Hitchcocks Rope

The film that I have chosen to base my assessment on is Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (1948). With reference to this film I will closely examine its production, distribution and exhibition. I will also consider film techniques, special effects and audience. In examining all these factors I will also bear in mind the year and era of the production and the implications that may have occurred as a resultThe film that I have chosen to base my assessment on is Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (1948). With reference to this film I will closely examine its production, distribution and exhibition. I will also consider film techniques, special effects and audience. In examining all these factors I will also bear in mind the year and era of the production and the implications that may have occurred as a result. Rope, a screenplay based on a stage play by Patrick Hamilton, has been described by many as a milestone in Alfred Hitchcock's career with it being the first film he had produced as well as directed, his first colour film and possibly one of his biggest technical challenges. The film centres on the action of two young homosexuals Brandon (John Dall) and Philip (Farley Grainger). The two boys take a rope and strangle a college friend, David (Dick Hogan), for a quick thrill, and then conceal his body in a chest in a room where David's parents and friends are later to have a cocktail party. The boys serve the buffet on top of what now is David's coffin and this scene is given a sense of eeriness as we see candles lighten and placed on the chest adding a funeral sense to the scene which is only apparent to the audience. Among the guests at the party is their former college professor Rupert Cadell (James Stewart). As the party goes on, the boys' attempts to impress their former professor leads them to disclose bits of the truth, and the big hint occurs when they hand Rupert the wrong hat as he is leaving; a hat bearing the initials of the dead boy. Rupert returns to the apartment after the guests have left and continues to quiz the boys, he finally works out what has happened and opens the chest, discovering the body and summons the police with a short, sharp gunshot. The gunshot was a very clever way of breaking the tension which builds up throughout the scene. Alfred Hitchcock worked alongside Arthur Laurents who was responsible for creating part of the dialogue, the rest being taken from the original stage play. He also employed the help of Hume Cronyn who worked on the adaptation. Undertaking the challenge of Rope was a huge risk. It was a film like no other Hitchcock had ever made before and could have ended in disaster. There were many factors which made this production one of great risk: it was the first film he had produced as well as directed, it was his first colour production and the way it was to be filmed would prove the biggest challenge of all. Alfred Hitchcock is famous for his theories on the importance of cutting and montage* for the visual narration of a story and therefore this film was to go against everything that Hitchcock worked on and believed. Hitchcock states that he undertook Rope as a stunt, not really knowing himself why he decided to indulge in the project. Hitchcock's first personal challenge was that he wanted the film to be similar to the original stage play in terms of time. The stage drama was acted out in real time, that being the actual time of the story, the action being continuous from the moment the curtain is raised until the curtain goes down. He decided the only way that he would be able to achieve this is if he carried out all of the shooting in one continuous action, with no break in the telling of the story, which begins at seven thirty and ends at nine fifteen. This method of filming broke normal conventions of the shooting a film because as a rule, a filmic sequence is divided into shots that last between five to fifteen seconds therefore an average length film ( 1 ½ hours) will usually consist of around six hundred shots. Hitchcock being a fan of montage and cutting frequently produced films that would average up to one thousand shots, one example being The Birds (1963). In Rope each shot runs to ten minutes. This film will remain in history as the only film that has been shot without any interruption for the many different camera set-ups. Hitchcock was known to many as an auteur** director and therefore often using the same actor's throughout a majority of his films. Rope was no exception, using James Stewart in many of his productions including Rear Window (1954), The man who knew too much (1956) and Vertigo (1958). He also relied heavily on employing big name stars to sell his films throughout the post war era often using Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. Hitchcock encountered many problems with the filming of Rope one being that in the beginning of the film the action takes place in daylight and by the end of the film it is

