Watch: Rope 1948 123movies, Full Movie Online – Brandon and Philip are two young men who share a New York City apartment. They consider themselves intellectually superior to their friend David Kentley, and as a consequence, decide to murder him. Together they strangle David with a rope and placing the body in an old chest, they proceed to hold a small party. The guests include David’s father, his fiancée Janet, and their old schoolteacher Rupert, from whom they mistakenly took their ideas. As Brandon becomes increasingly more daring, Rupert begins to suspect..
Plot: Two men attempt to prove they committed the perfect crime by hosting a dinner party after strangling their former classmate to death.
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Now I may be completely off beam here, but there is something ever so slightly homo-erotic about the relationship between John Dall (“Brandon”) and Farley Granger (“Philip”) in this rather clunky murder tale that is less of a mystery and more of a bragging exercise. The two, having murdered their college friend “David” invite some folks round for a dinner party that shows the pair – especially Dall – as obnoxious men with a profoundly mis-placed superiority complex. As their odiousness is enhanced by over-confidence and drink, their former school master “Rupert” (Jimmy Stewart) starts to suspect that there is more to the absence of “David” (the more suspicious because his father, Sir Cedric Hardwicke has come to the supper) than meets the eye; and soon he begins to put two and two together. I found the long takes helped build the tension quite effectively, but the dialogue was relentless and the fine line between characterisation and irritation – for me, anyway, was well and truly crossed. If Dall’s purpose was to alienate the room and the audience, then he succeeded spectacularly – and it says in the trailer – it’s certainly not a film you will ever forget.
Can’t believe I’m only seeing this now. It’s great. Basically a play. There couldn’t have been more than 15 shots. Ending had me in tears. Shouts out
Hitchcock And Actors
You know the quote about Actors being cattle. Hitchcock corrected saying he never said that actors were cattle what he said was that actors “should be treated” like cattle. Great actors give perfect performances in Hitchcok films. Think of Grant and Bergman in Notorious, Cotten in Shadow Of A Doubt not to mention Anthony Perkins in Psycho. Often the improbabilities of the plot become totally credible by the credibility of the performances. Here, John Dall and Farley Granger act and act to outrageously that it’s impossible to believe they can get away with it for more than five minutes. Their characters are impossible to warm up to like it happened with Anthony Perkins in Psycho or with Colin Firth in Apartment Zero, no matter how sickly those characters are you can’t help connect with their humanity. Hitchcock in Rope seemed much more taken by the technical wizardry and it is unquestionably fun to watch. So Rope provided me with superficial pleasures and sometimes that’s enough.
A masterpiece whose very form defines the content …
Every Hitchcock film invites for rich debates full of open interpretations and absolutely none can be intellectually or emotionally assimilated in one viewing. “Rope” is not an exception, although it’s exceptional.The movie is notorious for being one of the first to be shot in real time, featuring as few editing as possible to provide a sense of fluidity and continuity within the plot. The film is set like the very play it was adapted from, hence respects the unity of space, time and action with a remarkable precision. But beyond this technical achievement, “Rope” elevates itself to other cinematic levels, never is the experimental novelty used as an end but much more as a way to build a powerful psychological suspense. In other words, the editing serves the story and doesn’t reduce it to an exercise in style.
The movie opens with a shocking scream immediately followed by the last breath of David Kentley (Dick Hogan), tightly held by Brandon (John Dall) while Philip (Farley Granger) strangles him. But regarding Hitch’s refined cynicism, the real shocker comes with the aftermath: Brandon puts the corpse in an antique wooden chest in the middle of the house, and light a cigarette for relief while Philip doesn’t look quite enthusiastic. Hitchcock was said to shoot murders as love scenes, and love scenes as murders, while the murder’s aftermath clearly has some sexual undertones and a sort of ‘we done it’ effect, I think relying all the interactions between the two villains on that aspect is just ignoring what I consider to be the core of the film.
