The movie Alfred Hitchcock admitted was an “experiment that didn’t work out”
As one of the most high-profile filmmakers in the industry, it would have been easy for Alfred Hitchcock to rest on his laurels and continue delivering taut and atmospheric thrillers that followed cinematic convention to the letter. Of course, that never interested the ‘Master of Suspense’.
One of the most important and influential figures in cinema history, Hitchcock was determined to push the artistic limits of the medium as often as possible, even if some of his more experimental fare didn’t turn out exactly as he’d intended when crafting his latest ambitious undertaking.
By the time Rope was released in 1948, Hitchcock already had three Academy Award nominations for ‘Best Director’ under his belt, and his legacy had been secured through a string of incredible movies, including The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes, Rebecca, Lifeboat, and Spellbound.
Still, the psychological crime thriller marked his most prominent experiment to date, even if the overarching narrative of two men hosting a dinner party after committing what they believed to be the perfect murder fits neatly into the writer and director’s established wheelhouse.
However, in addition to being Hitchcock’s first feature in Technicolor and the first to star soon-to-be regular collaborator, James Stewart, Rope also unfolds largely in real-time, and its 80-minute running time is presented to appear as four extensively long shots. Effectively a play staged for the benefit of a cinemagoing audience, it wasn’t an easy feat to accomplish.
The entirety of Rope was shot on a single set except for the establishing shot right at the very beginning, with Hitchcock meticulously planning his camera movements in advance to reduce the amount of editing required to the bare minimum, enhancing the viewer’s perception that it was comprised of only four takes.
Of course, with the cameras only having the capacity to shoot for ten minutes at a time, stitching Rope together was an exacting and painstaking process when there were actors and crew members present, but Hitchcock wasn’t left particularly enthused by the end result.
Understandably, considering the high standards he’d set for himself, Hitchcock would dismiss Rope as “an experiment that didn’t work,” an opinion that Stewart echoed. “It was worth trying, nobody but Hitch would have tried it,” he said, per Donald Spoto’s The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock. “But it really didn’t work.”
Critical opinion was decidedly split at first, but over time, Rope has continued gaining appreciation as a bold swing from one of the most innovative auteurs to ever pick up a megaphone, offering an enthralling murder mystery that doubles as an attempt to reinvent the boundaries of how narrative storytelling can be conceived, staged, shot, and edited.
