...and twice as evil.
The attentive viewer of Rope can come away with many valuable party lessons. For instance, you should serve a dinner party out of the dining room, not the parlor. You should promptly introduce new guests and offer them a drink. Dead school chums are best kept out of sight under the serving table, et cetera.
It's even still considered fashionable (see the 1948 edition of Heloise) to invite the parents of the freshly murdered over to feast off the cabinet that houses the corpse.
But, under NO circumstances whatsoever can you invite Jimmy Stewart and expect him to not get wise to your murderous shenanigans. He is simply too much THE MAN. Consider the case of Hitchcock's masterful "Rope". Watching Stewart pick apart the sinister "experiment" that poor Brandon and unfortunate Philip stage is, quite simply, one of the coolest cinematic experiences a person could hope for. As a party guest attending a murder deliciously disguised as a dinner party, his performance is awe-striking. His Rupert Cadell suspects the party treachery like a raptor spotting the squirming mouse from a mile away. With the exactness of a latter-day Sherlock Holmes, he wears down the false party faces of his former students and learns that they've taken a harmless academic notion he expressed in the past to a horrific extreme.
In a great scene, Rupert delicately balances a plate of hors d'oeuvres on his lap while expounding on his theory of "artful murder." He suggests that murder should be applied as a kind of social science by the privileged and intellectual few. He describes how the turn of a knife or a well-placed bullet can dispense with the offending waiter or doorman, so that the civilized people can step over the bodies and be on their rightful way. Now, make no mistake, Rupert is a gentleman-- even if he does revel in gently shocking stuffy society types with his ink-black sense of humor. But it is an extension of his rapier wit, no more. Brandon, on the other hand, is unable to accept Rupert's ruse as anything but philosophical fact. Esteeming the old housemaster as he does, he nurtures Rupert's black kernel of humor until it grows into a towering superman complex, and with the help of Philip, serves up its' ghastly fruit at a dinner that would make Greek tragedy proud. As the cocktails flow, so do the suspicions of the partygoers rise. Philip begins to sweat guilt at Rupert's prying questions, and sickly suave Brandon tries to hold the caper together with diversions and a Cheshire grin. That is, until even his wicked conviction becomes unraveled like so much... (see title).
Film students! Do you find that your curricular dining table lacks this Hitchcock chef d'oeuvre? Proceed then to bind and gag your questionable instructor until he includes Rope in your intellectual fondue-pot. If there is a movie whose mechanics and thematic subtleties are enriched through thoughtful discussion and careful viewing, it is this Hitchcockian masterpiece.
The attentive viewer of Rope can come away with many valuable party lessons. For instance, you should serve a dinner party out of the dining room, not the parlor. You should promptly introduce new guests and offer them a drink. Dead school chums are best kept out of sight under the serving table, et cetera.
It's even still considered fashionable (see the 1948 edition of Heloise) to invite the parents of the freshly murdered over to feast off the cabinet that houses the corpse.
But, under NO circumstances whatsoever can you invite Jimmy Stewart and expect him to not get wise to your murderous shenanigans. He is simply too much THE MAN. Consider the case of Hitchcock's masterful "Rope". Watching Stewart pick apart the sinister "experiment" that poor Brandon and unfortunate Philip stage is, quite simply, one of the coolest cinematic experiences a person could hope for. As a party guest attending a murder deliciously disguised as a dinner party, his performance is awe-striking. His Rupert Cadell suspects the party treachery like a raptor spotting the squirming mouse from a mile away. With the exactness of a latter-day Sherlock Holmes, he wears down the false party faces of his former students and learns that they've taken a harmless academic notion he expressed in the past to a horrific extreme.
In a great scene, Rupert delicately balances a plate of hors d'oeuvres on his lap while expounding on his theory of "artful murder." He suggests that murder should be applied as a kind of social science by the privileged and intellectual few. He describes how the turn of a knife or a well-placed bullet can dispense with the offending waiter or doorman, so that the civilized people can step over the bodies and be on their rightful way. Now, make no mistake, Rupert is a gentleman-- even if he does revel in gently shocking stuffy society types with his ink-black sense of humor. But it is an extension of his rapier wit, no more. Brandon, on the other hand, is unable to accept Rupert's ruse as anything but philosophical fact. Esteeming the old housemaster as he does, he nurtures Rupert's black kernel of humor until it grows into a towering superman complex, and with the help of Philip, serves up its' ghastly fruit at a dinner that would make Greek tragedy proud. As the cocktails flow, so do the suspicions of the partygoers rise. Philip begins to sweat guilt at Rupert's prying questions, and sickly suave Brandon tries to hold the caper together with diversions and a Cheshire grin. That is, until even his wicked conviction becomes unraveled like so much... (see title).
Film students! Do you find that your curricular dining table lacks this Hitchcock chef d'oeuvre? Proceed then to bind and gag your questionable instructor until he includes Rope in your intellectual fondue-pot. If there is a movie whose mechanics and thematic subtleties are enriched through thoughtful discussion and careful viewing, it is this Hitchcockian masterpiece.
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