Rope

Rating:
Summary: Not Bad, But Not Hitchcock's Best
Review: I was a bit disappointed with this movie. It begins with two young men using a piece of rope to strangle another young man. I have to say that I hope I would put up more of a struggle if two guys tried to strangle me. He doesn't strike out or kick at all. Neither of the two stranglers gets even a scratch and no furniture is upset or broken. Another troubling point is the whole notion that such a murder would be committed simply as an intellectual exercise. For the challenge of doing it and not getting caught, as it were. As horrendous and improbable as this idea is, though, I can't fault the movie for it. The story is based on an real-life murder case.

What you're left with is a pretty straightforward plot. There is no mystery and the audience is simply left to wait and see whether the killers will be found out. After committing the murder and hiding the body, the two murderers spend the next twenty minutes or so justifying their actions and trying to reassure themselves. This part is rather appalling and it certainly doesn't engage the watcher's sympathy. It seems to drag and leaves you impatient for something to happen. Once all the guests have arrived, the tension begins to mount.

There's no major character to engage your sympathy in a positive way until near the end. Even Stewart's character is a cold fish whose elitist ideas are used to justify the murder. Add to this the unique way the film was shot, with no obvious breaks but with the whole stretch of time from the murder through the setting-up of the dinner party and then the whole of the party itself telescoped down into 81 minutes, and you get a film with an odd feel to it. Less like an engaging story and more like a lab experiment.

Despite these criticisms, this is a good dramatic movie. The acting is very good. Stewart gets the top billing, but Granger and Dall have the biggest roles. There is also plenty of tension in the later part of the story, and the psychological study of the characters played by Dall and Granger is fascinating as the pressure of guilt and suspicion mounts.

"Rope" has some shortcomings, and does not represent Hitchcock's best work. The kind of action of a "North By Northwest" is missing, and the story lacks the plot twists and surprises that he is noted for. It is a tense drama, however, and will hold your attention. It isn't one of his best movies, but it's still pretty good. Fans, especially, will not regret getting a copy.

Rating:
Summary: Hitchcock's best film
Review: I read about this film in Leonard Maltin's Video Guide and was intrigued by the fact that it's done in long takes. So I rented it and was captivated. The film plays out much like a play but the performances are unbelievable. The choreography of the camera is amazing the way it follows everyone and is so fluid. The story itself is very interesting and looks at the importance of human life and the idea behind guilt. Rope was filmed in 10 eight minute takes. This takes skill that can not be fathomed by most people. If you haven't seen it check it out. THAT'S IT, I'M DONE!

Rating:
Summary: One of the most misterious film Hitchcock has ever made
Review: To French director Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock claimed that he was only interested in the technical aspects in making this film. This does not seem so.

Hitchcock was fascinated about homosexuality (already his early British succeses such as THE LODGER and especially MUDER! deal with it); and ROPE is clearly about that inspite of the production code regulations of the time which violently forbidden any potrayal of "abnormal" sexual conducts. But Hitch was a master of sneaking in controversional elements within a seemingly naive entertaining surface.

In Rope, Hitchcock demonstrates his incredible talent and obsessive attention to details, and it is in those details that the true subversive nature of this experimental film appears, for instance, at the end of the shocking opening murder scene, John Doll takes of Farley Granger's leather gloves. In this gesture Hitchcock clearly expresses the rather sado-masochistic relationship of these two young men.

Though changing the reels by blacking out the camera on the back of the character looks rather awkward, the technic of showing the entire drama works perfectly for this complex and highly tensioned drama that reveals itself beneath the seemingly quiet and polite surface of a party that takes place in an evening in New York penthouse apartment. Also a note should be given to the extremely complex and realistic work by production designer Perry Furgson (the man who designed CITIZEN KANE) of recreating the entire Manhattan skyline with meticulously planned and organized series of minuature.

In ROPE, you see the genious of the master of suspence which was not really only about suspense, but a true understanding of human behavior and an elegant still poignant skill to show it, in a way that it enter directly to your emotion and to your psyche. Contrary to his notorious joke comment about actors being cattles, ROPE also proves what a great director of actors he was.