late evening and dark outside, this was overcome by gradually altering the flow of light through the background in order for it to appear as if there were gradual nightfall. Since the action never leaves the apartment Hitchcock had to make sure that the picture never turned into a static stage play, and he achieved this by keeping the camera constantly moving. Throughout the film the camera glides from one group of characters to the next, zooming in at times to capture important gestures or comments. He used 150 different camera movements to achieve the equivalent number of shots, it was suggested he was 'cutting the film inside the camera'. Hitchcock strived to make the viewer feel as if they were another guest at the party by allowing the camera to draw the viewer into the scene and allowing them to explore the action at close range. In trying to achieve continuous action with no dissolves and no time lapses, another problem he encountered was how to reload the camera at the end of each reel without interrupting the scene. Hitchcock claims he overcame this hurdle by having a figure pass in front of the camera therefore blacking out the action very briefly while people changed from camera to another and starting the next reel on that same close up of the same character. This gives the impression of a blackout allowing adjustments to be made while on the film it appears as a continuous movement of a character. The set of the film was built purposely for the production; the set consisted of a living room, a hallway and a small section of a kitchen. Hitchcock talks of the picture overlooking the New York skyline which had to be made into a semi-circular pattern which in turn meant that the camera was able to swing around the room and the skyline would always look in perspective, three dimensional rather than appearing as a flat, unrealistic looking two dimensional picture. For the background to appear in perspective it had to be made three times bigger than the living room décor itself. The clouds that appear between the skyline were made of spun glass and hung on invisible wires and were also set in the semi-circular pattern. Everything in this film was planned in advance even down to the clouds, which were shifted slightly from left to right in between reels. Although Hitchcock states that we never actually see the clouds move although we must remember that the camera isn't always on the window, and whenever a cloud reached the edge of the horizon it would be taken off and another one would appear in view of the window at the other side. Hitchcock also encountered production problems with the colour during filming as it was a new aspect of filming that he had not encountered before. "The average cameraman is a very fine technician. He can make a woman look beautiful; he can create natural lighting that is effective without being exaggerated. But there is often a problem that stems purely from the cameraman's artistic taste." Alfred Hitchcock Hitchcock's main problem concerning colour was that when filming the scenes that involve the sunset he decided that the sunset was far too bright and the colours far too strong, he stated that it was unacceptable and looked like a lurid postcard and in deciding this he has to re-shoot the last five reels of the film. Hitchcock had a theory regarding colour. "..There is no such thing as colour, in fact, there is no such thing as a face, because until the light hits it, it is non-existent...there is no such thing as a line, there is only the light and the shade." Alfred Hitchcock In the end Hitchcock's cameraman that dealt with the colour went off sick so he employed the help of a Technicolor consultant who with the help of a chief electrician finished the job off perfectly. As said earlier every tiny production detail was worked out well in advance of shooing the film, this preproduction phase is one of the most important of the whole process, it is where the producers can afford to make mistakes as mistakes during filming can be costly, especially with a production like this as each shot was filmed for so long, if something were to go wrong at the end of a shot it would mean a lot of wasted time and money. In filming Rope Hitchcock used a dolly and he mapped out a course of numbers all over the floor of the set which were used as a guide. This meant that all the dolly man had to do was move the camera to number one, two and so on at certain cues in the dialogue. When the camera was to move from one room to the next the walls would swing back on silent rails and furniture was mounted on wheels so that it could be pushed back as the camera went past. The amazing thing about this film, that amazed even Hollywood as it had never been achieved before was that Hitchcock was able to make a direct soundtrack even with all this movement going on around him, although sometimes things did go wrong. "It was very hard to achieve this continuous shot without sound being heard, while walls are being moved and lights being raised and lowered. I was so scared something would go wrong that I couldn't even look during my first take. For eight minutes of consecutive shooting everything went smoothly. Then the camera panned around as the two killers walked back towards the chest, and there right in camera focus, was an electrician standing by the window! So the first take was ruined."

