Rope
Almeida
Generous
Finborough
Oh dear, not this again. I’ve seen Hitchcock’s wonderfully creepy film Rope several times and I had little appetite for the Patrick Hamilton play on which it’s based. Big surprise. The film script was radically customised to accommodate the timid tastes of 1940s film-goers. The original, from 1929, is more daring, subtle, profound and psychologically interesting in every way. In fact, this isn’t just a masterpiece. This is one of those rare occasions in art when a mind of extraordinary power takes a stale genre — the repertory thriller in this case — tosses aside all the conventions and raises the format to a previously unimaginable plane of sophistication.
Right from the first line Hamilton rewrites the rule book. He starts by solving the mystery. A pair of amoral toffs kill a friend in order to test Nietzsche’s dictum, ‘live dangerously’.
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