The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2021: To Catch a Thief (1955), directed by Alfred Hitchcock

 

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune - "To Catch A Thief" by Lovage

       I wasn’t intending for Alfred Hitchcock to end up like Terry Gilliam or David Lynch where he gets an entry year after year, but I can’t deny that he’s a great time-saver. Crafting these lists every year isn’t the hardest thing in the world, but the amount of times I revise which movies end up on the final print is annoyingly high. Does it seem interesting enough to talk about? Does it fit the criteria? Do I feel like it? Just a constant filtering program that leaves me in a perpetual state of second guessing myself, and it’s exhausting. Sometimes what you want is the cinematic equivalent of the station wagon; Solid, reliable, wood paneling, all of that good stuff. That’s what Hitchcock’s films have been for me lately: whenever I’ve had a particularly hard time deciding on films, I just take a step back and throw on Hitchcock, because I know there’s going to be something worth talking about when it comes to his films. Also, because many of his films are ‘thrillers’, thus falling under the nebulous label of genre films, it means I have one less movie to worry about for years to come. Quite the boon.

       Released in 1955, To Catch a Thief was written by John Michael Hayes and directed and produced by Alfred Hitchcock, based on the book by David Dodge. Cary Grant stars as John Robie, a humble grape and flower seller who years before terrorized the French Riviera as The Cat, master jewel thief. After serving with the Resistance during WW2 Robie earned himself a parole and had made good use of it, but when a new rash of jewel thefts occur, all of which are identical in style to his old work, all eyes turn to him. Uninterested in being thrown in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, Robie goes on a hunt for the copycat, casing the same joints and people that he would in order to root them out. Which would be fine if that was all he was doing, but when he meets the beautiful Francine Stephens (Grace Kelly), his best laid plans threaten to go awry.

       To Catch a Thief is certainly the most extravagant of all the Hitchcock films reviewed so far. The seaside villas, the hotels, the mansions, one wonders where the people who actually work for a living are supposed to fit in between all this luxury. You couldn’t ask for a better setting for a story as removed from the general populace as this one is though, and Hitchcock makes full use of it. Every single shot we get of the coastline and the city, especially the aerial views during the driving scenes, make it look almost otherworldly, the kind of place you thought existed only on postcards. The opening shot of the film is of the window of a travel agency advertising trips to France, and after watching this movie I want to go just to see if this place is real.

A new setting, but Hitchcock’s penchant for marquee names remains intact. Cary Grant makes his third appearance in the filmography, his last being Notorious almost a decade previous, and despite looking a bit leathery under the Riviera sun I think he paints a interesting picture of the character of John Robie; Charming and intelligent but at the same time cynical and aloof, the kind of guy who is fun to hang out with but who never wants to hang out. Grace Kelly also makes her return after co-starring in Rear Window, one of her last films before retiring from Hollywood to become the Princess of Monaco (look it up) and once again it’s obvious why Hitchcock wanted to bring her back, because she looks like Grace Kelly. Her performance as Francine Stephens here is not too different from her character in Rear Window, the naive yet paradoxically witty and seductive woman who inserts herself into the protagonist’s life which ultimately leads to romance, although the whole ‘woman acts like a bratty kid because that’s cute’ thing tends to miss more than it hits, and overall I found her character in Rear Window far more endearing. John Williams, who appeared in Dial M for Murder and The Paradine Case as insurance agent H.H. Hughson, a man so overwhelmingly British you’d swear he pisses Earl Grey. Jessie Royce Landis (who would show up again along with Cary Grant in North by Northwest) plays Francine’s sassy mother Jessie, and honestly that bit of snark makes her my favorite character of the film. She’s also one of those actors who you’d swear was in everything because she has that certain look but that’s not the case, although she did have a career that stretched from the 30’s to the 70’s. Solid casting to be sure.

