In 2018, a video game called God of War was released by Sony out of their Santa Monica studio. If you are a fan of video games, you would know this is a reboot of the earlier God of War games released on the PS2, PS3, PSP, and PS Vita systems. The first two games were made under the direction of designer David Jaffe.
Jaffe was a game designer of his time. You know, the time when things were awesome. He understood that video games were fantasy and fun. He delivered games that, while not to my taste at the time, were undeniably flashy, fun, and bombastic.
The 2018 rebooted God of War was not helmed by Jaffe, but by his understudy, Cory “Balrog”* Barlog, and jettisoned the bombastic fun values of Jaffe for a modernistic, “sad dad” take on the character (much like Eon’s disastrous take on James Bond in recent films).
With this serious, games-are-mega-serious-business version of God of War comes… wait for it. Wait for it!
The.
One.
Shot.
Camera.
I was working in the video game industry at the time as a designer, and my fellow designers were absolutely abuzz with hype over this. One designer in particular just could not stop chattering about this inane amazing game feature. For my part, I just shrugged. Was the game fun? I played it. It is well made. But even though I was not a huge fan of the originals, the “sad dad mega serious filmic” God of War made me long for Jaffe’s original vision.
*Nobody calls him this but me, by the way.
Why in the world did I just natter on about a game about a god murderin’ knife swinging lunatic (though that does sound like a character Hitchcock might like!) as the preamble to a 1948 single-room murder mystery movie? It’s that single-shot camera. It plays a huge role in Rope. But before we get into it, let’s begin with our staple feature…
Anyone Left Alive?
The lack of child actors in Rope prevents any real chance of anyone being left alive. The closest we get is the amusingly named Douglas Dick. He made it to 95, passing away in 2015. He actually lived most of his professional life as a psychologist.
The Review:
Released in 1948, Rope was shot in technicolor, Hitchcock’s first color film. It is also Hitchcock’s first collaboration with Hollywood mega-titan super legend James Stewart. The protagonists of our tale, however, are John Dall and Farley Granger, who have to be the waspiest WASPS that ever WASPED in the history of WASPS. Seriously, if you grew a WASP in a lab, you’d get these guys. I’m sure they owned smoking jackets and smoked pipes and had a rich mahogany bar somewhere, slapping backs and saying “my good man” and all that.
Dall plays Brandon Shaw and Granger plays Phillip Morgan, who are young swinging bachelor men livin’ together in a swanky Manhatten apartment, complete with a maid. Yes, these two young men. Who are close. Very chummy. Just like, you know, two guys who are friends who like to drink a lot, you know?
Brandon decides that he’s gonna take those Nietzche lessons given by his college teacher to heart and just, like, kill a guy. Just because. And his close chummy always-by-his-side friend Phillip helps.
In true Hitchcockian fashion, we begin immediately. The very first thing that happens in this movie is a brutal murder by strangulation, done with typical Hitchcock flair. Again, I can’t stress enough how shocking this would have been in 1948. Hitchcock once again punching audiences right in the nose. And to be honest, like much of Hitchcock’s violence in films, it still hits hard today.
It isn’t enough to just kill a dude, they have to do the WASP 1948 version of teabagging in Call of Duty and actually host a swanky alcohol-fueled dinner party with the body hidden in the apartment. With the body inside the trunk being used as the buffet table.
Because this isn’t hubristic enough, they even invite that old college professor who taught them those handy ethics. This would be James Stewart’s Rupert Cadell.
The appearance of Rupert is what sort of unravels this story and makes this movie feel sort of weird.
What we have is a kind of Columbo-esque setup, with the murder being shown in plain sight to us, the viewers, making this the very first “howcatchem” ever made to my knowledge. Stewart’s Cadell enters after the first third of the movie precisely in the manner of Columbo.
Except Stewart doesn’t really bring any of Peter Falk’s gravitas and charisma to this particular role. Stewart is a fine actor, one of the best, but the format of this movie just doesn’t fit the reveal.
