Queering Cinema: 'Rope' and Hitchcock's Dandies

"Rope" could be thought of as Alfred Hitchcock's most daring film – not only in technique: It is comprised of a series of eight-to-nine-minute takes that create the illusion of a continuous action; but also in subject matter: Two young dandies kill a friend, hide his body in a trunk, then invite the victim's parent to a dinner party in which the dinner is laid out on the trunk. Hitchcock called the film a "stunt," but it far more than that.

When it opened in 1948, it failed at the box office and failed to impress critics, most of whom were more concerned with its technical aspects than its subject matter. It was slammed for feeling stage bound (which makes sense since it is based on a play and takes place in real-time) but for many it was too talky, and lacking Hitchcock's characteristic use of suspense. But New York Times critic Bowsley Crowther, often a stiff moralizer in terms of reviews, never mentions the film's gay subtexts, instead finds fault in Hitchcock's technique. "At all events, the picture takes on a dull tone as it goes and finally ends in a fizzle which is forecast almost from the start." Variety offered a more positive critique, though criticized the subject matter as "unsavory."

To this day, "Rope" is criticized for its static nature. "It's inherently uncinematic. It is not a movie," said director David Finchner, himself a Hitchcock acolyte famous for "SE7EN" and "Zodiac." Even Alejandro G. Iñárritu, who wold adapt the single-take technique for his Oscar-winning "Birdman," hated "Rope."

"There's always this comparison with 'Rope', which I think is a terrible film," he told Time Magazine when "Birdman" was released. "I don't like it. I think it's a very bad film of Hitchcock's. It's a very mediocre film. Obviously, he shot with that intention and it didn't work – because of the film itself! It has nothing to do with the technique, it's just a mediocre film."

It was also something of a lost Hitchcock film for nearly a generation. It was largely unseen for nearly 40 years, re-released in 1984, and was still considered static and not up to Hitchcock's standards. "As a piece of film, 'Rope' is pretty terrible," wrote Michael Bronski in reviewing the film for the Gay Community News in 1984. "Hitchcock's plan of no editing leaves the film static and is boring watch." At that point, its gay context was at last noted; but was considered by Bronski as homophobic. "In both their actions and circumstances the film presents Brandon and Philip as the epitomal stereotypes of gay men. Most of these stereotypes dovetail neatly into other images which exist in the popular imagination, usually associated with corruption, decadence, evil and a proclivity towards causing harm."

Bronski point is well-taken, given the lack of representation of LGBTQ+ characters in Hollywood films; but today with the breadth of queer content, the film can be viewed more contextually, and begs the question as to how Hitchcock was able to infuse the film with such a strong subtext without being stopped by the Hays Code, the strict industry content standard, which considered mention of homosexuality verboten. But in "Rope," the gay meme is hiding in plain sight, echoing the film's dark plot whose suspense relies upon the discovery of the body hidden in the chest that is in prominent view throughout. But it is not as if they are in the closet – everyone knows who attend, nobody cares.

In his book, "The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock," Edward White writes: "The conversation between the seen and the unseen, the surface and the subterranean, is the core of 'Rope.'" Hitchcock cast two gay men in the leads: Farley Granger and John Dall. They play Philip and Brandon, two privileged 20-somethings living in a swank Manhattan penthouse with a spectacular view of the East Side. In the film's opening moments, though, the view is draped as Philip (Granger) strangles his friend David (Dick Hogan) while Brandon (Dall) encourages him. Quickly they place the body in the chest and, while Brandon attempts to cool a jittery Philip, prepare for the party they are giving at which they have invited David's parents and girlfriend, Janet (Joan Chandler), as well as her old boyfriend, Kenneth (Douglas Dick, who is something of Hogan's double) and their old prep school teacher Philip Cadell (James Stewart). Also on hand is their fussy maid, Mrs. Wilson, played to the arched hilt by Edith Evanson in one of those priceless cameos that turned up in Hitchcock's from these years, British actress Constance Collier in a big, hammy turn as David's aunt, and Cedric Hardwicke, restrained as David's father and the film's moral conscience. For Hogan, his role is brief -- he has more screen time in the teasing trailer that Hitchcock prepared that shows him with Chandler on a park bench just prior to his fatal end. Watch the trailer:

Hitchcock wanted to cast Cary Grant in the role of Rupert, but he turned it down, supposedly because he was afraid of the questions it would raise about his sexuality in real life. Perhaps when he read an early draft in which Cadell was more overtly gay. White observes that scriptwriter Arthur Laurents "was as open about his gayness as one could safely be in the late 1940s, a time in which the harassment and criminalization of gay men was pursued with vigor."

"The three central characters in 'Rope' are homosexual. Brandon and Phillip are lovers...," writes Laurents in his autobiography "Original Story By." "Rupert is a good friend and probably an ex-lover of Brandon's; his is the most interesting role." But in no way would James Stewart play him that way.

"Instead of Cary Grant, we wound up with Jimmy Stewart; instead of Monty Clift, with John Dall," Laurents added.

He continued as to how he scrubbed the original play, "Rope" (retitled "Rope's End" for its 1929 Broadway run) by Patrick Hamilton, of any overt mention of homosexuality, which turned the Brandon/Philip relationship into the film's subtext akin to the body in the chest – ever-present, but unseen by the Hay's Code.

