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Recently I watched the movie Rope a suspenseful thriller that explores themes of morality, guilt, and the illusion of reality. The film’s unsettling atmosphere and forces the viewer to confront the uncomfortable reality of the crime. Rope is a 1948 American psychological crime thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock based on the play of the same title by Patrick Hamilton. The play draws upon the 1924 kidnap and murder of Bobby Franks by Leopold and Loeb.
What drew me to this old film was the concept that the intellectually superior can commit the perfect crime and get away with it. Here is the plot:
Two brilliant young aesthetes, Brandon Shaw and Phillip Morgan, strangle to death their former classmate from prep school, David Kentley, in their Manhattan penthouse apartment. They commit the crime as an intellectual exercise: they want to prove their superiority by committing the “perfect murder”.
After hiding the body in a large antique wooden chest, Brandon and Phillip host a dinner party at the apartment, which has a panoramic view of Manhattan’s skyline. The guests, who are unaware of what has happened, include the victim’s father, Mr. Kentley, and aunt, Mrs. Atwater; his mother is unable to attend because of a cold. Also present are David’s fiancée, Janet Walker, and her former lover, Kenneth Lawrence, who was once David’s close friend.
Brandon decides to use the chest containing the body as a buffet table for the food, just before their housekeeper, Mrs. Wilson, arrives to help with the party.
Brandon and Phillip’s idea for the murder was inspired years earlier by conversations with their prep-school housemaster, publisher Rupert Cadell. While they were at school, Rupert had discussed with them, in an apparently approving way, the intellectual concepts of Nietzsche’s Superman, as a means of showing one’s superiority over others. He, too, is among the guests at the party since Brandon, in particular, thinks that he would approve of their “work of art.”
Brandon’s subtle hints about David’s absence indirectly lead to a discussion on the “art of murder.” Brandon appears calm and in control, although when he first speaks to Rupert, he is nervously excited and stammering. Phillip, on the other hand, is visibly upset and morose. He does not conceal it well and starts to drink too much. When David’s aunt, Mrs. Atwater, who fancies herself a fortune teller, tells Phillip that his hands will bring him great fame, she refers to his skill at the piano, but he appears to think this refers to the notoriety of being a strangler.
However, much of the conversation focuses on David, whose strange absence worries the guests. A suspicious Rupert quizzes a fidgety Phillip about this and some of the inconsistencies raised in conversation. For example, Phillip vehemently denies ever strangling a chicken at the Shaws’ farm, although Rupert has seen Phillip strangle several. Phillip later complains to Brandon about having had a “rotten evening,” not because of David’s murder, but because of Rupert’s questioning.
As the evening goes on, David’s father and fiancée begin to worry because he has neither arrived nor phoned. Brandon increases the tension by playing matchmaker between Janet and Kenneth. The body is almost discovered when Mrs. Wilson begins tidying up and tries to open the chest before she is intercepted by Brandon. Mrs. Kentley calls, overwrought because she has not heard from David, and Mr. Kentley decides to leave. He takes with him some first edition books Brandon has given him, tied together with the rope Brandon and Phillip used to strangle his son. When Rupert leaves, Mrs. Wilson accidentally hands him David’s mongrammed hat, further arousing his suspicion. Rupert returns to the apartment a short while after everyone else has departed, pretending that he has left his cigarette case behind. He asks for a drink and then stays to theorize about David’s disappearance.
He is encouraged by Brandon, who hopes Rupert will understand and even applaud their deed. A drunk Phillip, unable to bear it anymore, throws a glass and accuses Rupert of playing cat and mouse games with him and Brandon. Rupert seizes Brandon’s gun from Phillip and insists on examining the chest over Brandon’s objections. He lifts the lid of the chest and finds the body inside. He is horrified and ashamed, realizing that Brandon and Phillip used his own rhetoric to rationalize murder. Rupert disavows all his previous talk of superiority and inferiority, and fires several shots out the window to attract attention. As the police arrive, Rupert sits on a chair next to the chest, Phillip begins to play the piano, and Brandon continues to drink.
Why would these two well educated courtly young men just randomly kill a classmate? Insanity? Perhaps. Remember the film opens with the murder itself, where two young intellectual Manhattan graduates, Brandon and Phillip, are throttling their former classmate David to death with a rope bound tight across his neck. We later learn they are doing this as an intellectual exercise. Proving to themselves that such is their power and position in life, they are able to commit the perfect murder and get away with it. Enter Rupert Cadell, a former school housemaster of Brandon and Phillip’s. Rupert engages them in a philosophical discussion about societal hierarchy and the superiority of the privileged, and for whom Brandon delights in hinting at the wonderful work of art he and Phillip have been working on recently. Rupert’s suspicions eventually grow into finding out what’s been going on, and the real reason why David is never going to arrive. The body in the chest is discovered, and a hurried confrontation concludes with the police on their way as Brandon sits quietly and drinks, his flawed masterpiece complete and Rupert is riddled with pangs of conscience regarding his role as the warped seed of inspiration for the heinous act.
Psychologically speaking, beneath the surface of the film Hitchcock at the same time deals with psychoanalytic theory; numerous hints at Freud’s theory of parapraxis suggest the existence of an unconscious dimension in the plot, characterized by biographical traumata, repetition compulsions and wishes of self punishment. The symbolism thus is of life juxtaposed against death, for the ‘life’ of the party that carries on through most of the film coincides with the knowledge that there’s a dead man’s body hiding in a large antique wooden chest, on which dinner is served. Rope, of course, is also the murder weapon … a simple length of common rope. “These well-to-do young men would end a man’s life to clear the way for the lives of “superior” men like themselves. They use rope as an executioner would, and as Rupert Cadell (Stewart in the film) says at the end of the play, they’ll hang (i.e., by rope–perfect karma) for their crime (Stewart’s Cadell says they’ll die).” – https://mawrgorshin.com/2021/08/11/analysis-of-rope/
Resources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rope_(film
I think Brandon was mentally disturbed since his childhood towards violence – once of those kids who pulls the wings off flies. Phillip obviously was the type that stuffed everything inside and exploded before he imploded. Rupert as the former headmaster of their elite school was a good example of indoctrination method. He seemed to come to terms with it at the end via his confession of shame. Good movie.