Alfred Hitchcock Another issue that he had to handle delicately was the films representation of homosexuality. Scriptwriter Arthur Laurents claims that there are ways in which the homosexual pair is represented without it being too conspicuous. The way in which the couple clutch at their 'straight' victim during the murder was used to suggest a symbolic rape. This was so subtle that the film censors did not detect it themselves although they did remove some parts of the dialogue such as 'dear boy' that Laurents suggested made no sense as they had no homosexual connotation at all. Other subtle hints at the boys sexuality was the fact the apartment was over decorated and the boys were resentful to the dead boy's girlfriend. Theorist Jean Renoir, who is fully accustomed to homosexuality in European films, suggested that Hitchcock avoided the issue of sexuality too much stating "I thought it was supposed to be about homosexuals, and you don't even see the two boys kiss". In my opinion Jean Renoir obviously missed the whole issue of the film, the film by no means is meant to focus on sexuality but the crime committed and the suspense surrounding the film. Sexuality is not the issue, as the film could quite easily have had two 'straight' men commit the same crime and the film would not be altered in any way. In total Rope took ten days of rehearsals and eighteen days of shooting. Although Hitchcock himself may regard Rope as a mistake many critics, as well as myself agree that rope should not be seen as a foolish experiment and that many directors have dreamed of linking all of a films parts into one continuous action and critics also claim, it is was a positive step in Alfred Hitchcock's evolution. One theorist that would appreciate the spectacle of Rope is Andre Bazin. "Editing was the destruction of the cinematic form, indeed the destruction of the essence of cinema...it is the shot, the unedited gaze of the camera onto the world before its lens that constitutes cinemas aesthetic core" Andre Bazin Bazin believed that editing cuts off the viewer's opportunity to the wholeness and continuity of time and space. He believes that editing is manipulative as it forces the viewer to see what the film maker wants us to see. If a shot were uninterrupted and in deep focus, so that everything in the shot appeared equally clear, then the viewer would be free to choose what to look at within the frame. He talks of the importance of mis-en-scene, lighting and movement, stating that these are the key to a good film not editing. Rope could be compared to the works of the Lumiere brothers, who produced short films of everyday occurrences such as a train pulling into a station. They filmed long, unedited takes, this partly to do with the fact that cameras at this time were static, and editing was not a film form established. Bazin, not usually a fan of Hitchcock due to his use of montage, would appreciate this film and its filmic technique. I would agree with Bazin's statement that editing is manipulative but would have to disagree that mis-en-scene and lighting are the key to a good film as editing and montage lift the tempo of a film and directly make it more interesting and often less tiring to watch, as long takes often become monotonous, although in Hitchcock's defence I did enjoy this film as he uses many different camera movements to keep the film running at a steady pace and therefore my attention never wandered. One theorist in complete opposition to Andre Bazin is Sergei Eisenstein, a director himself, whom I am more inclined to agree with on the subject of montage and editing and its overall effect on films and its viewers. "The shot is only raw material that the film maker uses to construct the edifice of his film" Sergei Eistenstein His theory stated that a shot has no meaning until it is put in contention with another shot in the form of montage. For Eisenstein montage was the film maker's most important tool but a sign of aesthetic and political control. He stated that the shot by itself was inert and that making the shot was only craft, turning the shot into a temporal structure of rhythmic, conflicting, kinetic montage was the director's art. Rope was released in 1948 which meant that it fell into the post war era of film making which meant as well as production problems they Hitchcock also faced economical and societal problems which would interfere with distribution, exhibition and therefore revenue. America came out of the war a wealthy country; men had earned good money in the military industries but had had little time to spend it. Troops

