Summary
The film opens on a street, shot from above. Gentle, expectant music plays and we see a woman pushing a stroller down the street. The music gets eerier and more suspenseful as the camera pans to a curtained window of an apartment building. Suddenly, we hear a scream. Inside, a man is being strangled with a rope. Two men wearing gloves check to see that he is dead, then put the body inside a box and heave sighs of relief. One of them, a man in a blue suit, turns on a light, but the other tells him not to, so he quickly turns it back off. The man in the blue suit starts to say something, but his companion, who is wearing a brown suit, interrupts him, “I know, but not just yet. Let’s stay this way for a minute.” The man in the blue suit takes out a cigarette and lights it, still wearing his gloves. “We don’t have too much time,” he says, and convinces his friend to make the room brighter, going to open the curtains. “No one ever feels safe in the dark, no one who’s ever a child that is,” he says. He opens the curtain, revealing large windows overlooking the city.
The man in blue suit sighs, looking out at the urban skyline and commenting on what a lovely evening it is, while his friend sits in the foreground, clearly rattled by what they have just done. The man in the blue suit takes off his gloves as well as the gloves of his friend, before telling him to put their gloves away in his checkbook drawer. The man in the blue suit opens more of the curtains, and examines some crystal glasses on the table. He tries to engage the other in a discussion about whether they should preserving the glass for posterity, but his friend is silent, still thinking on their deed. “Out of this, David Kentley had his last drink,” he says, looking at the crystal glass. He goes on to say, “I always thought it was out of character for David to drink anything as corrupt as whiskey.”
Here, the man in the brown suit speaks up, saying, “Out of character for him to be murdered too…” The man in the blue suit laughs at this, responding, “Good Americans usually die young on the battlefield, don’t they? Well, the Davids of the world merely occupy space, which is why he was the perfect victim for the perfect murder.” The man in the blue suit then makes a joke that the victim, David Kentley, was a Harvard undergraduate, which might make it “justifiable homicide.” The other man is upset that the body is still there, but the man in the blue suit assures him that “in less than 8 hours he’ll be resting gently but firmly at the bottom of a lake.” His friend becomes even more anxious when he realizes that the box that they put the body in is not locked. The man in the blue suit assures him that the lock is too old and doesn’t even work.
When the man in the brown suit expresses his remorse at having killed David Kentley, the man in the blue suit asks who would have been better—“Kenneth?” Turning to him, the man in the brown suit simply says, “You, perhaps,” which stops the man in the blue suit. The man in the brown suit goes on, “You frighten me. You always have. From that very first day in prep school. Part of your charm, I suppose.” Here the man in the brown suit retracts his statement, telling his companion that he isn’t dealing with the murder as well as he ought to, and is taking it out on him as a result. The man in the brown suit asks if he can have a drink, to which the man in the blue suit says, “This is an occasion. It calls for champagne.” They go to the kitchen, as the man in the brown suit questions the man in the blue about his choice to have bought champagne before, showing his certainty that the murder would work out.
As the men arrive in the kitchen, the man in blue declares, “You know I’d never do anything unless I did it perfectly. I’ve always wished for more artistic talent. Well, murder can be an art too.” He takes the champagne out of the icebox, and says, “The power to kill can be just as satisfying as the power to create.” The man in blue relishes how seamlessly the murder went, that nothing went wrong, and that they have murdered for the sake of murder itself. He continues to extol their incredible skills in murder to the man in the brown suit, whose name we learn is Phillip. Phillip takes the champagne from him and pops the cork. As Phillip pours them champagne, the man in the blue suit asks him if he’s still frightened, and Phillip responds that he is not. The man in the blue suit raises a toast to David, their victim, with a strange glint in his eye. The men drink, Phillip looking over with an anxious expression at the box where David’s body is stored.
