Exclusive“Rope” (1948): First Classic Suspense

I have a reservation for one. Oh yes, for Brandon? With a last name like Brandon, we're destined to a lifetime of people getting it wrong. I don't know how many times a hostess has mistaken our last name for the popular first name, Brandon. That is a popular first name now, but it wasn't common at all in old movies. There is one classic film, though, that features a lead character named Brandon. Not only that, they say his name 79 times. I'm Tiffany Brannan. And I'm Rebecca Brannan. Welcome to Real Thoughts on Cinema. I think anyone can become a classic film fan, you just have to see the right first movie. That's certainly true. You have to pick the first movie carefully, or you could be immediately turned off by how foreign it seems. That's why the trick is to pick a movie that matches your interests. The aim of this series is to help you find the perfect film to start your golden era journey. I think a lot of people now have the conception that all old movies are sort of happily ever after fluff, or even immature sort of fairy tale stories. Many people today love the genres of suspense films, murder mysteries, and true crime. You might think that you can only find these genres in more recent films. One classic movie that very dramatically disproves this notion is Rope from 1948. You've probably heard the name Alfred Hitchcock. His last name has now become the title of an entire genre of films. But then he was just a director with some very unusual ideas, and none so unusual as a lot of the techniques used in the making of this film. Rope stars many popular actors, including James Stewart, Farley Granger, John Dahl. It was made by the studio Warner Brothers, but the actual production company was Hitchcock's own short-lived company, Transatlantic Pictures. The script was adapted by Hume Cronin, who was a character actor at the time, but apparently also a talented scriptwriter. Oh, that's fascinating. This film tells the story of two young men, Brandon Shaw and Philip Morgan, who set out to perform the perfect murder purely for the reason to prove that they are superior, As a further show of arrogance, they give a dinner party, even setting the dinner on the trunk where they have hidden his body, and they invite only people who are somehow connected to the victim, David Kentley. That is, except for one guest, who is Rupert Caddell, their former prep school housemaster. Brandon invites him because Rupert was the one who taught him a lot of the ideology which he has now put into practice. However, as the evening unfolds, both Brandon's overconfidence and Philip's nervousness and remorse begin to make Rupert suspect that something is amiss. This movie was based on a true story. Speaking of true crime, it was based on what was called at the time the crime of the century. In 1924, a hundred years ago now, a murder was committed by two young men, Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb. They were 19 and 18, respectively, students at the University of Chicago. Like the characters in this movie, they were students of Nietzsche. Leopold especially studied his writings and believed that he and his good friend Loeb could become such übermensch. They went along with this idea that Nietzsche purported and propagated that certain people are so far superior to the common masses that they're above the law. As a matter of fact, laws and rules weren't made for them. They were just made for the common people. So they're completely above any form of morality. Thus, they have the right to do whatever they want, including murdering lesser individuals. They started to prove this to themselves by committing petty crimes, but they weren't satisfied when they saw that they weren't getting any media attention. So they decided to commit a perfect murder, the perfect crime, the crime of the century, and see if they could get away with it, just to prove how intelligent and superior they were. They chose as a victim a 14-year-old boy who went to the same preparatory school where Leopold had gone. His name was Bobby Franks. Like the two murderers, he was a wealthy Jewish boy. They were able to lure him into their car and hit him over the head before choking him. Their plan was to use a rope. Each of them would hold one side, just like in the film, having the rope used, so that they would be equally guilty of the murder. Whether or not they actually did that is a debatable point because there were no eyewitnesses. They spent seven months planning their perfect crime, yet they were quickly found out because of, firstly, their arrogance, and secondly, they always tend to overlook some small detail. Leopold, that very day, was talking about the murderer, not necessarily admitting to it, but, as in the film, talking with a university professor, just like Rupert in the movie, and a female friend, like Janet in the movie. Really? I didn't know that. That's very interesting. They were quickly caught, and their wealthy parents got one of the finest defense attorneys to defend them in court, Clarence Darrow, whose name is famous. Yes. Clarence