Rating:
Summary: DVD is the best "Rope" ever!
Review: I agree with all the people who consider "Rope" the most underrated Hitchcock of all. If you like live theater, clever writing, great acting, and classy 1940s ambiance, there's no more satisfying movie than this one. Even after you've seen it thirty or so times like I have and the suspense factor is irrelevant, you can still marvel at the brilliant manner in which the whole thing was executed. This DVD edition is everything you could possibly want. Let me say it once and for all: With very few exceptions, there were no widescreen movies before 1953!!! I'm so tired of reading where people complain about the lack of widescreen in the DVD versions of classic movies. The only way to present "Rope" (or "Wizard of Oz" or "Casablanca" etc.) in a letterbox shape would be to cut off the top and/or bottom of the picture, and who wants that?! But I digress. . . . The picture quality of this DVD is remarkable--e.g., I noticed the pattern in Joan Chandler's dress for the first time. The glorious Technicolor here is worthy of the name, and although the monophonic soundtrack is nothing to get excited about (multichannel soundtracks came with the widescreen era) at least it's crisp. clear, and free of distortion. The extra features are awesome, particularly the theatrical trailer which in effect provides an additional scene to the story! And if you're an old-movie purist like me, you'll be happy to see the original Warner Bros. logos restored at the beginning and the end instead of the tacked-on 1980s-era Universal logos seen in previous video versions. Glad to see this masterpiece getting the high-class treatment it deserves!

Rating:
Summary: Rope on DVD: Pros and Cons
Review: Hitchock's Rope is my favorite movie, and I have anticipated acquiring the dvd for some time now. Yesterday, it happened. Here are the pros: the dvd contains the original trailer, which is quite interesting; the dvd contains an informative special feature documentary with Hume Cronyn, Arthur Laurents, and Hitch's daughter. Here are the cons: The dvd is not in widescreen, and the picture quality, although better than any other presentation I've seen on video or on television, is not as crisp and clean as I expected it would be. You can see the blue hues shifting, and this is a bit distracting.

If you're a big fan of this movie, I would recommend buying the dvd; otherwise, you can live with the video.

Rating:
Summary: Chilling and troubling suspense!
Review: ROPE has never been one of Hitchcock's most popular works - audiences in France and England actually demonstrated against the film when it was released in 1948, and it was banned in several regions of the US. Many historians have found the film cold and arid - a triumph of technique over content. When I first saw the film, I thought it too slow paced and rather talky (understandable for a film based on a stage play). A second viewing changed my mind completely. ROPE is one of Hitchcock's most intellectual and most disturbing works. The revolutionary technique is part of what makes this film so chilling. The ever-moving camera, which constantly floats, changes position and creates new compositions (often so subtly that you don't even realize it has moved), eventually seems to imprison the audience along with the characters, trapping us in a claustrophobic environment which we cannot escape. The dialogue is brilliant, laced with a large dose of incredibly black and campy humor which no one except the audience and the killers can really "get." As in the much later PSYCHO, Hitchcock uses ironic humor to force us to sympathize with criminals and madmen - we know that Brandon and Philip are murderers from the opening moments, yet (perversely) we don't want them to get caught. The camera often directs our attention to a visual moment which is in direct opposition to the dialogue, and this disruption between what we see and what we hear creates further anxiety. Look for the incredible sequence where we watch (helpless to interfere) while the maid slowly clears the chest where dinner has been served on top of David's dead body. While we watch her go back and forth, the offscreen guests keep rambling on about the missing David's possible whereabouts (which we know very well). I gasped aloud when I realized that she was eventually going to open the chest unless someone stopped her. When Brandon prevented her from opening the lid (just in the nick of time), I sighed with relief - and this manipulation of our sympathies is Hitchcock's brilliant achievement in ROPE. I suspect that many viewers find the film unsatisfying because they are unable to see the humor and wit which coexists with psychosis and the macabre. ROPE is also a comedy of manners at some level - the incredibly WASP-y milieu of the upper-class characters seems so closed, so dry, and so devoid of genuine emotion, but rage, violence and sexual frustration seethe beneath the oh-so-polished surface of this decadent society party. Considering that the film was made when the Nuremberg trials were still happening, it is hard not to see ROPE as a comment on the seductive powers of evil, and the fatal allure of thinking that one belongs to a "superior" group. ROPE is not a movie with great "set-pieces" or quick and easy shocks, but this film has lingered in my mind for a longer period than many modern horror films. The more you think about this film, the more frightening it becomes. Don't they always say about serial killers that "they seemed perfectly normal?" ROPE'S glossy surface conceals a brilliant discourse on the thin line between normal and "abnormal." Don't just watch this movie once - see it twice, and then let it sink in!

Rating:
Summary: Rope-------(DVD VERSION) L@@K!!!! READ!!!!!!
Review: I first saw this film as a film student in the late 1980's and the quality of the film was quite poor to say the least.

