ABCs of Horror 3: “R” Is for Rope (1948)

Paste’s ABCs of Horror 3 is a 26-day project that highlights some of our favorite horror films from each letter of the alphabet. The only criteria: The films chosen can’t have been used in our previous Century of Terror, a 100-day project to choose the best horror film of every year from 1920-2019, nor previous ABCs of Horror entries. With many heavy hitters out of the way, which movies will we choose?

When it comes to filmmaking, innovation is the first step on the path to convention, which is itself the first stop on the road to cliche. Novelty passes into familiarity; familiarity into contempt. This is even true of how we talk and write about film, the same hoary anecdotes and factoids crystallizing into the commonly shared, repeated and subsumed gospel. You may be familiar, for instance, with the story commonly attributed to Alfred Hitchcock about the cinematic definition of suspense vs. surprise–in short, Hitchcock said that in a scene with a ticking bomb under a dinner table, “surprise” is when it explodes without the audience being clued in, but “suspense” is when we see the bomb and then have to wait for the explosion, enhancing our interest in the conversation thanks to our secret knowledge. It’s a real observation from the legendary director, published in Truffaut’s 1966 book on Hitchcock, drawn from hours of interviews. It’s also arguably one of the more “overquoted” filmmaking anecdotes ever, steadily transformed like a game of telephone into a million different versions you’ll find populating the web. The story is absolutely everywhere.

That, however, doesn’t make the substance of what Hitchcock was originally getting at any less true, and that’s the thing about cliches–they tend to originate from a place of truth, before the point becomes seen as ubiquitous. Hitchcock knew a thing or two about keeping an audience on the edge of their seat, and perhaps none of his films is so purely built around this type of “bomb under the table” suspense as 1948’s classic Rope. The director’s first Technicolor film is an enduring exercise in minimalism and characterization, innuendo and creeping suspicion. It plays out in real time, catching its characters at the most pivotal juncture in their lives, the moment that will either cement their psychopathic triumph or damn them for all time. From its first moments, we can see that our two young “protagonists” have just experienced something that will change them forever.

Those two young aesthetes (there is heavy gay subtext) are Brandon and Phillip, enterprising and self-impressed men who, as the story begins, have just finished the murder by strangulation of their own friend David. It’s only minutes before guests are due to arrive for a dinner party, but Brandon in particular is unperturbed–the slaying wasn’t a crime of passion, but something he and his partner had long plotted, a social experiment to demonstrate how easily these supposed “intellectually superior” individuals could get away with committing a “perfect murder.” They intend to not only have their crime undetected, but thumb their nose at fate by cramming the body into a large wooden chest, and then use that very chest as a table for hors d’oeuvres at the party. The only problem: Phillip doesn’t seem to be taking things quite as in stride as his more domineering partner in crime. Where Brandon is clearly exhilarated by the deed, the reality of what they’ve done is quickly dawning on Phillip, who becomes morose and taciturn. But will any of the guests have reason to guess at what might be bugging him?

Regardless of what happens, we’ll have a bird’s eye view, gliding between the various dinner guests like an invisible member of the Manhattan social circle, watching the walls of Brandon and Phillip’s careful defense slowly begin to erode. The entirety of Rope takes place in the apartment, largely in a single living room that contains exactly one (1) hidden body, at least to our knowledge. It’s also shot in the style of a single long, unbroken take, although this was a literal impossibility in 1948 to do legitimately, given that the magazines of film Hitchcock was using maxed out at around 10 minutes. He thus builds the central illusion of Rope through a series of hidden cuts, some fairly subtle and some quite obvious once the viewer knows where to look. It hardly matters–Hitchcock was playing with a new convention in this story inspired by the infamous Leopold & Loeb murder case of the 1920s, a technique designed to give a heightened sense of reality to the voyeuristic conversations we’re witnessing as the anxiety in the room grows and party guests note David’s unusual absence. We’re watching to see if Brandon and Phillip can manage to keep things together, to get through the night without a dramatic discovery of their crime.

And a funny thing happens in the process–we actually do worry, rather than necessarily hope, that the crime will be discovered. There are no other protagonists to root for here, so the despicable Brandon and Phillip are really all we have–thrusting them into the central focus, the director takes advantage of the viewer’s proclivity to identify with whoever we see most. And on some level, we almost do want them to get away with it, even if Brandon is obnoxiously arrogant, and Phillip meekly milquetoast. You can’t help but wonder: Could you hold yourself together any better, in this social gauntlet? Could you improve upon the so-called perfect murder?

Pushing the plot forward, meanwhile, is none other than Jimmy Stewart in the first of his collaborations with Hitchcock, playing professor Rupert, the man whose theories of the Nietzschean superman apparently first inspired the pair of murderous urbanites. The push-and-pull between Brandon and Rupert is particularly memorable, for the way Brandon’s idolization of this source of philosophical inspiration can’t help but seep through. Despite his caution, despite his sociopathy, Brandon on some level wants to let the secret slip out, so certain is he deep down that his former professor will not only understand, but approve of the choice to murder a social or intellectual inferior. For all his madness, Brandon is a genuine ideological zealot in this matter–he thinks that by killing David, he’s done the world some kind of service. And as Rupert’s suspicions mount, so does his own guilt, the gnawing realization that his philosophical ponderings planted a seed of evil that may now have borne ghastly fruit. Stewart ultimately disavows every bit of that presumed moral superiority in a bitter monologue, fully realizing the part he has played in the crime. The actor perhaps isn’t a natural in such a role, given that it plays against the well-worn humanity and humility that tends to be his Frank Capra-esque trademark, but he still manages the accusatory tone well when he demands to know if Brandon thought he had become god in deciding that he had the right to take a life. Stewart would of course go on to star in three other Hitchcock classics: Rear Window, The Man Who Knew Too Much and Vertigo.

Rope is as lean (but polished) a film as you will find from this era of American filmmaking, a white-knuckle exercise in suspense that sets its stakes immediately and then teases the audience with an impending fallout for a thrilling 80 minutes. Few directors have ever built this kind of tension into so economical a vessel, but that’s the beauty of Alfred Hitchcock. Almost 80 years later, directors are still attempting to match his ability to do so much with so little.

Jim Vorel is Paste’s Movies editor and resident genre geek. You can follow him on Twitter for more film writing.