Cadell starts pretty much solving the murder almost instantly. But why? Cadell is not a cop or private detective. He’s just a professor being invited to a party by his former students. Unlike other detective fiction in which a murder is known, nobody really knows anything beyond that the victim is missing (but not missing anywhere near long enough to be a real concern).
There is just no motivation for Stewart to care, so it feels odd that he starts questioning everything. Wouldn’t you just normally enjoy the hospitality of your two good friends living in that swanky Manhatten apartment together? You know, your former students who are inseparable at all times?
Another problem I have with this movie is that the murder is purported to be “the perfect crime,” committed because it is “art.”
Are you freaking serious?
This is one of the sloppiest crimes I’ve ever seen in something that purports to be a crime film. Clues abound. The actual Columbo would have delegated this case to that guy he calls “MAAAAACK!” in Last Salute To The Commodore.
The last time I saw villains this stupid, it was John Lithgow’s villain in Cliffhanger.
“Ok, ok, ok, we get it. WHY DID YOU SPEND SEVERAL PARAGRAPHS TALKING ABOUT 2018 GOD OF WAR.”
Ok. Fine. Let’s get to that bit.
I think one of the main reason this movie is a failed experiment is because Hitchcock wanted to use a… *drumroll*
SINGLE.
SHOT.
CAMERA.
MIND BLOWN!!!!!
And just like the 2018 video game, this was a big huge deal. And just like with the game, I’m left to wonder… “who cares?”
It’s a marvelous technical achievement because cameras at the time could only hold 10 minutes of film. So to achieve the effect, Hitchcock has to position the last camera shot behind a back or in some kind of obscured position so that the new reel can start in the same place, concealing this “cut” to create the illusion of one shot.
Technicolor cameras back then were about the size of a Mitsubishi Mirage, so another challenge was actually moving these cameras around during all of these long, long takes.
The effect of this is the usual Hitchcock pace: this is already short at 80 minutes, but it does fly by, because there is literally no break in the action. And as per the other movies, this is a strength here. And indeed if you aren’t looking for the obscured fake “cuts” you don’t notice them.
But this movie is clearly so focused on this technicality that they weren’t so focused on making the story work. It is a dark, weird movie without room for the characters to develop in ways that make the story satisfying. Stewart’s character is supposed to have a conscience-breaking moment when he realizes that his own teaching caused this murder to happen, but you just don’t care enough for that payoff to work well. You are supposed to find the murders, the WASP guys, to be sort of charismatic yet revolting as you accidentally root for them despite the horrible and amoral thing they did. I suppose they did succeed in portraying a certain manner of charisma with those two guys, just not the type of charisma needed for the actual story.
So unlike the first two movies in the Hitchcock blu-ray collection that were good-to-great, I would rate Rope as just “ok.” It’s not devoid of any entertainment value. I did enjoy a little subplot in which the murdered guy’s girlfriend shows up to the party. Also invited is the ex-boyfriend of the girl. Murderer WASP Brandon Shaw takes great pleasure in prodding the ex-boyfriend (played by Douglas Dick, see above) in trying to get back together with her, because, you know, wink-wink! And you know what’s crazy? It kind of works.
Joan Chandler’s Janet does in fact seem completely intrigued by Douglas Dick’s Kenneth’s advances, despite being engaged to the dead guy. What a gal!
The set, which had to have all kinds of weird contraptions to account for the one-shot camera effect (walls that moved and so on) looks fantastic. I mean, gosh, if I were super-very-extraordinarily good friends with someone and lived in Manhatten I would want to live in that apartment. What a view!
In summary: if Sabotuer is great as a Hitchcock genre film potboiler, and if Shadow of a Doubt is a noir classic, Rope is an interesting technical experiment with mixed results. Our first true miss in the bunch.
Alfred Hitchcock Power Rankings (new movies in bold):
- Shadow of a Doubt
- Saboteur
- Rope
It should be no surprise that Rope is currently in last place.
The next film in the box set? Rear Window, a very famous Hitchcock classic. In fact, it’s one of those “greatest movie of all time” contenders, so… Rope might want to get comfortable in the last position in my power rankings. It may be staying there awhile!
The Wizard of Woodward 