Unfortunately the concept of To Catch a Thief is more interesting than the execution. You hear the elevator pitch of a master thief forced to come out of retirement to hunt for another to clear his name and it gives the impression of a tense mystery-thriller, but that’s not really this film. There is a mystery that slowly unfolds over the course of the film, but it never feels like Robie is actively figuring anything out. There are a couple scenes where Robie has to sneak around or escape the cops but there’s no real sense of urgency to those scenes to really get the blood pumping. Most of the film is dedicated to building the romance between Robie and Francine, but despite the fact that Grant and Kelly are fine actors I don’t think they have any chemistry together. That’s the problem with the film as a whole in a way: no spark. The film looks good, sure, but there’s no stakes; It’s not like anybody cares if a bunch of rich people have their baubles stolen, and the biggest tension comes from Robie getting caught by the police, which is only a thing because he’s purposefully staking out the places that a thief would hang out in. Not that a film needs action to be good, but for a director who built their career on suspense this film lacks bite.

       To Catch a Thief gets the tentative recommendation. Getting that view of the French Riviera is great, and Hitchcock being Hitchcock still knows how to construct a watchable movie, but this is the first Hitchcock film I’ve reviewed that is definitively not a must-see. Put it on the queue if it’s there, maybe make it a movie date with the SO, but if it’s between this and Rear Window or Rope, then go for the other option. Less chance of contracting a deadly respiratory virus than actually visiting the French Riviera these days though, so that’s a plus.

Reelin' In The Years -- Shadow of a Doubt (1943), directed by Alfred Hitchcock

 

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Shadow of a Doubt", by Sonic Youth

    It’s been a long time coming. On almost every review since I started down this road to a century of film there has been one name that has been a constant presence, a shadow looming large over this humble blog: Alfred Hitchcock. Year after year would pass by and with it a Hitchcock movie to review, and yet I always managed to find an alternative, something else that struck my fancy. Generally speaking I think taking those chances was for the best and the Tour has managed to highlight some very good and very interesting films, but I’ve been teasing him for so long now that if I put him off now it would’ve been weird. Not to mention that there aren’t that many years left to cover, so if I don’t do a Hitchcock film now I might now end up doing any at all, as the movies I’ve got lined up are by and large too good to replace. So what better place than here, what better time than now and all that.

    In 1943 the world still had a bit to go before it ended it’s second global military conflict, and so to pass the time it put out some movies. Notable potential inductions for this year included Carl Theodor Dreyer’s period drama Day of Wrath, William A Wellman’s western classic The Ox-Bow Incident, Billy Wilder’s war thriller Five Graves to Cairo, and George Stevens’ housing crisis based romcom The More the Merrier. As I said however this was to be Hitchcock’s year, and of all the films I could have covered for this tour I decided to go with the one that I’ve heard was the favorite of his films, Shadow of a Doubt. I mean this is the same guy who made Vertigo and Rear Window, so I thought it would be interesting to try and figure out what makes this film, out of the dozen or so other great films that he made during his lifetime, so unique. Or maybe he was so overwhelmed by the flood of Abbott & Costello movies during the 40’s that it warped his perspective, there’ one way to find out.

     Released in 1943 through Skirball Productions, written by Sally Benson, Alma Reville (Hitchcock’s wife), author/playwright Thornton Wilder and based on a short story by Gordon McDonell, Shadow of a Doubt was Alfred Hitchcock’s 32nd film and the second to be released by Universal Pictures, the first being Saboteur the year before. A wealthy man who goes by the name of Charles Spencer (Joseph Cotten) is being watched by two men in a quiet boarding house in Philadelphia. After giving them the slip, he decides to ditch the East Coast altogether and instead take a train ride to the idyllic town of Santa Rosa California to reunite with his sister and her family, the Newtons. This is great news, especially to eldest daughter Charlie (Teresa Wright), who is her Uncle Charlie’s number one fan. Indeed, when Charles Oakley arrives at Santa Rosa there’s no one who sings his praises than his niece Charlie. Yet it’s not too long before Charlie feels that something isn’t quite with her beloved uncle. The way he acts sometimes, the way he hides things, the way he likes to keep secrets. What is going on with Uncle Charlie? More importantly, what’s going to happen to Charlie when she finds out?

