Few films did this quite as fabulously and artistically as Alfred Hitchock's Rope. Based on a play of the same name by Patrick Hamilton, Rope is a fictionalization of the story Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb; two University of Chicago law students who killed a 14 year-old boy for the thrill of committing the perfectly executed crime. Rope transplants their murder to a New York City apartment and replaces Leopold and Loeb with Brandon Shaw (John Dall) and Phillip Morgan (Farley Granger), two wealthy New York students who seek to prove their intellectual superiority by strangling their close friend David Kentley, whom they consider to be an 'inferior' human being. The duo store his body in a box on top of which they place the food for a party they hold promptly afterward, which includes among its attendees their prep-school housemaster Rupert Cadell, whose teachings on Nietzche's Übermensch theory lead Brandon to believe that he will admire the artistry with which they executed the killing.
The film presented Hitchcock with several challenges. To effectively translate the play to the screen, he used complex camera movements to capture long stretches of dialogue in single takes. There are only ten cuts total in the entire film, all of which are obscured by characters moving in front of the camera so as to create the illusion of one single, uninterrupted, eighty-minute shot, something unheard of in any movie prior. Another obstacle Hitchcock faced was in presenting the relationship of Shaw and Morgan, as Leopold and Loeb, the killers they were based on, were a romantic couple. While blatant portrayals of homosexuals were prohibited by the aforementioned Motion Picture Production Code, gay characters could be identified not just for their often stereotyped mannerisms, but also because they were frequently depicted as sadistic, criminal antagonists. In contrast to the image of the foppish dandy that prevailed in pre-war cinema, the real-life story of Leopold and Loeb fit in perfectly with Hollywood's agenda to marginalize homosexuals as sick individuals suffering from a mental disorder, which was the official classification of homosexuality by the American Psychiatry Association until 1973.
The fact that Phillip and Brandon are two young men living together would have been enough to raise eyebrows, but the film was still streamlined enough to get past censors. A large portion of the Rope's homosexual undercurrent is expressed through double entendres that comment on the societal restrictions gay individuals faced. Even the rope used for the killing itself seems to be a sort of phallic object. Within the first few minutes, after they've done away with David, Brandon opens the blinds while telling his partner Philip that its' "a pity they couldn't have done it with the curtains open, in broad daylight." The murder itself often serves as a representation for their sexual relationship: both factors were hidden parts of their lives that were bound to come to the surface. It can be further interpreted as an event motivated by what Halberstam describes as "queer failure". Are their murderous tendencies driven by frustration at their inability to second bedroom". - cleverly avoiding the awkward discussion on why there would be only one. These are just a few of many suggestive lines littered throughout the movie: from Phillip's declaration of "you're amazing" to Brandon after the killing to insinuations from Stewart's character that he knows Phillip has "choked the chicken" to , Hitchcock does everything possible to suggest that the two are lovers without coming out and saying it.assimilate into the mainstream sexuality? At one point, Brandon bemoans that he could never their victim David "lived and loved as [he] never could" - is this a veiled reference to jealousy at David's heterosexual success? Hitchcock leaves the answer conveniently ambiguous.The film also addresses social and generational differences surrounding acceptance of homosexuality. The closest that anyone comes to an open acknowledgement of their relationship is when Janet, David's fiance, asks Brandon where the telephone is. "In the bedroom", he replies, to which she responds "How cozy!" However, when David's father asks the same question, Brandon slyly says that the phone is located in the "
Rope is not the only film to depict queer characters in a negative, malicious light. Homosexuals were often representations of vanity, decadence, and poor morals in classic film noir. The Leopold and Loeb couple's relationship was depicted in much more explicit detail in Tom Kalin's Swoon. Infamous recounts the story of Truman Capote's rumored relationship with Perry Smith, one of the two murderers responsible for the Holcomb County, Kansas killings. Michael Haneke's Funny Games also stars two impeccably dressed and well-mannered men who are on a mission to kill for the sheer aesthetic experience. Gus Van Sant's , which is based on the 1999 Columbine school shooting, draws thematic parallels between the Rope killers and Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. The archetype of the killer as a sort of sexual outcast also persists the form of Norman Bates in Hitchock's Psycho as well as Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs. These are just a few of many examples. The equation of sexualities that challenge the mainstream with murder is a Hollywood convention that originated in influential thrillers like Rope that still continues to this day, and is based in the same desire seen in the Progressive-era films covered below to depict those aspects that challenge conventional American values as threatening and dangerous.
Elpehant
Works Cited:
Dyer, Richard. “Queer Noir.” Queer Cinema: The Film Reader. Ed. Harry Benshoff and Sean Griffin. New York: Routledge, 2004. 89-104.
Miller, D.A. “Anal Rope.” Representations. 32. (1990): 114-1333. Print.
Roach, Thomas J. "Murderous Friends: Homosocial Excess in Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (1948) and Gus Van Sant's Elephant (2003)." Quarterly Review of Film and Video29.3 (2012): n. pag.
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