Rope

Rating:
Summary: Technically fascinating filming of a great stage play
Review: Many people are today unaware that in the late 1940s Hitchcock went through a bit of a dead period. Between NOTORIOUS, released in 1946 but completed earlier, and STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (1951), Hitchcock made no films that are generally regarded as among his greatest. Of these, ROPE is the most interesting. One of the five "Lost Hitchcock" films that were unavailable for a couple of decades, it is primarily interesting for the way that Hitchcock wants to see what he can do with a set of self-imposed limits. Hitchcock at montage and editing, just as he was perhaps the screen's greatest master at the extended shot, but in ROPE he eliminated all montage and editing. The entire film is a series of eight minute shots, that being the longest cameras at the time could shoot before running out of film. The only editing, therefore, was planning a transition from one reel to another, either by having the camera zoom very close to someone's back, thereby producing a completely black screen, or by a standard cut and jump to another person. It is fascinating figuring out how he deals with such problems as how to make the sky through the soundstage windows appear to be changing. All in all, a very, fascinating film.

Unfortunately, apart from the technical delights of the film, it is far from one of Hitchcock's best. It is by no means a bad film, but he probably made twenty that were better. The acting is very professional, but it all feels very, very much like a filmed play. Several of the performances lack the subtlety that we associate with film rather than stage acting. Often the viewer is left with the impression that the actors are merely reciting lines, rather than portraying characters. Jimmy Stewart, Cedric Hardwicke, and Farley Granger, who would star in Hitchcock's next masterpiece STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, stand out in an otherwise lackluster cast.

But Hitchcock at less than his very best is very, very worth watching. My belief has long been that Alfred Hitchcock and Ernst Lubitsch were the two most gifted directors to have spent most of their careers in Hollywood, and is the standard by which all other action, crime, and suspense directors must be judged. So, in this film we see the Master at work, even if on one of his lesser creations.

The events, of course, were loosely based on the Leopold and Loeb murders, in which two University of Chicago undergraduates murdered a younger male for approximately the same reasons found in ROPE.

Rating:
Summary: Still trying to understand the experience
Review: Let me state first that I am a huge Hitchcock fan and am only two films away from having all of his Universal pictures on DVD, in addition to all the early British films, etc. I am a Hitchcock fan, though I had never seen "Rope" until purchasing this DVD. This is both typical and non-typical Hitchcock. The suspense is there, naturally, and the atmosphere is so thick you could cut it with a knife. It is certainly enthralling, philosophical, and peppered with typical Hitchcock dark humor. Still, it left me wanting... this is by far the shortest Universal picture he ever made, and it shows. It just ends, and it left me really wanting more and more... there are no car chases, no climatic finales atop Mount Rushmore or a shootout in an opera house. It just ends, neatly and quickly. This lack of action can most be compared to "Rear Window," but "Rope" lacks the voyueristic fetishism that made that movie such a classic human drama. This plays on other emotions, and I am still trying to understand the experience. 4 stars for the film, minus one because the bonus material is not quite up the standards of the other Universal releases. Still, a recommended Hitchcock experience.

Rating:
Summary: this is a classic, but it's not Hitch's best by any means
Review: Hitch did a lot better and he did a lot worse.

Rope is one of those movies where the concept WORKS. How many times have you said THAT about a "concept" movie made in the last couple decades?!

I highly rec this movie to any poor soul who hasn't had the chance to see it. It may not be a "keeper" for the casual movie fan ... but it's worth a look. You may be surprised at how re-watchable it is.

Rating:
Summary: Best Smoking Movie Ever.
Review: Blah blah technical. Blah blah stage play. Blah blah Leopold & Loeb. Blah blah Jimmy Stewart. Blah blah 'master of suspense'. Blah blah wooden acting. Blah blah continuous reels. Blah blah macabre philosophies. Blah blah boys' club. Blah blah Cedric Hardwicke. Blah blah wordplay.
It's time we saw this for what it is - the Best Smoking Movie Ever. The last act is wholly dependant on a cigarette-case. Everyone lights up all the way through.
An absolute must for fans of tobacco in film, up there with any noir you care to name.
(Note: best cigarette in a film, however, must go to 'The Exorcist', where the doctor examining Regan steps out into the hospital corridor and lights up while talking to her mother.)

Rating:
Summary: Merely a technical exercise?
Review: The most formally daring of Hitchcock's thrillers also happens to be his most distressingly perverse, heralding the master's burgeoning fascination with the logic, psychology, and inexplicable appeal of murder. In this case, he's dealing with unmotivated murder, as he follows in near-real-time the diabolical exploits of two college students who slay one of their peers and then stage a dinner party merely to examine their guests' suspicions over the man's absence - all of this for the sake of carrying some radical academic theorizing into full practice. As the principal photography is comprised of only a dozen or so shots, the cuts between them disguised by momentary obscuring of the image, the audience is automatically compelled into complicity with the crime from its execution all the way to its necessary final ramifications. The men's tyrannical experiment transforms into something of a sickly alluring game and then, on satiric terms, emerges as a send-up of the model theatrical dinner party by undercutting the dialogue, generally prim and hackneyed as it is, with unwitting references to the corpse occupying the same room with the participants. Apart from everything else, this breed of black comedy is delicious. Later, though, the climactic "moral apotheosis" articulated by the Jimmy Stewart character serves to emphasize the iniquity underlying what we've found so fiendishly entertaining with the whole affair, and though this all may sound too preachy on first viewing, it actually delivers a rather intriguing point beyond face value, leading us to consider (through exaggerated means, no doubt) the inability of intellectualism to distinguish idealized hypothesis from a complex human reality.