    So what makes this Hitchcock’s favorite film, if indeed that’s the case? Perhaps it’s because of the structure. The audience are given a crumb at the beginning of the movie, something is up but what that could be is not clear. Then that sense of unease builds, and it builds, and some things that don’t add up start to appear, and it builds until finally we hit that crescendo where we learn the truth. Then when the film finally reaches that ‘Oh Shit!’ emotional peak, a very well done scene by the way, then comes the build towards the reaction to that discovery. There’s a great feeling of momentum to Shadow of a Doubt, and I don’t just say that because of the recurring element of trains. Though I’ve described the film as a slow burn it never feels slow, each tension beat comes in quick enough succession that you don’t have much time to stew in your own thoughts. Momentum, I think in my notes I also described it as a feeling of inevitability, which I think describes Shadow of a Doubt well. The audience knows that something bad is at the end of the tunnel but Hitchcock grabs them by the scruff of the neck and drags them towards the light, and they’re helpless to stop it. Hitchcock is no stranger to suspense of course, but I think because he takes so long to fully lift the veil that your mind is allowed to speculate more and more gruesome scenarios, and that tension is that much more palpable because of it.

    Then again, perhaps it’s his favorite because of the tone. As an artist Alfred Hitchcock was as much a fan of gallows humor as he was of the gallows if you know what I mean, but Shadow of a Doubt hits differently than the other films that I’ve covered on this blog. The contrast between this wholesome, almost parodically good family and the undercurrent of dark violence is feels incredibly unique, more Lynchian than Hitchcockian. The first instinct is to give the credit to Thornton Wilder, as Santa Rosa and its people bear a resemblance to Wilder’s famous play Our Town, but to be honest I don’t know how much involvement he actually had in the screenplay. Not only is this the only film that Wilder is ever credited as working on, but there was also two other writers working on the picture, one of which was Hitchcock’s wife and frequent collaborator, which implies that his contribution to the film was far less than what would be implied. Things like the running gag of Charlie’s dad and his friends eagerly discussing the best way to murder each other lends creedence to that theory, as it seems like the kind of thing that would fit right at home on an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Whoever is responsible, a thriller that’s also funny is a pretty cool trick.

    Perhaps it’s because of the casting? Shadow of a Doubt doesn’t have the marquee names of Vertigo or North by Northwest, but it also proves the strength of the material and Hitchcock’s ability as a filmmaker that he can succeed with the ‘crutch’ of big name actors. Joseph Cotten is the highlight here as Charles Oakley, like James Cagney he has this quality about him where he can go from the nicest guy you’ve ever met to the scariest fucker in the room in the same scene but without Cagney’s aggressive energy, which makes his performance more intimidating. Teresa Wright honestly might be too old for the role, she looks like she’s in her mid 20s playing a character that’s written more like 17 or 18, but I think she has an innocent strength about her that fits the material. I was also very impressed with Patricia Collinge, who played Charlie’s mother. She doesn’t do all that in the story, but whenever she gets her own time in the spotlight I think she absolutely nails it.

    There’s also those interesting experiments in cinematography. The chase scene near the beginning of the film done from a top down perspective was great, if a bit short. There’s also a great shot after the discovery scene that I mentioned earlier, and the recurring waltz, not unlike the recurring trains. Shadow of a Doubt isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel or anything, but flourishes like that are always a fun reminder that Hitchcock was first and foremost a visual storyteller, and he was always looking for new ways to tell his stories.