Darrow took the case because he was a strong opponent of capital punishment, which was the usual punishment for murder at the time. Right. And arguing not only that they were too young to kill, but also that they were victims of their circumstances and their age with World War I, he was able to have them not get the death penalty, but instead a life sentence in prison, plus 99 years. Loeb ended up being killed in prison by another inmate, and Leopold was eventually released for good behavior, but it was much sooner than 99 years later. Only a few short years later, in 1929, this crime supposedly inspired a play by the British playwright, Patrick Hamilton, entitled Rope. When it was produced on Broadway in the same year, it was renamed Rope's End, but it follows almost the exact same plot as the film, as it was the inspiration for it. The only character that maintains exactly the same name in the film is Rupert Caddell, the professor. The character of Brandon was actually named Wyndham Brandon, and the character of Philip was a Spaniard named Charles Granillo, or Grano, as is his nickname. But Brandon was the name by which the character is known in the play. Everyone calls him Brandon as if it's his first name, and I believe that's why they decided to make it his first name. The first actor to play the part, interestingly, was named Sebastian Shaw, Shaw being the last name that the character is given in the movie. I would say the largest difference between the movie and the play is that there's a stronger sense of right and wrong in the film, and that is achieved largely by making the characters as nuanced and realistic as they are, almost like representatives of different facets of the human personality. Brandon is very definitely a representative of someone who just has evil within him. Of course we all have evil within us, but someone who just thinks in a way that someone who's a bit more normal simply can't, someone who just has sort of violent or homicidal tendencies. And Philip, in spite of being the one, interestingly, who actually strangles him, Brandon doesn't actually commit the murder. Philip is almost as much of a victim as the young man they killed. You can see how he has been manipulated by his friend. And Rupert is a teacher who didn't really take his responsibilities seriously enough and didn't consider what these ideas he had, how they could affect impressionable minds. And you can see as the film unfolds, especially in the last scene, once he finds out what they've done, you see it in his face that he knows and he says that he realizes these were his words and his ideas are what put this in Brandon's mind. Although he also says there's something in you that would allow you to do this, that there's something in me that could never let me. But when he looks at Brandon, you can see that look in his face that he's thinking, here was a young boy and I gave him these ideas. If I hadn't, perhaps he still would have gone down the wrong path, but maybe not quite so dramatically. The moral ideas and the moral climate of the era in which the play was written was very different from the moral climate of Hollywood 20 years later. In the 1920s, it was the Jazz Age, Prohibition in America, and they called them the Roaring Twenties for a reason. It was a very amoral time, if you will. Many young people were saying goodbye to the morals and traditions of the past. By the 1940s, things were very different. Hollywood, and thus American films, had adopted some strong rules and guidelines, and there were no Ubermensch who were above these rules. In 1934, the Motion Picture Production Code was adopted by Hollywood as a set of rules and guidelines which would help the filmmakers, firstly, avoid censorship around the country, but secondly, just a set of rules that everyone agreed these will make movies better because they'll be decent enough for everyone to watch. That presented a lot of challenges for making movies, which are suspense films, murder mysteries, and true crime, because the important thing highlighted by the code was that movies shouldn't inspire people to imitate something wrong, and that's the whole point of the story. Two impressionable young men, both in real life, then in the play, and then in the movie, are inspired to do evil by a bad influence, whether it's Nietzsche's writing or a university professor introducing them to these ideas. Similarly, movies can introduce young people to bad ideas. Many times, it says in the code that movies must not become a school for crime. So how does a movie made under the Motion Picture Production Code deal with two young people senselessly murdering a friend of theirs just for the sheer fun of it, or to prove that they can? It could do so, firstly, by being delicate, and secondly, by proving a strong example of why you don't do that. The real life case, I think, is a pretty good example of you probably shouldn't try that because they got caught very quickly. But then Clarence Darrow was saying, almost, we need to just, they're just boys being boys, and they're young and foolish, but this movie is