An Analysis of Alfred Hitchcock's "Rope"

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The 1948 film Rope by Alfred Hitchcock is a strange one to place in the director’s canon of iconic films. Granted the film contains a decent amount of the elements crucial to a Hitchcock film (A great performance by regular player Jimmy Stewart, innovative camera work, a playful director’s cameo, and a wonderful reinterpretation of how a director can use tension), but still, the film comes across as a wholly individual departure for someone who makes films iconic for a few other reasons. Hitchcock himself has stated the film was an experiment, and with that said, I believe it is how the film should be thought of when watched. The film does not disappoint by any means, but that being said, it lacks a couple of crucial elements needed to make a Hitchcock spectacular. The great French director Francois Truffaut once said: “You respect him because he shoots scenes of love as if they were scenes of murder, but we respect him because he shoots scenes of murder like scenes of love.” While it was a playful statement by Truffaut, he makes a good point. A Hitchcock film normally has incredible characters on moral journeys that shatter the laws of black and white expectations and subsequent answers. In Rope, the moral journey happens in one room in one evening. The film makes a large statement about morality in a small intimate setting, ironic in itself that the film makes a big statement about debilitating moral philosophies of the world post World War II. This certainly isn’t the first time Hitchcock has dealt with international governments (This is apparent even in early works such as the early masterpiece The 39 Steps) and this also isn’t the first time Hitchcock would film an entire movie in one room (the well-renowned Rear Window). So when examining all these statements I’ve made as to what makes a Hitchcock film superior, it becomes apparent there are

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