    That all being said the film isn’t perfect. Right before the discovery scene Hitchcock engages in a rather obvious bit of cinematic shorthand to get the story where he wants. This wouldn’t be so bad if the cut wasn’t so jarring and if it wasn’t a lead-in to the romance subplot, which is a significant part of the film. The whole thing ends up on shaky ground, pushing a romance without devoting the time necessary to make it work, and honestly this is one of those films that doesn’t really need a romantic angle to make it work. Especially when those romantic leads don’t have a strong chemistry together.

    Is Shadow of a Doubt Alfred Hitchcock’s best movie? That answer is of course subjective; Vertigo tends to trade places every year or so with Citizen Kane on lists of the best movie of all time, and personally I’ve always had a fondness for Rope. Can I see why it might be Alfred Hitchcock’s personal favorite of his films? I think so, yes. Shadow of a Doubt is a very simple kind of movie, good versus evil, hope versus base nihilism, and it tells that story without ever being that violent or macabre. As the man said in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the implication of a thing is often more than enough to get the desired result, and I think to the master of suspense a film built on implications was far more appealing than one built on action. Less work, certainly. Shadow of a Doubt gets a strong recommendation.

    Next stop on the tour we’ll be continuing our stay in the 1940’s. Another thriller is on the card I think, the decade was chock full of them after all, but perhaps not the one you’re expecting. See you all then.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2014: Vertigo (1958), directed by Alfred Hitchcock

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Falling For You", by Weezer

     In the world of filmmaking, there are few people as influential in the field as Alfred Hitchcock. Not only in terms of constructing narratives and cinematography, but also in raising the status of the director within the film industry. Aside from maybe Orson Welles, who acted as well as directed, Alfred Hitchcock was one of the first directors to become famous as a figure in pop culture outside of his films. Nowadays of course ‘auteur’ directors are commonplace, in fact they’re probably the standard, but Hitchcock basically made himself a brand name in the days when most people thought the director was just someone who told a guy where to point the camera. There’s a reason that Hitchcockian is considered a legitimate adjective in regards to film, along with Lynchian and Whedonesque. Also, Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch and Joss Whedon are all film directors who have had their own television shows. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

     Hitchcock had a string of well-regarded films during his heyday, many of them thrillers or mysteries, which fit into my personal criteria for a Halloween movie. I could have gone with The Birds, the prototypical ‘animal attack’ movie, or Psycho, the prototypical slasher movie, but I decided to take a detour and try out Vertigo. Mainly it was because I often see it being placed alongside Citizen Kane as the best film ever made and I wanted to see if the hype surrounding it was legitimate, but also because a while back I had seen the film Rope, which like Vertigo was directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starred Jimmy Stewart in a major role. I thought Rope was fucking excellent (there’s actually a write-up of it on my oft-neglected film blog you could check out), so a chance to see the two men working together on a new project was worth checking out. Well, it hasn’t been new for about 50 years, but you get the idea.

     I don’t want to write too much about the events in the film, since I have the tendency to overwrite, and I might be treading familiar territory anyway, but I believe that Vertigo is a film about obsession. I’m sure you could say that about many Hitchcock movies and the thriller genre, but it’s definitely a major theme in this particular film. Scotty Ferguson (Stewart), our protagonist, begins life as an aloof bachelor, but eventually falls in love with Madeline the wife of his friend, who seems to fall prey to long bouts of dissociative fugue states. When Madeline dies unexpectedly, the passion that would have once been seen as a commendable trait soon gives way to toxic, all-encompassing obsession. Which only compounds upon itself when Scotty comes across, Judy, who bears a striking resemblance to his once deceased Madeline. How far will Scotty go to relive his romance with Madeline? You’ll have to watch it and find out.

