Speaking of HitchCOCK - Rope

It's dreary. Those cantankerous long takes destroy any possibility of suspense or intrigue. It's the opposite of cinema.

I love it all: a couple of pretty students who are too-clever-by-half, a beautiful apartment, Jimmy Stewart’s moral indignation, and a mysteriously capacious, human-sized wooden chest to serve dinner off of. What’s not to like?

Rope is great to watch to see how clever Hitch and others are in playing a scene without editing. There's a lot of dialogue and stage direction, keeping the actors moving. Each scene before the "edit" is the length of time a roll of film takes to run through a camera.

Is it a success like other films Hitch directed? No, but it is a great watch if you're studying the mechanics of filmmaking.

OP, the film was indeed released in 1948, the year it was filmed. You are probably confused because it was never re-released nor available to see again until the 1970s, which was unusual.

I think it is interesting that much of Patrick Hamilton's original dialog was jettisoned because the censors found it too Gay. Benign phrases such as "old boy" were considered "too Gay."

R5 I read that characters were actually gay, but due to censorship there were only lots of hints.

Thee film was based on a stage play in which which the two leads were a gay couple, the play having been inspired by but not directly based on the Leopold/Loeb case. The screenplay by Hume Cronyn and Arthur Laurents had to rely completely on gay subtext, although it's pretty blatent for the period.

R6. Two different things. It was a bit of a joke. The relationship between the two is pretty explicit for a 1948 film, but what the censors cut was common British language that had no Gay meaning at all.

^ Gay subtext and coding

It's deliciously perverse and Hitchcock's experimental style of filming is fascinating. The acting and physical production are first rate. It didn't work as a commercial film then or now but I've always loved it.

[quote] "It's deliciously perverse and Hitchcock's experimental style of filming is fascinating."

Indeed, R10. He shot single takes lasting ten and eleven minutes (among other things)! Here he discusses shooting the opening of "Rope", & how one of the takes was ruined, after ALLLLMOST making it successfully to the end. It starts @ 2:39.

The first time I saw it was on video in the 1980s. I didn't make the gay connection between the two leads until I saw it the second time.

Yes, r11. He wanted to shoot the whole film in one long single take but it wasn't possible. Film magazines at the time held only ten minutes worth of film.

Great movie. Loved Mrs. Wilson.

It's a daunting challenge R10/R13. But Hitchcock was definitely up to it, even if the technology wasn't. Sokurov's "Russian Ark" is an interesting (and pretty famous) example of a single-take film....with a cast of hundreds.

Wow, I thought those guys were too nice but didn't fit the pieces together. I loved how upscale it all looked too.

One of those incidents where the real life story is much more interesting than the movie.

It's brilliant. Noel Coward visited the set whilst it was being made and commented on the innovative technique.

IIRC there were five Hitchock films that were out of circulation for a couple of decades because of copyright disputes.

Rope was one of them.

Here's an article explaining the particulars.

I like rope

Joan Chandler was hot - why didn't she have a career?