Rope: Hitchcock’s Fakest Film

Despite the “uninterrupted reality,” Rope has deceit at its very core.

The master of suspense. A cinematic magician. Alfred Hitchcock proved himself to champion both titles throughout his career, as the thrill of the unknown necessitates deceit. Illusion is thus at the forefront of Hitchcock’s career: duping the audience into excitement and terror while pioneering innovative illusory techniques to do so. The cinematic sorcerer played into this identity, falsifying storyboards throughout his life and claiming them as relics of his on the spot genius is just as playfully manipulative as his iconic cameos. Ironically, Hitchcock’s masterful  duplicity is best demonstrated in what many view as one of the premiere films that renders reality with unrivaled fidelity: the 1948 thriller Rope. 

An adaptation of the 1929 play of the same name, Rope itself is already deceiving its audience as an original story. Perhaps unintentionally so, the film dons an inherent mask; this is a stage play transformed. At its very core Rope is a film concerned with play pretend, with the warping of reality to best convey the illusion of tactility, of creating a convincing world inside the screen just as real as our own. This falsified world is the most prominent Hitchcockian deception in Rope. A contradiction, but one performed so convincingly it is forgotten by the engaged audience. Andre Bazin spoke on the powerful effect of the realist aesthetic. The critic/theorist advocated for a style that was real in the way it affords audiences the agency to focus on aspects of the film, thus making them a part of the meaning making process. The potential to miss a scenic detail reflects the audience member’s interaction with reality: in real life, we are not guided by a higher power framing our eyesight on our goal in close-up (if only life were that easy). Bazin specifically notes long-takes, depth of field, minimal editing, realistic acting, naturalistic lighting, and other cinematic techniques as being realistic; all of which are heavily utilized in Rope. Famous for its invisible editing and the very long-takes Bazin asserts as realist, Hitchcock worked to manufacture a reality by employing techniques to mask the fiction inherent to cinema. For many, even in the modern day, that reality is upheld; a flawless rendition of real time suspense that lives and dies by the audience’s belief in the on-screen world. The planning to perform such a feat is astonishing…and evidence of a lie. Unmotivated movements to the character's back’s mask the hidden cuts required by the ten minute maximum for film reels at the time. Outside of this sneaky adaptation, there are other cuts made invisible by human memory, five others to be exact. Either purposefully forgotten to maintain the director’s achievement of “a film without interruption,” or because they are truly that well hidden, the fact stands: this is not an unbroken film. Rather, it is one that masks its cuts and bruises with control over the filmic reality. The audience is presented with a lie.

Yet, for utilizing Bazin’s realist techniques, the audience is still guided towards this lie instead of choosing to focus on it themselves. While it may appear that the implementation of wide shots and deep focus would allow the audience to engage with the film on their own terms as Bazin proposed, as we have seen, Hitchcock never relinquished his dominance over the film’s falsified reality. Deep focus shots would display the ambiguity that is inherent to Bazin’s realist aesthetic, if not for the perfectly blocked actors in position with leading lines to frame the audience’s gaze towards their figure. Uninterrupted action would keep the reality intact, if it were not for the camera choosing to move into a close-up instead of cutting to a similar level of distraction. Meaning, for all its supposed liberation afforded by onscreen reality, Rope grasps the audience’s view and forces it exactly where it needs to be according to the master hand. The presentation is pure theatricality, a complete farce with naturalness disguising the meticulous planning behind every shot, movement and frame. This is no reality, but rather, Hitchcock’s world.

But Hitchcock does not stop his mischief with falsified freedom, his reach extends to narrative as well. Simply put, for a film considered “realistic” for its “real time” story, the movie exists in anything but. The deceptive cuts are used to change the potemkin New York skyline from glowing sunset to dreadfully dark as the story turns sour for our leads. Over the course of eighty minutes, hours pass, and the amount of events that transpire creates a story that fits neither time frame. In less than an hour and a half, a murder takes place, the hosts organize a party where guests mingle, squabble, and resolve all before the crime is then exposed and brought to a close. It’s reality on fast forward, with the temporal consistency only feeling real by the separate deception playing in the background. Once again, Hitchcock presents his audience with “reality,” one that is controlled, warped, and reconfigured to appear as such. In fact, the window itself is so famous exactly because it maintains a manufactured realism. The backdrop is a spectacle precisely because it shouldn’t exist, and it doesn’t, but Hitchcock makes it so. The world outside of the film is real, but only because a mask is used to conceal the inherent fiction. 

However real it seems, the window is a lie, one that privies the audience to a clue at this world’s constructed nature. One would imagine a film depicting reality would refuse to break the fourth wall, yet Hitchcock can’t help himself from deconstructing the reality of his own world with three cameos; the most in any Hitchcock film. His iconic silhouette is seen multiple times late in the film as a glowing red neon sign; a symbol so obvious one can only imagine him laughing behind the camera knowing he’s duped the audience into never noticing it. Right under our noses, the magician appears and vanishes, managing to maintain reality while giving his audience all of the evidence to tear it down. This, then, is proof of how convincing Hitchcock’s illusions are: even when purposefully breaking his own rules, the audience is too engaged in “reality” to notice. 