saying, no, they're guilty, as is the teacher, as is Nietzsche, or anyone who thinks that he puts himself up for being superior. And it was with the tastefulness of the Motion Picture Production Code, expertly handled by Joseph Breen, who was in charge of enforcing it, that helped them create a movie like this that is so nuanced, so brilliant, not very violent, besides the brief instant when you see the final strangling of the victim, beyond that, you never see his corpse. It's all psychological, but it's so exciting and so powerful. I believe Clarence Darrow, in his speech, made a point about the climate of the world from World War I. Yes, he did. How is murder different than killing an enemy in war? That's a theme that is brought up in the play by Rupert, when he is making one of his speeches about how he feels about murder and so forth. He raises that comparison. He actually is a World War I veteran. He has a bad leg because of it. That's a detail that wasn't included in the film, and I think for good reason, because they didn't want to include that argument about why murder is good. His way of presenting it, Rupert, in the film, everyone to whom he's speaking and everyone in the audience is just thinking, what is wrong with you? Why do you think this is a lie? But interestingly, by the time the film was made, World War II had happened, and the father of David, who doesn't realize his son has been murdered, responds to Rupert by saying, Nietzsche said that, and you know who believed that? Hitler. Now, that was very relevant, saying, yes, our American soldiers have had to go and learn to kill, but why were they doing that? They were doing that to defend us from people like Adolf Hitler who agree with Nietzsche that they can go around killing other people. Absolutely. That's an excellent point. And ironically, bringing up Hitler, those original murderers were Jews who were the main victims of Hitler, showing you weren't... One person can consider himself an Übermensch, but another doesn't. Hitler certainly wouldn't have considered them superior. He thought they were inferior. I heard someone make an interesting point that the young man they killed, David, seems to be very successful, wealthy. He's engaged to this very attractive young woman. He's intelligent. I believe in the play, he's actually a great athlete. So how did they decide he was so inferior? He seems to be on the same level with them. He's one of these four young men who are all friends at college, as well as that other young man who's at their party. It's just an unfathomable mental process. Well, then we see Brandon, in one line, subtly admits that the girl to whom he is engaged used to go with him. So clearly this is a crime of passion. He's jealous that David has everything that he wanted. Perhaps more loving parents. We see his father. We don't really know what Brandon's parents are, but we can see he's just using those ideas of Nietzsche to justify something he wants to do, get rid of his rival, a young man he's always resented. This film, beyond its fascinating psychological aspects, also is amazing from a technical standpoint because it used an extremely unusual filming technique, which has hardly ever been used other than this. It was largely regarded as unsuccessful, but I personally think it's quite brilliant. And that is that it's filmed to appear as though it's all in one take and happens in real time. There are a few conventional cuts in it, which you just don't really notice, but usually someone goes toward the camera and it goes black against his back or the lid of the trunk or some such thing, and that's when they take the opportunity to take a cut. It was filmed in 10 takes altogether, ranging from about 4 1⁄2 minutes to just over 10 minutes, and as a result of that, it's... the tension never lets up. You don't have a fade-out, you don't have any break from just this feeling, are they going to find out? Is someone going to look inside the trunk? And it just really builds the intensity. Apparently it was very unpleasant to film. None of the actors enjoyed it. Jimmy Stewart commented that the main thing being rehearsed was the cameras and not the actors. But the set had to be designed specially so nearly everything was on rollers so they could move walls or furniture out of the way to move the camera, which was also on some sort of rolling apparatus, and move with the actors, who had to follow a very definite path of choreographed cues and also be careful of not tripping over the cables that were on the floor. You can see in the film, sometimes even they're standing closer together than is often... you'll often see, and that's because they have to stay in the right angle. And apparently Hitchcock was inspired to do this by the 1939 BBC broadcast of the play, where they used long takes such as this in order to always have the chest, which held the victim's body, in the shot. It's widely believed that later on, when television used this technique, it was inspired by this film. Another interesting aspect which has since been studied is that the runtime of the film is only 80 minutes, or an