Endless threads have been posted about “Rope” homosexual undertones and while I understand this positively contributed to the movie’s fame as the first to cover some controversial material, I don’t think it plays a significant part to the plot in the very context of the film, regardless of all the peripheral elements that went probably unknown by movie viewers in 1948. This is why I feel like cheating by knowing that Brandon and Philip were a couple and that their admiration toward their ex-headmaster Rupert (James Stewart) confined to a more intimate form of appreciation, because it has nothing to do with the movie and Stewart’s performance and it distracts from the real beauty of the character study which is Rupert’s redemption. I’ll get back to that.
Now, so many people focus on the Brandon-Philip duo and Rupert but there’s a character in this film so unfairly overlooked: it’s the murder itself. Through the body hidden in the chest, improvised as a dinner table when the guests come to the house: David’s father, his aunt, his fiancé Janet and her ex Kenneth, they’re all discussing about the reasons of David’s absence and our knowledge makes the whole setting particularly disturbing and adds a level of poignancy and subtle sadness that doesn’t get much attention. While Brandon amusingly leaves some hints of the murder, Philip drowns his sorrow in alcohol and from his tormented conscience, we feel the presence of the murder, and Rupert the headmaster will be our guide to the macabre discovery.
What makes the murder so cinematically fascinating is how fully cynical it is. Beyond the whole setting that makes the table look like a sordid altar, the reason behind the atrocious act IS the real groundbreaking thing about this film. Brandon ‘the brain’ and Philip ‘the tool’ did this to validate the very idea that some superior men have the right to decide who deserves to live and die among inferior human beings, believing in the idea of ‘supermen’. These Nietzchean conceptions have been inculcated by Rupert who, during one of these discussions, materializes his theories about the triviality of killing. His words, spoken with a sort of calculated cynicism, rings in Brandon’s heart as true words of wisdom while it shocks David’s father who intelligently refers to Hitler.
The ambiguity, yet the fascinating aspect of the murder, is in the way it contradicts itself. Brandon kills to prove his control and superiority over David and all the others. He acts like a puppeteer that brings all of David’s relatives in the house, playing the matchmaker between Janet and Kenneth. He’s so confident that he deliberately leaves clues and hints, as if he unconsciously wanted to lead Rupert to the truth, what Philip foresees and tries to hide under many drinks of champagne. Rupert wants to provoke his mentor’s admiration, for the student who finally made the words reality. And as the movie progresses, the secret is in danger of being unveiled especially in an endless shot where everyone discusses about David’s absence while the maid is cleaning up the chest but the twist doesn’t happen here, not even in the genius part where Rupert puts the wrong hat and realize it features David’s initials.
The twist is symbolical, as the most important development lies in Rupert’s morality. His horrified reaction when he discovers the corpse is the pivotal point where he reconsider all the ideas he believed in. All his life toying with the ideas of supermen, inferior and superior, Rupert underestimated the extent of his charisma and the way he transmitted extremely dangerous ideas, his character’s arc is achieved when he redeems himself by punishing the two killers and calling the police, after a passionately hateful speech, where part of the hatred seems to be aimed toward him. The movie ends silently with the three men waiting for the police to come, each one carrying a part of guilt, the one who held the victim, the one who strangled him, and maybe the most guilty of all, the one who communicated the hatred.
How pointless are all the debates about the sexual orientations when the film is so intellectually rich. The best in “Rope” is in the cold and sophisticated murder and its hideous but spectacular unmasking, while the rest is simply film-making at its best.
Original Language en
Runtime 1 hr 20 min (80 min)
Budget 1500000
Revenue 2200000
Status Released
Rated Approved
Genre Crime, Drama, Mystery
Director Alfred Hitchcock
Writer Hume Cronyn, Patrick Hamilton, Arthur Laurents
Actors James Stewart, John Dall, Farley Granger
Country United States
Awards 2 wins & 4 nominations
Production Company N/A
Website N/A
Sound Mix Mono (RCA Sound System)
Aspect Ratio 1.37 : 1
Camera Technicolor Three-Strip Camera
Laboratory Technicolor, Hollywood (CA), USA (color)
Film Length 2,215 m (Finland)
Negative Format 35 mm
Cinematographic Process Spherical
Printed Film Format 35 mm