The version that played recently on AMC, was much improved but still lacking in color and there was quite a bit of grain in the film elements.

Th film itself really plays second fiddle to the concept, that is to film with virtually no edits and to give the viewer a felling of watching a stage play.

It succeeds on many levels the running time of this film is 1 hour 37 minutes and includes about 14 or 15 fades through various means, usually with the camera lens pulling into either someones back or a piece of set furniture.

The acting which includes Jimmy Stewart, who would later go on to play in numerous Hitchcock films including Vertigo, The Man Who Knew Too Much,Rear Window to name a few is quite good, as is Farley Granger and John Dall.

This film I learned was cleverly choreographed with off camera individuals moving set pieces around as the camera moved through their apartment penthouse and the New York City background scene that slowly changes from day to night is most impressive especially on this DVD release.

Interesting to note on this film is the homosexual undercurrent between the two lead stars, it's not spoken but quite obvious.

In film school I learned that the characters as originally written were quite obviously gay, however the production code at that time, this is 1948 by the way, would not permit any overt gay references.

In addition, James Stewart who plays their old college teacher was written as gay and was also a past lover of one of his pupils which when you are armed with that information, makes this film even more interesting, aside from the experimental nature of the faux one shot camera work .

Overall a very enjoyable DVD the best quality I have ever seen this film presented in,VHS,LaserDisc,television broadcasts pale in comparison to this new release.

On a rating of Bronze to Platinum I give this DVD a......GOLD.....Rating!!!!!

Pick this DVD up you won't be disappointed!!!

Rating:
Summary: The most under-rated Hitchcock film ever made
Review: Rope isn't nearly as popular as other of Hitch's films, and it's easy to see why. It plays out a little like something from the stage (because it was based on a play) and the action moves along in real time. This only allows Hitch to build the suspense in the wake of the two students' murder of a classmate to the breaking point. The score, with the musical number being "practiced" by one of the murderers during the dinner party as its centerpiece, gets faster & more jarring as things thicken, exposing some of the deepere motives behind these "intellectual" killers. This pairs well with the filming style mentioned here before, these long takes carefully overlaid, the most famous part of which is shot through a swinging kitchen door while farley Granger is dropping a piece of rope, the murder weapon, into a drawer.

There is a bit of both purposeful and today inadvertant comic relief in this film, the former through a prudish, wheedling maid, and the latter by the utter hilarity of the way these "college kids" live & throw a party, with champagne & suits. Perhaps it'd be more popular today if it could be updated - their lives seem out of touch with reality. Also, I can't have been the only one to catch the dominant / submissive nature of the roommate-killers' relationship, almost directly implicit of homosexuality but vague enough to avoid the censors - the same feint is pulled by Hitch with James Mason & Martin Landau in North by Northwest.

If you're a film history buff, you'll love the uniqueness of this Hitch film and appreciate having the first pairing of him and Stewart for film, as the philosophy professor who finds to his horror that it's his ideas that inspired these men to kill. Farley Granger is also deliciously evil, not unlike the vicious Ray Milland in Dial M for Murder, another set-piece based on a play Hitch adapted for cinema. The rest of the cast is mainly composed of stock characters. The funny thing with Rope is that from the beginning you know how it's going to play out, but the great part is watching it actually happen. I find it gripping.

Rating:
Summary: Now this is insightful!
Review: You don't see too many films like this nowadays. Alfred Hitchcock is, to say the very very least, one of the most gifted human beings ever born! This film stands as one of the most stunning criticisms of Social Darwinism, the concept that some groups of people are created with survival and contemplative skills better than others. Another amazing fact about the film is that there are only a handful of edits, meaning that the whole film was shot on the same set, in the same apartment! It leaves you thinking about the power of words and mankind's conceded self-destructive nature. Buy this movie and learn from it, that's all I can suggest.

Rating:
Summary: Underrated
Review: I know that a lot of people look at Rope as an interesting experiment, but an overall failure. I disagree. I guess maybe it's because I'm such a huge fan of Hitchcock's. Maybe because the same is true of me in regards to Jimmy Stewart. Sure, some of the acting is a bit cheesy, but the "seamless" editing approach came off very well in my opinion, as did the theme of philosophy/literature intruding and corrupting real life. (I think this theme is even more appropriate today than it was then.) I look forward to watching this film on DVD, and I hope if you're reading this, you'll give it a chance as well (or a second chance if you've already seen it). Please do! Even if you hate the film (which I find hard to imagine), at the very least you'll get another Hitch film under your belt, and get to see Stewart play a Philosophy professor.