     Whether Vertigo is the best film of all time, or whether it’s the better than Citizen Kane I can’t honestly say. I’ve seen both, I’ve liked both, and whether or not you like one movie over the other has always felt like a subjective argument to me anyway. What I will say though is that the acting is great, the music is spot-on and the scenes of 1950’s San Francisco are downright stunning. It’s a film that you could enjoy any time of year, but it’s dark themes earn a spot on my Halloween list.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2018: Rear Window (1954), directed by Alfred Hitchcock

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Lisa - Intermezzo", by The City of Prague Philharmonic

       It’s strange to consider just how few of Hitchcock’s film I’ve seen over the years. Even if I like to designate a lot of films as review material, which if you’ve seen my posting schedule really limits my intake, but this is Hitchcock we’re talking about here. A man who has become synonymous with the words ‘motion picture’. Film students study him religiously, other filmmakers rip him off shamelessly, his is a legacy that few others can even hope to match. Everything is telling me I should have seen at least half his filmography by now, and yet I’ve only seen four at this point. Gives me a lot to look forward to I suppose, but until then I’m struck with this gnawing sense of inadequacy. More so than usual, I mean.

Anyway.

Based on a 1942 short story by Cornell Woolrich by the name of “It Had to Be Murder”, Rear Window centers around a location (a room facing out towards the back of a New York City apartment complex) and a man (L.B. Jeffries, played by the illustrious James Stewart). Jeffries was a photographer, a damn good at that, until an encounter with a rather surly race car earned him a cast on his leg and an unplanned vacation. With nothing on the radio and reality TV still 4 decades away, the former man of action is left with far too much time on his time. Visits from his nurse Stella and his fiance Lisa Carol Fremont alleviate some of the boredom, even if he thinks Lisa is too dainty for his kind of lifestyle, but his main hobby is looking out his window into the lives of his various eclectic neighbors. In one window is Ms. Torso the buxom blonde ballet dancer, in another The Pianist, in yet another the salesman and his invalid wife, and so on. A rich tableau of the human experience, a glimpse into their personal lives, all from the comfort of his apartment. And he didn’t even have to pay for it! 

On the last week on his convalescence however, Jeffries’ innocent voyeurism turns upon something strange. The salesman’s invalid wife has up and disappeared, and the salesman is engaging in some… questionable activities. Late night trips, long distance phone calls, wrapping up knives and saws in newspaper, things which could lead to some macabre conclusions. Which is exactly what Jeffries does, becoming absolutely convinced that the salesman (Lars Thorwald, played by Raymond Burr) murdered his wife and is trying to hide the evidence, even convincing Lisa and Stella of it. Trouble is, how exactly do you prove anything happened when all you’ve got are a couple of suspicious scenes from a window? Moreover, how far is Jeffries willing to go to prove that he’s right? Pretty damn far, as it turns out.

While I’m not an expert on Hitchcock’s work by any means, what I do like about his films is how very simple they appear on the surface. Within the first few seconds of the film starting you understand exactly where you’re at in the world of L.B. Jeffries, and the same goes for Stella and Lisa during their introductions. You know who they are, what their motivation is, and what their relationship is to the other characters. Not just our main cast either, the entire film is built on this premise of constructing narratives based on the small amount of information we’re given. It’s as if Jeffries is situated across from a wall in which multiple theaters are each playing its own (mostly) silent film, each with its own protagonists dealing their own trials & tribulations. Possibly a metaphor for life, but I don’t want to put words in anybody’s mouth.

Hitchcock was, as his business cards would attest, the master of suspense, and Rear Window is no exception to that. Unlike Rope, the Hitchcock movie that I always love to trot out during comparisons, this is not snowballing anticipation of inevitability. This is a slow burn, almost mundane to a degree, until suddenly you realize that your footing isn’t quite as strong as it used to be, and that’s when Hitchcock springs his trap. The fact that there’s little in the way of a score, preferring instead the sounds of the city and muffled piano, only serves to heighten the sense of paranoia growing in your gut as Hitchcock nudges you right next to Jeffries. I don’t know if I was necessarily on the edge of my seat, since Rear Window is probably the most reused Hitchcock concept in pop culture next to the shower scene from Psycho, but seeing the original does have an appeal that imitators lack.

