Production Long Takes

Rope (1948) is a film written by Hume Cronyn and Arthur Laurents, produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring James Stewart, John Dall and Farley Granger. It is the first of Hitchcock's Technicolor films, and is notable for taking place in real time and being edited so as to appear as a single continuous shot through the use of long takes. The film was based on the play Rope by Patrick Hamilton, which was said to be inspired by the real-life murder of fourteen-year-old Bobby Franks in 1924 by two University of Chicago students named Leopold and Loeb who simply wanted to show that they could commit a murder and get away with it. However, they were both arrested and received long prison terms. Production The film is one of Hitchcock’s most experimental and "one of the most interesting experiments ever attempted by a major director working with big box-office names" [2] , abandoning many standard film techniques to allow for the long unbroken scenes. Each shot ran continuously for up to ten minutes without interruption. It was shot on a single set, aside from the opening establishing shot street scene. Camera moves were planned in advance and there was almost no editing. The walls of the set were on rollers and could silently be moved out of the way to make way for the camera, and then replaced when they were to come back into shot. Prop men also had to constantly move the furniture and other props out of the way of the large Technicolor camera, and then ensure they were replaced in the correct location. A team of soundmen and camera operators kept the camera and microphones in constant motion, as the actors kept to a carefully choreographed set of cues. [3] The extraordinary cyclorama in the background was the largest backing ever used on a sound stage.[4] It included models of the Empire State and the Chrysler buildings. Numerous chimneys smoke, lights come on in buildings, neon signs light up, and the sunset slowly unfolds as the movie progressed. At about one hour into the film, a red neon sign in the far background showing Hitchcock's profile with "Reduco"—the fictitious weight loss product he used for his appearance in Lifeboat (1944)—is visible for just a moment. Within the course of the film, the clouds—made of spun glass— change position and shape a total of eight times. [5] Long takes Hitchcock filmed each scene in segments lasting up to ten minutes (the length of a magazine of film loaded in the camera), each segment continuously panning from character to character in real time. Several segments end by panning against or zooming into an object (a man’s jacket, or the back of a piece of furniture, for example) or by having an actor move in front of the camera, blocking the entire screen. Each scene after that starts a static shot of that same object. In this way, Hitchcock effectively masked many of the cuts in the film. However, at the end of 20 minutes (two reels), the projectionist—when the film was shown in theaters—had to change reels, and on these, Hitchcock cuts to a new camera setup, not disguising the cut. A description of the beginning and end of each segment follows. Hitchcock told Francois Truffaut in the book-length Hitchcock/Truffaut (Simon & Schuster, 1967) that he ended up re-shooting the last four or five segments because he was dissatisfied with the color of the sunset. Hitchcock used this long-take approach again to a lesser extent on his next film, Under Capricorn (1949) and in a very limited way in his film Stage Fright (1950). Themes Homoeroticism Rope may be considered a homoerotic movie, even though the film version never indicates that the two murderers in the film were having an affair, and Brandon says he was in a previous relationship with Janet, the fiancee of the murdered man. However, there is no indication that the two men live apart, Phillip even has a key of his own for the Shaw apartment, and towards the end of the movie they discuss going away together for a holiday. At one point, when Janet asks where the telephone is, Brandon says "It's in the bedroom" — indicating there is only one bedroom — and she responds "How cozy!" Even though homosexuality was a highly controversial theme for the 1940s, the movie made it past the Production Code censors. However, many towns chose to ban it independently, memories of Leopold and Loeb still being fresh in some people’s minds. Dall was actually gay in real life, as was screenwriter Arthur Laurents — even the piano score played by Granger ( Mouvement Perpétuel No. 1 by Francis Poulenc) was the work of a gay composer. Granger was bisexual.[13] Granger’s role was first offered to a bisexual actor, Montgomery Clift, who turned the offer down, probably due to the risks of coming out in public. [14] Cary Grant turned down the part of Rupert Cadell for similar reasons. [15] In Hitchcock’s Films Revisited , critic Robin Wood points to several instances in the film that could be interpreted as homoerotic. He suggests the opening strangulation reflects the euphoria of an orgasm and the subsequent limpness; and Wood sees masturbatory overtones to the scene in which Brandon excitedly fingers the neck of a champagne bottle. In Hamilton’s play, the dialogue is much more homoerotic, as is the relationship between the students and their teacher. Many of these "risky" elements were removed from the script as the play was rewritten for the film, due to the censorship of the time. Despite this, Hitchcock managed to supply much subtext which made it past the rigorous tests of the censor. One example is how Hitchcock makes plain the sexual nature of their relationship, as well as each character’s role, at the very start of the movie with the first lines of dialogue spoken. Directly after the murder, while both men are standing, Brandon wants to get moving to arrange the party — but Phillip, shocked and drained by what they have just done, asks if they can’t "just stay like this for a while." Brandon agrees, then lights a cigarette. This mirroring of post-sexual dialog is immediately identifiable, and also indicates that Phillip’s role in the relationship is that of the submissive archetype, while Brandon’s is that of the dominant partner. The fact that the two characters were inspired by Leopold and Loeb, who were themselves homosexual, only furthers the argument that Brandon and Philip were meant to be gay as well. [16] Nietzsche Much of the film is based on the idea that one might murder someone just to prove that one could. Some film scholarship has found links between this idea and literature and philosophy. Suggestions have been made that Crime and Punishment and its protagonist Raskolnikov form a subtext to the film — whereby the film parallels the idea of murdering just for the sake of performing the act. References to Nietzsche abound throughout the film — particularly to his idea of the superman. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rope_(film) .

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