Phillip then asks the man in the blue suit, whose name we now learn is Brandon, how he felt while they were killing David. Brandon tells him that he doesn’t remember feeling much of anything until David’s body went limp. “Then I felt tremendously exhilarated,” Brandon tells him. When Brandon asks Phillip how he felt, the camera pans down to a floral centerpiece, two candelabras and china. The two men are hosting a party immediately after the murder, and Phillip asks, “You don’t think the party’s a mistake, do you?” Quite the contrary, Brandon assures him, the party is the finishing touch on their artful murder. “This party will be the most exciting ever given!” Brandon says, but Phillip isn’t so sure, and responds, “With these people?” Brandon then reveals that the guests of the party will be the family of David Kentley, the murder victim. “We did have to have them. After all, they are David’s mother and father,” he says. When Phillip remains unconvinced, Brandon assures him that “Janet will be buttering them up, poor girl. She’s banked everything on hooking David. Somehow I don’t think she’s going to succeed.” Apparently, a girl named Janet is coming to the dinner in hopes of getting David to fall in love with her. Phillip looks uneasy as Brandon suggests that “she can switch back to Kenneth tonight.”
Suddenly Brandon realizes something, grabs a candelabra, and urges Phillip to take the other and follow him into the next room. As they approach the box in which David’s body is held, Brandon puts his candelabra on top of the box and tells Phillip that he’s making their “work of art a masterpiece.” Phillip becomes upset, telling Brandon that he’s going too far, but Brandon is insistent that they eat dinner on top of the box. “I don’t think you appreciate me, Phillip,” Brandon says, but Phillip assures him that he’s “beginning to.” As they walk back towards the kitchen, the camera remains beside the box and Brandon says that Mrs. Wilson is coming back soon. Phillip assures Brandon that he has Mrs. Wilson’s key, after telling her he lost his. Phillip then becomes upset for a moment, saying, “We’ve got to have an excuse for the others!” Brandon scolds Phillip for getting too upset too easily as he picks up a stack of books. He tells Phillip that Mr. Kentley is coming to look at the books, and that they can put the books on the dining room table “where the poor old man can easily get them.”
Suddenly, the bell rings and Brandon goes to answer it. He picks up a phone and says “of course,” before hanging up and telling Phillip to set up the books on the dining room table. It was Mrs. Wilson. Phillip gathers the books in a stack, when suddenly he is startled by the realization that the rope they used to kill David is hanging out of the top of the box. He calls frantically to Brandon, who comes back into the room an orders Phillip to yank the rope out of the box, but Phillip tells him that he cannot. Brandon unceremoniously pulls the rope out and warns Phillip that his anxiety will be as good as a confession and that he needs to keep his cool. Phillip and Brandon bring the books into the dining room, as Brandon restates that they must maintain perfect composure. “Being weak is a mistake,” he tells Phillip, who counters, “Because it’s being human?” Brandon fires back, “Because it’s being ordinary,” as the door buzzes.
Brandon answers the door and lets in Mrs. Wilson, who enters and informs him how much money he owes her for taxis, and telling him she would have been there sooner had it not been for traffic. Mrs. Wilson is a verbose woman, and outlines all the places she went for the food for dinner. Nervously, Phillip interrupts her to say hello, which alerts her to the fact that they are putting books on the dining table and preparing the box in the living room for dinner. “What’s happening with my table?” she asks, skeptically. When Brandon tells her that they’re showing Mr. Kentley some books from the chest and it would be better for him to look at them in the dining room, Mrs. Wilson tells them that she thinks the chest looks “downright peculiar…particularly those candlesticks, they don’t belong there at all.” Brandon tells her that the dinner table will be a kind of sacrificial altar, but Mrs. Wilson remains worried that there won’t be enough room to set the table on top of the chest. On the whole, she thinks the idea is ludicrous, but excuses herself to begin dinner anyway.
Left alone, Brandon and Phillip argue about what to do with the rope that they pulled out of the chest. While Phillip insists that they should hide it, Brandon assures him that it’s just a rope, “an ordinary household object,” and decides not to hide it. Brandon swings the rope performatively and carries it to the kitchen. He walks past Mrs. Wilson, who doesn’t see the rope, and puts the rope in the kitchen drawer. He tells her that there’s champagne in the ice box, which gets her excited. “If it’s that kind of party, I must get dolled up a little,” she says. Mrs. Wilson gushes as she tells the two men about once sharing a glass of champagne with a man named Mr. Cadell on her birthday. Brandon takes this opportunity to tell Mrs. Wilson that Mr. Cadell will be at the dinner party, which pleases her.
