Rope

I had not ever heard of Rope before seeing it, and was pretty excited about going into my viewing as an unbiased audience. Coming out of it, I enjoyed the movie very much. Some aspects of the movie stuck out in my mind.

First, I was struck about 30 minutes in to the film that the entire movie is filmed in 2 shots, and one complete scene. The camera does not switch from character to character as they speak, but instead either pans out to capture the whole scene or pans left or right to focus on the action. This amazed me, because it shows the quality of the actors and their abilities. There was only one time throughout the movie where the camera jumped from one character’s face to another’s, instead of panning. I certainly do not think that this was a coincidence. As Brandon is relating the story of Phillip’s attempting to strangle the chicken, the irritated and slightly drunk Phillip loses his composure momentarily and snaps at Brandon, calling him a liar. As he raises his voice and the excitement and tension in the scene rise, the camera quickly jumps to Rupert’s shocked expression. This is a clear technique to demonstrate Rupert’s intrigue and suspicion. It serves to tell the audience the first time that Rupert begins to suspect that the two party hosts may be up to something. The fact that this is the only time in the entire movie that the camera makes a quick switch from character to character instead of panning left, right, or out creates an effect of tension and raises the level of excitement in the audience’s mind.

Another technique that Rope used and I found fascinating was the use of sound as Rupert begins to interrogate Phillip at the piano. Like the camera shooting described above, it serves to raise the excitement and suspicion of all involved at the party. As Phillip is playing the piano, Rupert walks over and subtly probes as to why he and Brandon are on edge, and where David is. As his questions become less and less ambiguous and he starts to actually pry at Phillip, he turns on the tool used to keep the piano player’s rhythm (I don’t actually know what this tool is called, but it creates a tick, tick, tick, tick noise). As the interrogation continues, the “tick, tick, tick, tick” begins going faster and faster. Phillip continues to play the piano, and the audience can hear the other party goers in the background talking and laughing. The three sounds, mixed together with Rupert’s probing tone of his questions, raises the level of stress at the party. The audience can obviously see that more and more pressure is being put on Brandon and Phillip, but Rope’s use of sound and scene shooting (described above) make the audience actually feel it, which I found extremely interesting.