Props and setting continue to deceive as the film progresses. A rope is a murder weapon masked as a makeshift backpack. A trunk tricks its guest by pretending to be a table, which in itself holds a dark secret of its own. The dining room performs as an art gallery. Objective, tangible elements of reality are re-defined and repurposed into separate objects altogether; lies told by characters who manipulate in service of hiding their own truth. 

In Rope, not a single character is honest. Phillip, the honorable ivy leaguer, lies about his past. He could never hurt an animal, much less kill a chicken! Just think, Phillip, the pianist, a monster? How could he be? It’s simple, as long as he says he isn’t, then a new truth masks the old. Phillip never killed that chicken, just like he never killed David. As long he upholds the lie it will become true. However, there is no denying that Phillip seems more upset at the prospect of people thinking he is a murderer than people knowing. After all, one’s reputation is fragile, and being a chicken strangler is one truth that need not be uncovered for an aspiring musician. This  belief that reality is whatever one speaks it to be is held strongest by Brandon. If Phillip is afraid of being an ivy league snob, Brandon wears that title as a badge of honor. Ever the superior thinker, Brandon cannot help but lie through his teeth simply for the practice, the art, the thrill of performance and manipulation. Not only does he lie about the murder, he teases with it. Why not have a macabre display of criminal intelligence by masking the chest as a dinner table? It’s not like the two will ever be caught with their level of genius and superiority over the dunces coming as guests. This is a mask twofold: Brandon pretends to be unaware of the social torment he’s organized (creating a love triangle for fun, teetering on exposure for his crimes for enjoyment, etc.), but only to project the superiority and confidence he desperately craves. Cracks of nerves reveal themselves when speaking with Rupert, his old prep school headmaster, exposing that the man who self assuredly has it altogether is perhaps the least cool under pressure. This is only one example of many: Brandon leaves David’s hat easily accessible in the closet, and Rupert catches the gun tucked in his pocket before it's even revealed. It seems as though the master hand of the story is not as sly as he hopes, or presents himself to be. 

While Rupert may seem innocent due to his role as hero, no one is free from lying for their own desires. Rupert hates dinner parties, yet more than once he effortlessly demands attention. From joking about murder much to the simultaneous amusement and disgust of his companions to stealing Mrs. Wilson off her feet, Rupert is quite the star of this show, and by now I hope you see, it certainly is a performance. By the end of the film, Rupert disavows the very beliefs he has held onto seemingly for years. At least, since prep school, where he stated the righteousness of murder if done by the superior upon the inferior that inspired the very killing Brandon and Phillip executed that night. While only minutes earlier, or hours for the entranced viewer and in world characters, Rupert held strong to his convictions, it is only when he sees the reality his words inspire that he begins to second guess - no, outright refuse them. Yet, his panicked speech makes it difficult to parse reality from fiction: does Rupert genuinely have a change of heart in a moment’s notice after years of conviction, or like Phillip, is he simply wearing another guilt absolving mask for inspiring David’s murder? The answer is ambiguous, which is perhaps the most close to reality element of this falsified cinematic world. 

The other realistic element that manages to squeeze itself in Hitchcock’s playworld is that of social order. Any audience member can replicate the false smile painted on Janet’s face when reconnected with her ex, Kenneth. One is bound to meet the Mrs. Atwater type at some point in their life: a wealthy liar who has to project their riches in order to feel superior, just as they project a deceitful grin to appear down to earth from their miles high stack of money. And these separate liars are all then placed within Brandon’s individual social games, which in themselves exist alongside the greater coverup of David’s murder, that is in itself a reality manufactured by the director. Layers upon layers of falsity exist in Rope, as if it wasn’t already difficult to differentiate fact from fiction. 

Which leads to the ultimate meaning behind this web of lies, the truth hidden by trick after trick: ideas have power, but ideas are no more concrete than the painted buildings that make up the New York skyline. What does it mean when action can be inspired by a single phrase with infinite meanings? When one has mastery over their reality, they become all powerful, as represented by both the character’s and director. At least, that’s what the character’s believe, up until the moment their reality is broken. As their lies catch up with them, Brandon and Phillip can no longer hide behind the mask of innocence. Phillip breaks first, and Brandon follows suit with an uncharacteristically in-character head bow; his secret insecurity making itself seen for the first time as a distraught Rupert questions his own philosophies: what does he really believe in? Is there any way for him to know if not faced with it in real time? In the real world? If just words, ideas can be taken and manipulated just like the reality they create. Action can be executed based on a misinterpretation, a projected identity, a slip of the tongue or purposeful trickery. What is there to believe in then if a word can be construed into whatever meaning the speaker and listener desire? What world is there to believe in if its ideas are just as malleable as the reality they create? Notably, all of these questions arise from an imaginary reality of their own, one expertly maintained by a true illusionist. Ironically, Hitchcock proves himself to be a master of fiction with his most realistic film, all centered around the mask of a chest as a dinner table as a coffin. Layers upon layers, lie after lie, Hitchcock crafts a reality the audience cannot help but believe in.