"There wasn't a word of dialogue that said the lovers were lovers or homosexual, but there wasn't a scene between them where it wasn't clearly implied. John Dall and Farley Granger played Brandon and Phillip's sexuality truthfully, and that took courage. I don't know whether it ever occurred to Jimmy Stewart that Rupert was a homosexual. Hitchcock didn't say anything but it wouldn't have mattered if he had. Jimmy Stewart was Jimmy Stewart, which meant not a whiff of sex of any kind."

On the set, the subject of homosexuality was only referred to as "it," but in his autobiography, Granger said that he and Dall discussed its gay subtext. And in the film "The Celluloid Closet," Granger said: "We knew they were gay, sure, but nobody said anything about it. That was one of the points of the film, in a way."

Also not discussed on the set was the play's original source material: The 1924 murder of a 14-year-old boy by Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, who murdered him believing their intellectual and moral superiority over their victim. Called "the crime of the century," their trial became a national sensation. Their trial was later filmed in 1959 in a fictionalized version, "Compulsion" then later by queer director Tom Kalin in "Swoon" in 1992. But in the national consciousness, the sexuality of Leopold and Loeb was well-known and likely the public understood the source of the story, which proved to be another way Hitchcock and Laurents were able to allude to Brandon and Philip's sexuality without ever mentioning it.

What audiences at the time likely picked up on that may be lost on contemporary audiences is how Philip and Brandon's theories are rooted in the racial superiority policies of the Nazis that Hitchcock loathed. Like "Lifeboat"only a few years before, "Rope" is his attack on fascist beliefs. It is hard to imagine audiences not seeing a reference to the Holocaust when Cadell flippantly jokes about those in society he would do away with. In the film's climax, Cadell takes the moral high ground, condemning the young men and claiming he only thought these theories, but would never carry them out. Curiously, neither Hitchcock or Laurents make him more complicit – in all likelihood the seeds of the younger men's actions came from discussions with Cadell while they were at school. The dismissal of his involvement is a problem with the film, as his personal relationship with Brandon, whom Laurents had said had likely been Cadell's lover. Was talk of this theory pillow talk for the men?

That Hitchcock cast two actors who were known to be gay in Hollywood also alludes to his wanting to bring authenticity to his story. Granger and Doll have a strong connection, though it is never expressed in any physical way. Their only contact comes when Brandon removes the gloves from Philip's hands after the murder. In all likelihood, this was a conscious decision by Hitchcock, whose relationship with gay characters in his films is complicated. He wasn't a homophobic man by all accounts. He once told Rodney Ackland, a gay man who wrote Hitchcock's 1932 film "Number Seventeen" during his London period, that had he not met Alma in the early 1920s, he might have "become a poof." Laurents thought he was a "repressed homosexual." Hitchcock, the screenwriter, adds, was obsessed with homosexuality while filming (despite never using the term). In his autobiography, he wrote: on the set... (Hitchcock) alluded to the subject so often -- slyly and naughtily, never nastily -- that he seemed fixated, if not obsessed." That Hitchcock saw homosexuality as a something akin to a dirty, schoolboy joke makes sense. Growing up Catholic, he saw homosexuality as both morally and legally wrong (it was illegal in England until the 1960s); but as an adult wasn't personally judgmental. While filming "Rope," he often entertained Laurents and Granger, who were dating at the time, something that Laurents says he knew. Instead Hitchcock saw homosexuals as societal outsiders, disliked by the general population, and used this prejudice to his advantage by making them villains that played up and likely fuelled the public's homophobia.

"Hitchcock was exposed to vibrant gay communities in both England and Hollywood, and he worked with many gay and bisexual professionals in various aspects of film production, including writers and actors. He knew their subculture well, and the gay codes in his movies were not an accident or an oversight. They were intentional, and he knew exactly what they implied," write Scott Badman and Connie Russell Hosier in their essay "Gay Coding in Hitchcock Films."

And Badman and Russell make a case for Ryan Murphy's take on "Rope" opening with a hot three-way that ends in the murder by some sort of sexual asphyxiation. "He coded Brandon and Philip as gay by their 'sex scene.' It occurs at the very beginning of the movie, which is also the murder scene. Hitchcock is strongly equating murder with sex. The murder-sex occurs behind curtained windows. The death scream corresponds to the orgasm. Now visible, the murderers Brandon and Philip quickly put the body in a cabinet and go into a postcoital exhaustion. Philip doesn't even want the light turned on. In an inspired touch, Hitchcock has Brandon light a cigarette, a standard Hollywood indicator for 'we just had sex.'"

Though Oscar-nominated in an early role (for "The Corn is Green" in 1945), Dall's career was spotty at best. Along with "Rope," his only performance of note – and it is a doozy – came in the 1950 noir classic "Gun Crazy," in which he plays a lovestruck, carnival sharpshooter who meets his female counterpart and goes on a crime spree. He became an alcoholic and died at the age of 50 in 1971 while living with his partner in Los Angeles. Granger had a longer and happier life. His film career continued through the 1950s, most notably with Hitchcock in "Strangers on a Train" in 1951 and with Italian master Luchino Visconti's 1954 historical romance "Senso" with Alida Valli. He met his partner Robert Calhoun in the early 1960s and they stayed together until Calhoun's death in 2008. In 2007, Granger came out in his autobiography, "Include Me Out." He died in 2011. "Rope was an interesting technical experiment that I was lucky and happy to be a part of, but I don't think it was one of Hitchcock's better films," he wrote in his autobiography.