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Dayton Daily News (22/Mar/1995) - Hitchcock experimented with techniques in 'Rope'

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Hitchcock experimented with techniques in 'Rope'

This is the fourth in a series of 10 films by Alfred Hitchcock in the FLICKS series now playing at the New Neon Movies, 130 E. Fifth St. Andy Nonymous,a film buff, offers this insight into the making of Rope, which will be shown at 1 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday and at 7:30 p.m. Monday.

Alfred Hitchcock's first film in color details a bizarre situation. Two young homosexual men have just strangled a college friend and have placed his corpse inside an antique wooden chest.

Covering the chest with a tablecloth, they proceed to serve dinner to guests, including the victim's parents and financee, as well as their college professor whose philosophy lecture the killers have misinterpreted as condoning murder.

Hitchcock made this 1948 film as a technical experiment. It was accepted practice in filmmaking to use quick cuts from one shot or camera angle to another to create suspense.

Hitchcock decided to film Rope with only one camera in long, continuous 10m takes.

Facilitating this is the fact that the story is about a dinner party that lasts only 80 minutes and it takes place in one location, the living room of a New York penthouse.

The necessary interruption due to the reloading of new rolls of film are disguised by the camera sliding briefly behind a dark object to black out the screen momentarily.

The movie cost $1.5 million dollars, a large sum for a 1948 film using only one camera and a single set. However, both the camera and set were complex. The camera was mounted in a special crane that was on rails. To make the camera even more fluid, much of the furniture was on wheels so it could be quickly pushed out of the camera's way.

Whole walls of the apartment set had to slide away to allow the camera to follow the actors through narrow doors, and then swing back noiselessly to show a solid room.

The most incredible thing is the fake New York city skyline visible through the large picture window. It is a Cyclorama three times the size of the penthouse set containing a small-scale reproduction of 35 miles of Manhattan below a studio sky complete with spun-glass clouds.

Upon release, Rope died at the box office.

Today it is enjoyed and considered a film classic.

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