't have the simplistic filmmaking style of the forties and yet it springs from that era, not fitting in with anything else from the period, decades ahead of its time.
I have seen it many times over the years and always found it moving and disturbing but never analyzed why it had this effect. On viewing it again tonight immediately after watching To Catch a Thief, I became aware that Rope remains brilliant whereas the other movie was merely a pretty and lightweight, average 50's period piece.
The really strange thing is that Hitchcock's movies fall into certain distinct periods which have been written about at length (from early British to late Hollywood; from suspenseful dramas to macabre comedies), but this does not fit into any of them. It is a forties movie, like Saboteur, yet it is shot in colour so it looks like a much later film. To everyone, forties equals black and white. This is a stage play and takes place all in a one room set, but there is the remarkable effect of the huge window which shows the sun going down in real time over the course of the movie, over Manhattan buildings. This is of course done carefully with special lighting effects, but it gives the perfect illusion of the sun setting. It is just that there are fewer skyscrapers there than we would see today.
Some of the slang is dated (but charming), and such elements as a cigarette case could never play a part in a movie made today, but even with these few period references it seems to be a very modern film. The subject matter was horrifying and shocking for 1948, but is rather less so now, as we are unfortunately used to seeing gore and mindless violence. The homosexual subtext would now be played overtly, but the way it is filmed gives it a more ominous atmosphere than movies which have everything spelled out.
This is a movie filled with suspense from the first frame, without any extraneous footage. All the dialogue sounds genuine, not "stagey" as most plays generally do when made into movies. Examples: Glengarry Glen Ross, Oleanna, Boys in the Band etc. All good movies, but all scream out "filmed stage play - actors emoting!" whereas this movie simply draws you into its scenes of gradually dawning horror. I doubt if any Hitchcock film contains more pure tragedy and pathos, or a stronger moral message.
It is a powerfully modern film and yet it is 52 years old. Even the dinner party repartee is filled with wry comments that would not be out of place at a dinner party today - about such topics as the astrological signs of movie stars.
Yet under the witty dialogue is an undertone of tragic irony as the two hosts play an elaborate and secret prank on their guests, simply for their own smug satisfaction.
But it isn't simply the two hosts being in on it together; they are at odds, they bicker, and we are kept on edge because (as Hitchcock wants us to) we are forced to empathize with them to a degree, as well as hating them; we are fascinated by their quirks, played out in subtle nervousness. In taking us into the minds of the criminals as well as the minds of the innocent bystanders, we are left in torment for the horrifying state of humanity, until finally we are forced to take sides.
There are so many brilliant touches in this movie that I can only list a few (without giving anything away). Jimmy Stewart idly setting the metronome in motion as Farley Granger plays the piano, making him play faster and faster while he questions him. The preoccupied worrying of Sir Cedric Hardwicke as he looks out the window hoping to see his son, who is late, as the others chatter; the gradual coming together of the estranged couple who were hostile about each other's presence at the beginning; the unbearable tension as the plates and candles are being cleared away by the housekeeper while the guests and hosts are heard conversing off camera.
The devastation in Jimmy Stewart's face as he realizes that his careless armchair philosophy has fed the imagination of two unstable minds and therefore he too is guilty.
I can't say enough good about this film. It is underappreciated, never on any list of Hitchcock's greatest, but the time is long overdue for it to be appreciated as a masterpiece of suspense and art.
It has none of the irritating Hollywood production glossiness of otherwise great movies such as Vertigo and North by Northwest, none of the blatant psychological mood shots of films such as Marnie. It doesn't have the simplistic filmmaking style of the forties and yet it springs from that era, not fitting in with anything else from the period, decades ahead of its time.