hour and 20 minutes, but the action actually covers 100 minutes, and people who watched the film were positive that's how long it was. This was done by speeding up a couple of things, such as the formal dinner only lasts 20 minutes, and the sunset's a bit too quickly. The cyclorama, as it was called, the backdrop which is outside the apartment windows, showing a New York City skyline, was the largest one built for a film to date, and it has amazing details in it as well. You see the silhouettes of all these buildings, the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building notably, and the lighting changes as the sun sets. You see some smokestacks with real smoke coming out of them. The lights change, and the clouds, which were made of spun glass, change position 8 times. Later on in the film, a neon sign starts flashing with a man's profile in it. That was actually Hitchcock's profile. He was famous for putting a cameo of himself into all his films. Little details like wanting to be in all his films and funny different cameos, it's just one of the things that highlights how unusual Hitchcock was. He was both amazingly unique and extremely formulaic. There are certain tropes you see in all his movies, certain types of actors, certain types of actresses. He would use the same actor in many different movies because he liked that person's style. He began as a British director in the silent film era. He achieved success as a British director of suspense films, including Jamaica Inn in 1939, and then he came to America. His first American film was Rebecca from 1940, and this was a David Selznick production. He always claimed that that was one of his least favorite films because he felt very restricted by the studio system and David Selznick. But it was the beginning of highlighting his talent for American audiences, and after that, he continued to grow in popularity with his dramatic, suspenseful films, inspiring other directors and developing his own niche, which would lead him to make movies like Rope, and then as he started his own production company and worked with other production companies, eventually going on to make the films which we now remember so well. What would you say are the most well-remembered Hitchcock films today? I think I would say The Birds, Psycho, Rear Window, and Vertigo, probably. Those are all in the top five. Really? The order, which is generally listed if you research it on lists, is Psycho number one, Rear Window number two, Vertigo number three, The Birds number four, and North by Northwest number five. That's interesting. I definitely would have thought The Birds would be higher. I've heard about that film for so long in my whole life, I think. It's really a shame that his Code films aren't more well-known, outside of Rear Window, of course. Yes. That Code era, when Mr. Breen was in charge, ranging from 1934 to 1954, within those years, Hitchcock was active, making American films from 1940 to 1954, and he made 15 films during that time in America. I didn't realize it was that many. A few of my favorites would be Rebecca, of course, not only because my name is in the title. Strangers on a Train, also with Farley Granger, is a really great one. Notorious is very well-known. And Suspicion, also with Joan Fontaine, who was in Rebecca. Yes. Hitchcock was a master of suspense. Yet, ironically, his best-known films, which were made in that later era, after 1954, are more blatantly violent than suspenseful. It's true. After 1954, when Joseph Breen retired, Geoffrey Sherlock, another Englishman, took over the PCA, and like Hitchcock, he was much more comfortable with violence on screen and things being gorier, and that allowed Hitchcock to do things like Psycho, with the stabbing in the shower, or The Birds, with the horrifically violent bird attacks, Vertigo, with some very disturbing and violent murder scenes. Whereas his earlier films, made during the Breen era, he was allowed, as a matter of fact, he was forced to show his true brilliant genius of using suspense and lighting, shadows, psychological twists, and story shifts. And thus, we see his true great genius, because he was allowed and encouraged, by being challenged, to follow the guidelines of the Code. Speaking of guidelines, there were very definite fashion guidelines in that era as well, which we now observe in our daily life. We always wear vintage-inspired clothes, such as the ones we're wearing now, but for today, we based them on the fashions in Rope. Since there's only one young female character, and she only wears one outfit, it presented a difficult challenge to us. However, fascinatingly, in one of the many unusual gimmicks Hitchcock used in this film, he filmed an entirely separate scene, just for the theatrical trailer. It shows Janet, the leading lady, with David, the murder victim, shortly before the film starts, out in the park. And she's wearing a lovely fashionable day outfit, which I have replicated here. Her outfit is soft grey, but I had this lovely vintage black suit, so I chose to wear this. I have a matching vintage hat, black patent leather pumps, a