Rating:
Summary: HITCHCOCKs MOST DISTURBING FILM
Review: 1948's ROPE is a thoroughly enthralling and disturbing look at a thrill killing perpetrated by two prep-school chums (John Dall and Farley Granger) possibly suggested subconsciously by their unwitting professor (James Stewart). This film has often been characterized notably only as Hitchcock's great experiment. He shot it in ten-minute takes contrary to his stylistic use of effective story telling through editing. This was a technique that he also employed to a lesser degree by Hitchcock in 1949's UNDER CAPRICORN. However, ROPE is first and foremost a riveting tale bordering on the perverse.

Rating:
Summary: The Master Confines Himself
Review: What is the toughest challenge a director can undertake? Making an epic in the sea or desert? Imagine making a film where all the conflict and resolution happen inside one apartment and nowhere else. Who could do it succesfully? None other than the master himself, Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock goes even further by making all of 'Rope' in eight shots!!
'Rope' is about two brilliant college students who decide to carry out a morbid facination. They murder a man and then serve dinner from the chest where he is buried. They even have candles on top of the chest. In many ways, 'Rope' provides a dry and intellectual stimulation. All the characters, expect the two boys, don't know there is a dead man right under their nose. But since the audience knows, it provides a strange tension. Jimmany Stewart is the heart of it all. There is a terrific and nailbiting scene where he almost figures out what the boys have done.
Alongside being a thriler, 'Rope' raises some questions about who is 'superior' and who is not. Are there people who are really above the mass of humanity? The two boys think so and there is a fantastic debate in the middle of the story. Sadly though, I think this movie is only for Hitchcock fans.

Rating:
Summary: Unique Idea
Review: By now much has been made of how Hitchcook tried to disguise the film changes in the camera, and how it often did not work out well.
What they overlook is that by using one camera and no cuts the viewer becomes more and more paranoid as if they themselves are in the room and are about to be discovered hiding the secret.
It becomes quite unsettling after awhile even it was not done as well as we would wish, it was a bold idea to even attempt.
The other thing I notice is the heavy homosexual overtones here. These guys are very obviously "lovers" even though there is some dialogue about one of them having "dated" one of the female guests earlier. The fact that the subject is avoided by all makes it even more obvious. I'm not sure if Hitchcock did this on purpose, or the time in which the film was made deemed it impossible, but it's interesting. Even more so is how one character rules over the other svengali-like, to the point of helping him murder someone just for fun. It's obvious that the one guy does not want to go along with this, but he is helpless in the face of his stronger partner who obviously calls all the shots, and enjoys doing so.
This movie is just as much about dominant/submissive relationships as it is anything else.
It may not be perfect, and it might drive you crazy at times, but that is the whole point of this movie, and I applaud the attmept, even if the final result was not as good as it might have been

Rating:
Summary: Great acting, great director, great movie!
Review: This is one of my favorite Hitchcock and James Stewart movies. This movie was ground-breaking in two ways: the movie was shot in color, where most of the other films during this time were in black & white, and the film was shot by Hitchcock in one set (the apartment interior) and in eight 10-minute shots. Any Hitchcock fan must see this film to appreciate these film shots.

Rating:
Summary: Contrived, Stagey, and Disappointing
Review: Based on a stage play which was in turn based upon the infamous Leopold-Loeb case, ROPE is famous for two technical reasons. First, it is a very rare instance of a film that occurs in "real time;" the entire action of the film occurs in the span of about two hours, which is the duration of the film's run time. Secondly, in order to heighten the effect of "real time," Hitchcock attempts to make the film seem as if it is presented in one long, uninterrupted take. Instead of cutting, he moves the camera itself instead and attempts to disguise points at which the film had to be changed in the camera by briefly focusing the camera on a dark or neutral object.

It doesn't work. There are several reasons. Although the story has some interesting aspects, it seems extremely contrived: two friends thrill-kill a young man and then as a test of their coolness conceal the body in their apartment while they host a cocktail party. Guest Jimmy Stewart becomes suspicious and, predictably, ferrets out the truth. Stewart's performance is merely adequate, while Farley Granger and John Dall's performances are about as subtle as a turd in the punch bowl. This aside, all the actors seem to have considerable difficulty sustaining energy through the very long takes, and Hitchcock's self-enforced "no edits" concept gives the film a static, stagey, and decidedly awkward feel--and, I might add, the "invisible cuts" aren't. Certainly Hitchcock deserves considerable applause for attempting something completely different in his work, but in this case the gamble doesn't pay off. Diehard Hitchcock fans will no doubt find much to praise, but more casual viewers should stay away.