Phillip is surprised to hear that Mr. Cadell is coming, and walks into the living room looking visibly upset. When they are alone in the living room, Phillip frantically says to Brandon, “Of all the people on this earth, Rupert Cadell is the one man most likely to suspect.” Brandon says that that’s exactly the point, that Rupert Cadell is the “one man who might appreciate this from our angle: the artistic one!” Brandon assures Phillip that it would have been too easy to get away with if they hadn’t invited Mr. Cadell, suggesting that part of his investment in the murder is the desire to make their getting away with it as difficult—and thus as artful—as possible. Brandon then tells Phillip that he considered asking Mr. Cadell to participate in the murder, but that he knew that he didn’t have the courage to go through with it. He relishes the fact that they are superior to Rupert Cadell, when suddenly they are interrupted by Mrs. Wilson, who brings a plate of food to the table.
Analysis
The film is immediately notable for its sudden, shocking shift from pleasant outdoor setting to grisly murder within the first two minutes and for its alignment of the viewer with the murderers. The murder is abrupt, and occurs before a word of dialogue has even been uttered. While thrillers more commonly build suspense around an event that is yet to happen, Rope presents its climactic act of violence at the start. Also notable is the fact that we begin the film from the point of view of the murderers. While a thriller usually takes the perspective of a person trying to solve the murder or the mystery, this film aligns the viewer with the murderer from the start. The viewer must then watch the two murderers attempt to elude their own apprehension throughout the film. The structure of the typical murder narrative is inverted, making for a different kind of suspense.
Indeed, it is quickly established that the subject of the film is the “perfect murder.” Brandon approaches the murder of David Kentley in a markedly detached manner. The way he describes the duo’s deed makes it seem less that they had anything particular against David, and more that he was, in an abstract way, “the perfect victim.” Brandon seems to have no real complaints about David Kentley, other than he “merely occupied space.” The completion of a perfect, clean, and diabolical murder is the reward in and of itself for killing David Kentley. This makes it all the more unsettling. Their desire to commit the “perfect murder” is hardly distinguishable from the desire to set the perfect dinner table, or create the perfect living room.
Indeed, another unsettling aspect of the murderers is their meticulous attention to detail and their apparently elegant lifestyle. Minutes after strangling David, Brandon examines the crystal glass from which David took his last drink. He comments on its worth, exhibiting an uncanny materialism in the aftermath of such a grisly deed. Instead of thinking about David as a human being whom they have just killed, he retrospectively judges David’s choice of drink—whiskey is a “corrupt” drink, in his eyes. Additionally, the apartment in which they kill David is large and refined, with enormous windows and an impressive view of the city skyline. These are not typical murderers, which seems to only make their deed that much more unsettling. While we expect our killers to be seedy lowlifes and menacing criminals, the murderers in Rope are two clean-cut, well-dressed aesthetes who have a taste for the finer things.
The photography in the film is notable. In the first seven minutes, the camera does not move, as the events following the murder and the conversation between the two men takes place in real time. When the two men begin to walk into the kitchen area to get the champagne, the camera follows closely and steadily behind, as though the viewer were him- or herself in the world of the film. The height of the camera and its pace as it follows the two murderers gives the impression of our being actually with them in the apartment. In this way, Alfred Hitchcock makes the viewer complicit with the grisly deed, and aligns us with the seemingly sociopathic main characters. Additionally, the film is notable for its use of very long takes. Throughout the film, there are hardly any cuts. This gives the impression that the events are taking place in real time, without any time jumps or skips. The through line of the narrative maintains a steady momentum throughout, which also serves to build suspense.
The beginning of the film aligns the two men in a kind of shared mania and insanity. It is strongly suggested that the two men are more than just friends, as they stand especially close to one another and discuss the virtues of their murderous project with an air of wonder and intimacy. Brandon has a kind of grandiose idea of his own abilities as a killer, extolling his ability to pull off the perfect murder without a hitch. To him, murder is creative, a claim that strikes an immediately dissonant tone. Murder is the exact opposite of creation, in that it extinguishes life, while creation attempts to make more. Brandon’s belief that the two deeds are the same are evidence of his skewed perspective, his diabolical sense of the way things work. His impressionable companion, Phillip, goes along with it, seduced by Brandon's self-assured and elaborate rhetoric. While he has his grave doubts, he cannot help but hesitantly drink his champagne when the crazy-eyed Brandon proposes a toast to their victim.
