James Stewart once described his work on Rope as the most difficult task undertaken by an actor. Released in 1948, Rope was a notable collaboration between Alfred Hitchcock and James Stewart. Over a period of years, Stewart starred in four Alfred Hitchcock movies, with Rear Window and Vertigo easily being their most high-profile ventures together. However, the other two received their fair share of critical acclaim, with both The Man Who Knew Who Too Much and Rope enjoying great reputations with critics and audiences alike. Rope, for its part, sits at 93% on Rotten Tomatoes.
The 1948 thriller takes place in an apartment building where two men – who have just committed a murder – host a party. Unbeknownst to their guests (who are all affiliated with the victim in one way or another), the murder is actually the occasion that’s being celebrated. As the story unfolds, tensions develop, and one particular guest – James Stewart’s Professor Rupert Cadell – grows increasingly suspicious of the party’s two hosts. Based on comments Alfred Hitchcock has since attributed to Stewart, his role in Rope was a challenge unlike any other he’d ever faced in his capacity as an actor.
Rope Was A Unique Movie With An Extremely Complicated Filming Process
James Stewart Felt A Great Deal Of Pressure When Making Rope
Alfred Hitchcock went in an unorthodox direction when making Rope, a story he decided to tell in real-time. To this end, Hitchcock and the filming crew went to great lengths to make the entire movie look like one long scene. A two-hour movie filmed in one take would obviously be next to impossible, but Rope makes this work by cleverly hiding the breaks in between takes. But despite this, extremely long scenes were still necessary for Rope to have its real-time feel, so it’s no surprise that actors in the cast found filming Rope exceptionally difficult.
Most of Rope’s takes were about seven to 10 minutes long, with its longest clocking in at 10 minutes and six seconds.
Reflecting back on the making of the movie, Alfred Hitchcock recalled James Stewart saying that the film was “the toughest job an actor ever had” [via Popular PH๏τography].The long takes put heavy expectations on the actors, with Hitchcock recounting Stewart’s admission that he “wasn’t sleeping nights” because of it. The issue wasn’t that Stewart himself didn’t want to redo really long scenes; he was much more concerned with his colleagues, afraid that if he made a slight mistake with his lines, he’d be creating more work for the cast and crew.
‘What this means,’ Jimmy said, ‘is that if the rest of the cast is perfect and I fluff a line at, say 895 feet, it becomes the colossal fluff in screen history. The only way it can be resH๏τ is to do the whole scene over again.
Hitchcock explained both in the interview (and to Stewart at the time) that the actor’s worries about the situation were the reason he was picked for the role of Rupert Cadell, indicating that his sense of personal responsibility over a production made him an ideal choice to take on such a huge challenge.
Alfred Hitchcock Later Believed That Rope’s Unique Format Didn’t Work
Unfortunately, Alfred Hitchcock’s innovative approach to the production and the high demands it put on the actors didn’t pay off – or at least, not as well as the studio hoped. That’s not to say that Rope was a bad film, per se, as its 93% score on Rotten Tomatoes and overall positive reputation as a quality Hitchcock movie are evidence to the contrary. However, its quality aside, the fact remains that Rope wasn’t a box office success, and critical reception was lukewarm at the time of its release in 1948.
Hitchcock himself has expressed disappointment with the results. In a 1962 interview, Hitchcock explained that he “undertook Rope as a stunt” and admitted that he didn’t know how he “came to indulge in it.” Sometime after making the movie, Hitchcock came to the conclusion that the concept was actually “quite nonsensical.” Hitchcock went on to criticize the idea, noting, “I was breaking with my own theories on the importance of cutting and montage for the visual narration of a story.”
Alfred Hitchcock learning a lesson from his self-perceived failures with Rope is evident in his second – and remarkably more successful – movie with James Stewart. Rear Window followed a somewhat similar format, with the story staying confined to one room. But though large portions of the film took place over several minutes, it wasn’t afraid to employ time skips, allowing the movie to move at its own pace. In a sense, Rope was a stepping stone toward Rear Window.
