“It tickled him”: the Alfred Hitchcock movie that caused an uproar in multiple states
If you were making a movie during the 1940s, you had no choice but to accept that your work was probably going to face the wrath of censors if it didn’t comply with Hollywood’s strict regulations.
That meant no explicit nudity, sex, drug use, blasphemy, violence, homosexuality, interracial relationships, you name it; if a film didn’t fit Hollywood’s cookie-cutter mould of social normalcy, then it could face major edits or outright banning, so you were best off erring on the side of caution.
Alfred Hitchcock loved to push boundaries; he was a proper pioneer, after all. Whether he was introducing audiences to bloody violence in Psycho or having his leading lady attacked by birds, Hitchcock knew how to shock, so he couldn’t help but get excited when he made Rope, which teased something very much against the Hay’s Code.
Released in 1948, the movie is a clever tale of two men who host a dinner party, with their guests unaware that a corpse is sitting in the wooden chest that is playing host to the food. James Stewart starred as Rupert, a guest at the party and the pair’s former housemaster, who inadvertently inspired them to commit this ‘perfect murder’.
Stewart found the movie incredibly difficult to film because of the long takes, which really pushed him to his limits. “I’d never found making a film so difficult,” he told biographer Michael Munn, explaining that “I couldn’t sleep at nights, after a day’s shooting on Rope. Just to do a ten-minute take is hard enough because there are always noises that ruin the sound.”
Not only was the film notorious for its unconventional and challenging filming methods, but it also teased some sort of homosexual relationship between Brandon and Phillip. It is never explicitly stated, as homosexuality was not approved for the big screen by the Hays Code, nor was it widely accepted in America in general, so there was no way Hitchcock could portray an outright gay relationship in his film.
Yet, screenwriter Arthur Laurents was in a relationship with the bisexual Farley Granger, who played Phillip, at the time, and made no secret of his belief that the characters were gay lovers. Hitchcock liked the idea, with Laurents quoted as saying, (via Hitchcock and the Censors), “It tickled him that Farley was playing a homosexual in a movie written by me, another homosexual; that we were lovers; that we had a secret he knew; that I knew he knew. All titillating to him, not out of malice or a feeling of power but because they added a slightly kinky touch, and kink was quality devoutly to be desired.”
When Rope was released, it received mixed reviews from critics, although it is now much more widely regarded as a great Hitchcock film, even inspiring a great Psychoville episode. With the homosexual undertones and the theme of a murder being committed for the mere thrill of it, censors were not happy with Hitchcock’s film, which was subsequently banned in the likes of Chicago, Memphis, and Seattle.
The film isn’t so shocking anymore, but in 1948, this mixture of cunning criminality and homosexuality was enough to have certain cities banning the film for a short while, clearly unable to appreciate the genius of Hitchcock’s film.
