An Analysis Of Alfred Hitchcock's Film Rope

Alfred Hitchcock is well known for bringing queer characters into his films. He’s also well known for exposing those queer characters in a negative light, making them murderers, or simply reinforcing the thought of the time that gay persons had mental illnesses. Due to the laws at the time concerning cinema, directly having queer characters in your film was hard to do. Yet, Hitchcock made it possible by implying, through the use and manipulation of technical elements of cinematography, that the character(s) in front of our eyes were queer. In the film, Rope, he does exactly this. Robin Wood says that “ for Hitchcock, the experimentation of Rope is never in the least conceived as in opposition to his already highly developed montage technique, …show more content…
We have both men in close proximity to the victim. One is holding him from behind, while the other is strangulating him. The image following it adds to this, as both Brandon and Phillip cram David into the chest. They both are heaving looking simultaneously relieved and excited. The lighting is coming from the right side of the screen, reminding us that they buried their sexuality just as they did David in that chest. This is a secret performance only for their eyes. It’s no doubt that Hitchcock’s use of lighting for this scene is supposed to parallel their crime with their sexuality. Once the act is committed we have a close up shot of them face to face, in where they are practically inches away from each other. In this frame, the focus is both of them; the lighting is completely focused on their faces and their proximity, everything behind them is dark. Hitchcock manipulated the lighting to bring into specific focus not only these men but also their implied relationship. The literal light is figuratively shedding light on the situation of their persons- and not on their murderous intent exactly, but more so on their sexuality. Even though, at the time this film was made, Hitchcock (as well as most of society) believed that being gay made you deviant- so really it was all one and the same almost. Hitchcock uses lighting to shed light on the fact that these men are gay. When they commit the crime, the scene is done …show more content…
Although it does little to nothing for queer people, in the sense that it only reinforces stereotypes and continues to backup and support homophobia, it does accurately depict the thought of the time. Hitchcock was able to create representation, which is what Wood argues in his essay titled “The Murderous Gays”, of gay people even though it was done so in a negative light. While today we can judge this film, using new conceived notions and ideas about queer persons, and understanding that there might have been more to Hitchcock than his blatant homophobia, we still do have to understand it within its context. In that sense then, Hitchcock used the setting of scenes, the lighting, the shots, the mise-en-scene, to create not only a film that was considered successful, not only a film that gave us queer representation (albeit a disappointing kind), but also a film that did what it could with what it had. The Production Code was strict about its allowed representation of taboo-considered subjects within film. This means, that even if Hitchcock had wanted to be outright explicit about the protagonists sexuality in the film Rope and had he desired some kind of happy ending for them, the likelihood of the movie coming out was scarce, actually it was near impossible. Rope is far from perfect, but it is one of the very few films in which the characters are clearly queer and even occasionally charming. In this film,