Week 3 Rope

“Rope” is a fascinating story about the murder of a young man by his two friends simply for the purpose of proving their intellectual superiority. Brandon Shaw and Phillip Morgan murdered their friend David Kentley right before their dinner party for his father. The party includes Kenneth Lawrence, David’s father, aunt, and fiancé as well as their ex-school housemaster, Rupert Cadell. For the majority of the beginning of the movie a series of long following shots follow the characters in practically all their movements. In my opinion, the most striking technique Hitchcock used in this film is getting the audience comfortable in one long shot and then tripping them with a sharp interruption of another long shot. Take for instance, the scene beginning at 32:45. In examining it we notice that the camera was following the speakers of the conversion and moves to focus in on their face as they speak to give the audience a sense of being a part of the party. However at 32:59, the camera suddenly cuts away from Brendan and Phillip as they argue about an anecdote of Phillip’s past experience with strangling and quickly switch focus to Rupert’s face. By following the speakers thus far, this technique of suddenly changing the focus is clearly bringing to attention the suspicion felt by Rupert about the two young men’s conversation. Not only that, the technique served to bring the audience’s attention to the conversation as well, making sure that we fully get the irony of the situation. A mere three to four seconds shot of Rupert’s face would have been sufficient in getting our attention of that fact. Instead the camera remains motionless on Rupert’s expression for a full 22 seconds, greatly emphasizing the intensity of the suspicion. By choosing to cut one scene into two long continuing shots, Hitchcock succeeds in injecting suspense into an otherwise stylistically-dull conversation.