returned to rejoin their partners and set up households. The birth-rate increased during the war and rocketed after the war and this new generation was labelled the 'baby boom'. With all of this money at peoples disposal prospects seemed excellent for the movies. People flocked to the movies and the box-office figures for 1946 were the highest in U.S film history and probably remain the highest till this day. Hollywood's international market was also expanding and the studios turned to the foreign department of the MPPDA (Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors Association) into a new trade organisation, the Motion Picture Export Association of America (MPEAA). This new organisation was responsible for coordinating American exports and negotiating prices. While some countries struggled to rebuild their industries, Hollywood came to rely more on exporting its products. Before the war about one third of U.S box-office income had come from abroad, but by the mid 1960's the figure had risen to around one half. Rules governing the exhibition of films took a dramatic turn in 1948, as a decision was made concerning the paramount case. The paramount case was concerned with the five main studio's at the time ( Paramount, Warner Bros, Loew's (MGM), 20th Century Fox, and RKO), of coming together to monopolise the film industry. These studios owned theatres and block booked films among other strategies to keep the smaller and independent film companies out of the business. The decision handed down by the U.S Supreme Court stated that the five companies were guilty of monopolising the market and were ordered to sell their theatres. It was also decided that they should not be allowed to block-book films. With this decision all of the five studios remained in the production/distribution side of film but no longer owned the theatres. This decision meant that exhibition became more limited, and places were the films were to be distributed had to be chosen with more caution. This decision also meant that small independent theatres that had only been able to get hold of cheap films were now able to show big cost movies and had a bigger range of films to choose from. Another positive action to come from this was that more stars and directors were able to break out on their own to start their own companies. However from 1947 and for the next decade the movie industry took a turn for the worse, weekly ratings at the local picture houses fell from around 98 million viewers per week in 1946 to about 47 million per week in 1957. About 4000 theatres closed down in that same decade. As men returned and the baby boom began, families tended to stay in and listen to the radio rather that go to see films. Veterans decided to start their educations again and this cut into their leisure time. Men now having more money saved from their time at war decided to purchase more goods such as houses and cars, this therefore reducing the amount of money they had for disposable purposes such as going to the local cinemas. The impact of war on the film industry was huge and it had caused a drastic cut in the distribution of American films to European countries. Bordwell and Thompson state that Hollywood overseas negotiations were carried out by the MPEAA and its strategy was to make each country's domestic industry strong enough to support the large scale distribution and exhibition of American films. Penetration was very quick and by 1953 in virtually every country American films occupied at least half of all screenings. Europe had become America's main source of foreign revenue. Although distribution to these countries was vast, as to was exhibition, in 1948 European countries needed help as American films were taking over and countries decided on certain time allotments that would be dedicated to American films. France decided that at least 20 weeks per year would have to be filled with French products. Britain decided at least 45 percent of screen time be appointed to British films and Italy decided 80 days a year be allowed for Italian films. This was in order to bring revenue into their own countries in an effort to rebuild after the war. Rope was released in1948 and it was this year that television began to expand at a more rapid rate. The number of television sets used by the public ascended by more than 1,000 percent from 14,000 in 1947 to 172,000 a year later. By 1954 the amount had risen to 32 million television sets being used. By the end of the fifties 90 percent of homes had a television set. Television had replaced film as the dominant leisure time activity of the American population. When couples did decide to go the cinema they tended to be more particular than movie goers in the past. Rather that going to the local picture house regularly they tended to go les and would only choose an' important film' to watch. With this in mind directors tended to cut back on the number of films they produced, concentrating more emphasis on ways that the most could provide big attraction films that would attract the big audiences. Here I would have to argue that Hitchcock does not fall into the majority of directors. Hitchcock did not cut down on the number of films he released, averaging 14 films a decade, and this is not to say that his films lacked depth, all his films had elements that he knew would attract the audience, from using big name stars, to advanced technical elements or simply just the plot of the films. Marketed as the 'master of suspense' Hitchcock was probably the most publicly recognised director of the post war era.

"...His films carried the stamp of his fussy, childish delight in discomforting the audience. Like his mentors the soviet montage directors, he aimed at pure, almost physical response. His goal was not mystery or horror but suspense. His plots, whether drawn from novels or his own imagination, hinged on reoccurring figures and situations. The consistency of his stories and themes furnished evidence for the European critics who proposed that an American studio director could be the creator -the 'author'- of his work..." Bordwell & Thompson - Film History. In conclusion to this essay I would say that I have examined aspects of production, problems faced during production and methods of production throughout my chosen film and in doing so have called upon the work of two well known theorists, one who agrees with this work and one opposed it. I have given my view of their theories, opposing or agreeing myself. I have also studied distribution and how it was changed in relation to the war. I have looked at methods of exhibition and how those methods came to change with time. With all I challenged in this essay I have kept everything in relation to its time of production and the implications that came as a result. WORDS 3,593 * Montage is a specific kind of editing that is constructed out of shots that affect each other in particular ways. One shot takes on meaning in relation to the shot that precedes and follows it. ** Auteur directors are directors seen to be most responsible for a films form, style an meaning. E.g Hitchcock films as an auteur will have reoccurring themes, images, technical aspects or even actors. And each film will be studied in respect to all his other work.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Phillips, G (1984) Alfred Hitchcock Bordwell, D, Staiger, J, & Thompson, K (1985) The Classical Hollywood Cinema - Film style and mode of production to 1960 Balio, T ( 1985) The American Film industry - Revised edition Hill, J & church-Gibson, P (1998) The Oxford Guide to Film Studies Thompson, K & Bordwell, D (1994) Film history - An Introduction

Hark, I (2002) Exhibition - The Film Reader Klevan, A (2000) Disclosure of the everyday - Undramatic narrative in WEBSITES www.theinternetmoviedatabase.com

Narrative film