Classic Movie Review Rope

Rope (1948) 

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock 

Written by Arthur Laurents 

Starring Jimmy Stewart, John Dall, Farley Granger, Sir Cedric Hardwicke

Release Date September 25th, 1948 

Published June 10th, 2024 

Director Alfred Hitchcock enjoys a good thought experiment. Take an average man, place him in a situation and watch him use his wits to get him out of it. The plots become a series of mini puzzles that the main character has to solve before the story can progress and the main character can make their escape. Usually, these puzzles are spread over the course of an adventure whether across a city, a country or the globe. But, for his 1948 film Rope, Hitchcock decided to create a puzzle for himself as a director. 

Adapting a script by Arthur Laurents, Hitchcock creates a series of traps for himself. How will he navigate a thriller set entirely in one location with none of the trappings of his globe trotting adventures. He also has no spies, detectives, or dangerous women to push the story forward. Instead, he has only a lavish apartment building and a gathering of intellectuals. Oh, and a murder. It wouldn't be Hitchcock if there weren't a murder to get the ball rolling.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Classic Movie Review Rear Window

Rear Window 

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock 

Written by John Michael Hayes

Starring Jimmy Stewart, Grace Kelly, Raymond Burr

Released September 1st, 1954

Published March 12th, 2025 

Alfred Hitchcock’s genius, for me, boils down to two elements: juxtaposition and perversion. Hitch takes a thing or a person associated with a specific characteristic and places that person or thing in a different context, one opposite to how we perceive it. The Birds (1963) is a great example. Before The Birds, no one associated birds with anything remotely dangerous. Hitchcock takes Birds and turns them into horror movie villains, convincing us through the use of storytelling and the tools of cinema that even the most innocuous animal can be used as a symbol of a battle between man and nature. 

He enjoys this kind of juxtaposition in his actors as well. Take, for instance, Cary Grant in North by Northwest. Here, Hitchcock takes this bastion of handsomeness, charm, and good manners and repeatedly renders him helpless, hapless, and narrowly avoiding dangerous schemes not by his unending charm or good looks but by sheer chance and good luck. This flies in the face of our collective, cultural memory of Cary Grant as a debonair, accented charmer, a man constantly one step ahead of anyone he’s in a scene with. He is certainly the hero of North by Northwest but he does not drive the action, action happens to him. A leading man is supposed to be the catalyst of a story, Hitchcock takes the ultimate leading man of his time and robs him of his agency, forcing him to be subject to a plot rather than driving it. It's a juxtaposition of our expectations, of Grant's persona, and of the concept a leading man in a movie.

Click here for my full length review at Geeks.Media