Acting is at generally the high standard you expect from a Hitchcock film, which is pretty impressive considering this is a movie where most of the people on screen are practically mimes and that it’s only the second time our leads have worked with him before (James Stewart with Rope back in 1948, and Grace Kelly with Dial M for Murder released earlier in ‘54). James Stewart as L.B. Jeffries is deceptively (natch) charismatic, seeming for all the world like an obsessive crank, but his enthusiasm is so infectious that you can’t help but identify with him. Grace Kelly, as one might expect from her famously brief film career, is a unique talent, seemingly embodying everything that makes up the perfect fiance: Beauty, elegance, wit, devotion, dynamism, the whole shebang. Every time she’s on screen she draws the attention to herself, and her radiance is often heightened by the dingy brownish squalor of Jeffries’ apartment. I’m not 100% sold on the chemistry between the two, I think James comes across as a bit of a cold fish in the more passionate moments, but that may just be me. By the end you’re invested in these characters anyway, so I suppose it doesn’t really matter.

Rear Window is one of the quintessential Hitchcock films, one that captures the essence of what made him such a influential filmmaker, and as such easily snags the recommendation. Simple but never simplistic, easily digestible but never bland, it’s so damn easy to just watch Hitchcock’s films that I can’t think of any reason why you wouldn’t. Give Rear Window a try, hell throw on three or four of his movies, and you’re bound to have a great Halloween. Just remember to be cautious around windows, you never know who might be watching.

The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2015: Psycho (1960), directed by Alfred Hitchcock

There we have it folks. Another year passed and another Halloween marathon completed, though perhaps not the only thing I'll be doing for the holiday. Even though I started working on this list in the middle of summer, I still ended up getting down to the wire, which is why some of these entries might seem a bit haphazard (some movies lend themselves better to writing than others though). I don't know if that means I need to make stricter deadlines for myself or just shorter ones, but at least I didn't waste half the month before posting them, right? I think I ended up with a pretty good selection of films too, maybe a bit more outside the horror genre than last year, but I'm an eclectic man with eclectic tastes, and it's just something we all have to deal with. I hope all of you reading out there found something new to try out this Halloween, and it ends up being something you enjoy. Not love, necessarily, we all different tastes after all, but just something that you can enjoy. If these little scribblings can help you discover a movie that you'll really enjoy, something that makes you laugh or cry or think even inspires your own art, then that's more than enough for me. It might be a tall order, but I can hope.

Happy Halloween!

The Trailer

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The Appropriate Tune: "Psycho Killer", by Talking Heads

     Since I rarely get comments on the articles I write, I’m going to assume I being silently judged for the film i’m highlighting this time around. Judgement for waiting till now to watch Psycho, judgement for placing it at the number one position (even though the placement doesn’t really mean anything) when Vertigo placed lower on last year’s list, despite being considered one of the greatest films of all time. Continuous, constant judgement. However, if there was one director who really earned the right to be at the top of any movie Marathon, much less mine, it’s Alfred Hitchcock. Without his influence, without seminal works like North by Northwest, Vertigo, Rear Window, Rope (a personal favorite), The Birds, etc. filmmaking as we know it would not be what it is today, and that goes double for the horror/thriller genres. When people talk about auteurs, those directors of supreme creative talent and vision, they’re talking about guys like Hitchcock. I’ve discussed him several times in my reviews of Rope and Vertigo, you can go there to see even more opinions.