scarf very much like hers, and gloves, as any lady would wear then when she was going out. In the actual film, at the party, Janet is wearing a beautiful burgundy dress that seems to be of a heavy, slightly patterned material, and she's wearing matching gloves, and a beautiful elaborate hairstyle. She's always very stylish and classy. So, I have this dress, which is in a similar colour tone, and the style of the sleeves with the trumpets reminds me of that 1940s era, and the structured aspect of the skirt, as well as the length just slightly below the knee. One of the most important things about the fashion of this era was that it was so feminine and beautiful and glamorous without being revealing or indecent, and that was something which the code inspired. Definitely. It followed the same pattern as the films. Leave enough to the imagination to make it interesting. Well, I think it's about time to be tying things up. This film, Rope, is our recommendation for your first classic movie if you like suspense, murder mysteries, true crime, or even horror films. While it doesn't have the gore of your average slasher flick, the opening scene is one that you will not soon forget. It has the style and the class of the 1940s era in terms of the just amazing costumes and the beautiful decor, but this movie is not old-fashioned or dated by any means. It's extremely nuanced, and it shows how nuanced culture was at the time, yet it remains extremely relevant today. When I first saw the movie, I was just amazed by it because I'd never seen anything quite like it, and I haven't found anything like it since. It wasn't particularly successful at the time. It was very controversial, but it got a lot of bad reviews, honestly. Even when our father watched it recently, we were talking to him on the phone, and he said, I have to finish watching this horrible movie now. I said, why do you think it's horrible? He was just struck by the murder scene at the beginning, as I saw one reviewer was at the time, but I think maybe I'm looking at it more from a production standpoint. Yes. We are producers ourselves. I just saw the creativity in it is just unparalleled. Every line and every movement is meaningful without it being overplayed. Yes, not everything is significant, but in this case, it's just perfect, and after I read the script of the play quite recently, I saw it was good, it was entertaining, it was quite funny, but there wasn't just that significance to everything. Even the rope from the title wasn't that important. Interesting. But in the film, the rope plays a part throughout. It sort of ties the film together, if you'll forgive the cliche. And the acting is also, as all acting at the time, is just so amazing, but I was especially impressed by the actor playing Brandon, John Dahl. He's not very well known. He didn't really make it all that big at the time, didn't make a lot of movies, but his performance in this one is really stellar. You just really believe everyone in this film is the character that he's playing. It's more like a play because of the way they filmed it. Yes. I would highly recommend this film for other young people because it's very edgy. Yes. And that's, I think, maybe why our father was disturbed by it. It could be disturbing to, just like it's disturbing to the older characters are disturbed, but it's all about these young characters. So I think young men and women can enjoy this movie by seeing something in these characters that somehow reminds us of ourselves while we see the good characters, the good young characters, as opposed to the very bad ones and realize just how easy it is to get on the wrong path. It's so alive and so real that I think you certainly do not have to be an old movie fan to like this movie. I could easily see people who aren't interested in old movies at all becoming very interested in classic cinema because of how amazing this film is. It's not hard to find. You can easily buy or rent it on Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, wherever you find movies to purchase in either renting or for a long-term purchase for streaming. No more than $15, oftentimes a lot less than that, around $4 or $5 just to rent it. You can also buy it on a DVD, on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Walmart, wherever you find DVDs. There's even a free copy on the Internet Archive. Wow. As well as a free copy of the script of the play that you can borrow if you're interested in seeing the story behind the story. Next time, we're going to talk about a very different movie which will appeal to people with perhaps a lighter preference for movies. Recently, there have been a lot of musicals. There's been a resurgence in that in cinema. The Greatest Showman, all the Disney live-action remakes, La La Land, most of them very successful. So if you like musicals, we suggest watching Singing in the Rain, one of the most famous musicals of all time. We'll talk more about that next time and reveal why we think this is the perfect musical to start your golden era journey. Thank you for joining us for Real Thoughts on Cinema. Goodbye.