     While Psycho is certainly deserving of its spot in film history, being a prototype of the ‘slasher’ movie years before that subgenre really growing steam, I think the more worthy legacy of Psycho is solidifying the idea of humanity being its own monster. Prior to Psycho, a lot of your horror antagonists were fantastical beings, Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, The Thing from Beyond Space, and so on. After Psycho, the movies were darker and more ‘real’, and yet the antagonists were still fantastical. Jason Voorhees is an undead killing machine, Freddy Krueger is a dream demon, Leatherface is some sort of hyper exaggerated Ed Gein, we’re still dealing with monsters. Still in the realm of fiction. Norman Bates though? Norman Bates could be the guy behind you in line at Taco Bell, or the guy pumping your gas. Throughout your day-to-day life you could interact with dozens, maybe hundreds of people, and any one of those seemingly normal people could be a murderer or a psychopath, and go through your entire life not knowing it. In real life there’s no identifying features like aversion to garlic or silver to determine who wants to make your skin into an ipad cover, and so you watch horror movies to work out that instinctual paranoia in a safe environment. Then Psycho comes in and reminds you of that fear, and suddenly you’re out of that comfort zone that vampires and mummies had built up for you. Suddenly you can’t help but realize that you can’t really know other people the way you know yourself, and that you can never be sure what they’re thinking, or if they mean what they say. That’s why we have wars and racism and all that other horrible stuff, and that’s why Psycho is such an effective horror film. Because anybody could be a Norman Bates, and Norman Bates could be anybody.

     I’m not going to give too much away again, because I’m not really in the mood for recapping the story, but I will say that it’s not really the kind of movie you’d expect. Psycho is mainly known in pop culture for the infamous shower murder, which I think gives it the impression of being a slasher like Friday the 13th or Halloween. In fact, that scene is more like build up to the rest of the film, which is about investigating that murder and catching Bates. It’s sort of like the plot to an Columbo story, where we know who the murderer is and how they murdered the victim, and we’re just watching the character’s journey up until the point where they put it together and it all comes together. Since I’m a huge fan of Columbo, as should we all, maybe that explains some things.

     Watch Psycho, I guess is the suggestion here. There’s really not any deep philosophical arguments to be had like with Rope or Vertigo, it’s just thrills, chills and attractive women that Hitchcock probably verbally abused during filming. All in all a horror classic, prime Halloween material whether one is alone or with friends, even decades after its release. True art never really fades, even if the people in the pictures do.

Rope (1948), directed by Alfred Hitchcock

In this entry, I say the word Hitchcock much more than is necessary or proper.

The Trailer
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The Appropriate Tune: "Body In the Trunk", by N.O.R.E. feat. Nas

     The cold hard fact: Alfred Hitchcock was big. One could even say he was famous, holding an incredible influence on the then-adolescent art of filmmaking and a consistent commercial and critical appeal through the major part of his career, and they would be right. Much like fellow legend and frozen-pea enthusiast Orson Welles, Hitchcock helped to raise the public perception of film directors from mere names on a screen to full-fledged icons, able to match the star-power of the actors (in some cases, obviously). Unlike Welles however, Mr. Hitchcock was not an actor nor ever made an effort to be, outside of the hosting segments of his popular television show Alfred Hitchcock Presents perhaps, yet his trademark look and peculiar brand of charisma placed him firmly in the pop-culture of the mid-20th century. It’s hard to mistake a Hitchcock film: the macabre sense of humor, the witty dialogue, the masterful sense of pacing, whether it was a thriller or a comedy wasn’t really separated from the other. Vertigo, Psycho, North by Northwest, Rear Window...looking back on it now is like looking through Michael Jordan’s career in the 90s, ‘masterpieces’ in layman’s terms.

     So of course I haven’t seen any Hitchcock movies.

     Well that’s not entirely true. I had seen the beginning portions of The Birds, a pioneer in the ‘random animals attack small town’ genre (see also: Frogs, Piranha, Slugs) and probably the only good thing to come out of a portly British man chucking birds at Tippi Hedren’s face. While an interesting film, the B-movie concept done well, I never ended up finishing it for reasons that absolutely did not involve birds in any way. I didn’t really have any compulsion to watch it either, even when I had decided to get back into the watching/writing film game, just a complete lack of enthusiasm on my part to write about this film that’s had 40 years of the critical eye placed upon it (which I didn’t think about when considering Psycho or Vertigo, so maybe I have an unconscious bias against that movie for some unknown reason). To cut a short story even shorter, I decided to go with a A.H. film that’s maybe a little bit under the radar that still holds a fine reputation. Because we should always watch films based on hearsay.

     Rope starts off the proceedings with a bang, most good films often do, as within the first few minutes we seen a man get totally strangled, by a rope even. The strangled man is David, and the stranglers are Philip and Brandon (Farley Granger and John Dall, respectively), Dave’s former schoolmates and the type of well-to-do white people that only really existed in the 1940s. Philip is a little shaken up by the whole thing, but Brandon is entirely too excited, for reasons that we’ll get into a bit later down the page. They stuff Dave’s corpse into a drawer in the center of the room, placing candlesticks such upon it to keep the housekeeper from digging into and to otherwise make it more presentable. There’s to be a party you see, and Brandon has invited a plethora of interesting guests that just so happen to have a connection to David, including his relatives, his fiancee Janet Walker, his former friend and Janet’s ex-boyfriend Kenneth and Rupert Cadell (James Stewart, a recurring name in the Hitchcock filmography), their former teacher. Of course the reasonable thing would be to cancel the party so one could focus on disposing of the body, never mind not murdering anyone in the first place, but Brandon is not the type to just cancel a party on account of death. They’ll just have it in the front room. In front of the box holding their dead friend. Waiting for him to show up. What a magical night eh?

     So Rope is in essence a whodunit that’s already been solved, a one-sided murder mystery to coin a phrase. We know who killed David, and we know that Brandon and Philip are going to get their just desserts in the end, we the audience are just waiting to see it happen. Hitchcock dances around it beautifully too, drawing out the tension, dropping the hints, always keeping the partygoers on the edge of realization (and the audience on the edges of our seats). Tension is the name of the game, and a helpful portion of that is the fact that this is a ‘bottle movie’ (a movie centered entirely on one location), and the fact that it’s done in one take in one continuous shot. Although the set is fairly roomy, the fact that our attention is unceasingly connected to someone serves to make it feel a tad claustrophobic, while also keeping you on your toes waiting for any sort of slip-up by Brandon and Philip to bring the whole thing down. I’ve always believed that a director who understands how to effectively use tension is about a step away from a great film, and Hitchcock is the go-to guy for that. It’s almost like “The Tell-Tale Heart” in a way, at least in Philip’s case, who seems to be in a perpetual state of crapping his own heart out.

     What does a man do with his life that deems we to end it? Who has the right to judge over the forces of life and death, if anybody? The philosophy of Social Darwinism is the major theme of Rope, variations of which are espoused by Brandon and Rupert throughout the movie. Remember that this film was set and released in 1948, a scant three years after the end of World War II and that little campaign of genocide known as the Holocaust. While we in the present are removed from that by several decades, the idea of people spouting off quotations from Mein Kampf is similar to someone starting up an Osama Bin Laden fan club in 2004. So the moral of the story is a little transparent (you shouldn’t kill people folks), and certainly one that is incredibly easy to hamfist all up in your story, but it never really feels heavy-handed for my tastes. Plenty of that credit goes to the actors of course, particularly James Stewart and John Dall, who slip into their roles of darwinian teacher and asshole almost effortlessly. Despite the movie having the the ‘it’s a play’ feeling to it (because it was, by Patrick Hamilton), the characters feel real to me. A film done right, I guess.

     I don’t know if films by one of the most celebrated directors can count as ‘underrated’ or ‘obscure’, but if it can I’d say Rope is an obscure underrated gem. If you’re interested into getting into Hitchcock, might as well add this one to your list after you’ve gotten through the big-names. Just don’t strangle people okay? You’re not Hitler.

Result: Recommended