Summary
Phillip is suddenly startled when he sees Mr. Kentley enter the room carrying a bundle of books tied together with the infamous rope with which they strangled David. Cadell notes Phillip’s sudden anxiety and questions him about it, but Phillip is silent. When Cadell presses him, Brandon admits that he thinks that the books are tied up in a clumsy manner. Cadell looks over and sees that the books are tied up with the rope, then turns back to look at Phillip, who is all but shivering with fear. Phillip goes over to make himself a drink, where Brandon whispers to him to calm down and stop looking so suspicious. When Phillip tells him that Mr. Cadell is on to them, Brandon denies it and urges him to “let up.” As the two men begin to argue more violently, Mr. Cadell approaches and asks if he has upset Phillip and Brandon.
As Mr. Cadell begins to confront the two men about the fact that they both seem to be upset about something, they are interrupted by Mrs. Wilson, who enters to announce that someone is calling for Mr. Kentley or Mrs. Atwater. “It must be Alice. I’ll talk to her,” Mrs. Atwater says, and goes to answer the phone. The camera follows Mrs. Wilson as she begins to clear the chest and take items back into the kitchen. We hear the group discussing David, with Mr. Cadell suggesting that David was always very polite and punctual, and that it seems suspicious that he wouldn’t have phoned or arrived yet. Where could David be, they wonder. We see Mrs. Wilson pick up some books from the dining room to bring back into the living room. She sets the books on the floor, as Brandon suggests that perhaps David is at Janet’s apartment, but Janet denies that that’s possible.
Mrs. Wilson continues to clear the table as the group discusses David’s disappearance. She takes a tray into the kitchen, as Mr. Kentley discusses the fact that David went to play tennis that afternoon, which he knows because someone phoned him from there with a message that David would meet them at the dinner party. As Mr. Cadell suggests that David’s plans must have changed at the tennis club, Mrs. Wilson begins to blow out the candles and remove the tablecloth from the table. Brandon tells the group that neither he nor Phillip have spoken to David since they invited him to the party, as Mrs. Wilson brings the candles into the dining room. Just as Brandon says this, Mr. Kentley states that he heard David on the phone with Phillip the previous day. Phillip reluctantly admits that this is true, and Mrs. Wilson brings yet another stack of books into the living room.
Just as Mrs. Wilson goes to open the chest and put some books in, Mr. Cadell offers to help her, and she does not look inside. Brandon interrupts them, and tells Mrs. Wilson that she should put the books back the following morning, which seems to confuse her, as she had not planned to come in then. She accepts his order, and Mr. Cadell puts the books on top of the chest. Suddenly Mrs. Atwater comes in, and tells Mr. Kentley that Mrs. Kentley hasn’t heard from David. Ms. Atwater details the fact that Mrs. Kentley is very upset and thinks that David may have had an accident, and that she wants Mr. Kentley to call the police. As the room becomes more and more tense, the camera pans to Mr. Cadell, who looks at Brandon and Phillip with a concerned expression. Mr. Kentley then says that he ought to go home and tend to his wife, bemoaning the fact that David is behaving so uncharacteristically.
Janet offers to go with Mr. Kentley, who accepts her offer. As Brandon escorts everyone to the door, Kenneth takes the opportunity to have a private moment with Janet. He tells her that he’s very glad that they spoke to one another, smiling at her. She agrees, and assures him that David will be pleased as well. As Kenneth says his goodbyes, Janet invites him along, an invitation he accepts. Brandon brings Janet her stole and Kenneth goes to get his hat. Brandon smiles at his prediction come true: that Janet and Kenneth would have a connection that evening. As Brandon says goodnight to the guests, the camera pans to Mr. Cadell and Phillip in the living room. Mr. Cadell approaches Phillip, before going out into the hall and walking to the closet, where he takes the wrong hat from Mrs. Wilson. When he puts it on and it doesn’t fit, Mrs. Wilson laughs, but Cadell maintains a grave expression.
As he looks down at the hat that he grabbed, Mr. Cadell notices that the hat has the initials “D.K.” in it, David Kentley’s initials. Mrs. Wilson brings him his actual hat, and Cadell hands her David’s to put back in the closet. Cadell leaves the apartment, and Brandon closes the door behind him, heaving a sigh of relief. He takes out a cigarette and smirks, walking back to the living room. There, he turns on a lamp and laughs about their success to Phillip, who still looks stricken. When Brandon brags that their evening could not have gone more beautifully, Phillip insists that it would have been smoother had Cadell not been there. Brandon is unconvinced, however, pleased that Mr. Cadell led such such a spirited discussion of murder, adding the “touch” the party needed.
Phillip is still upset and tells Brandon about how Cadell questioned him relentlessly while Brandon was busy tying up the books in the murderous rope. “You’ll ruin everything with your neat little touches,” Phillip snarls. Phillip is drunk and upset, and Brandon confronts him for lying about wrangling the chickens’ necks. “Have you ever bothered for one second to wonder how someone else might feel?” Phillip asks Brandon. The men fight, with Phillip confronting Brandon about his vanity and megalomania, and Brandon teasing Phillip about how much he is drinking. “At least if I have a hangover it’ll be all mine,” says Phillip, defiantly. Brandon sits and discusses whether they ought to take a longer holiday than originally planned, but Phillip is still upset, expressing regret for having murdered David. He tells Brandon that he is afraid they are going to get caught, but Brandon assures him that that’s no longer a possibility.
They are startled by the sound of a door opening. It is Mrs. Wilson, who tells Brandon that she needs a key so she can come and clean up in the morning, especially if Brandon and Phillip are traveling up to the farm that evening. Brandon gives her a key, and she wishes them well on their vacation, before going out the front door. Brandon then calls the garage to get the car ready. Phillip looks anxious and walks into the living room. Brandon approaches the chest and begins to open it, but orders Phillip to close the curtains first. Suddenly, the doorbell rings, and Phillip becomes frantic. Brandon thinks it’s just the garage or Mrs. Wilson who forgot something, and orders Phillip to answer it, but Phillip is horrified. Anxiously, Phillip goes to answer it, as it rings yet again.
Phillip answers it and looks terrified. Hanging up the phone, he runs towards Brandon, telling him that it was Mr. Cadell, who wants to come up and retrieve his cigarette case which he left behind. Brandon stays calm and tells Phillip that they have to let him come back up, but Phillip is hysterical, insisting that Cadell must be on to them. When Phillip won’t do as he says, Brandon slaps him, and goes to the phone himself, inviting Cadell to come back up and apologizing for Phillip’s anxious behavior, which he attributes to drunkenness. Hanging up the phone, Brandon goes to Phillip, whom he implores to pull himself together in anticipation of Cadell’s arrival. Phillip is nearly catatonic, unresponsive to Brandon’s requests. Brandon pours Phillip another drink and assures him that Cadell will leave in five minutes and that all will be well. “For those five minutes, you’ve got to pull yourself together,” he tells Phillip, but Phillip is still upset.
Brandon goes into the hall to retrieve something as the camera pans to the door, which buzzes to signal Cadell’s arrival. Brandon walks into the frame holding a gun. He then goes to answer the door.
Analysis
If Brandon is too smooth and confident in his duping of the party guests, Phillip is too excitable and anxious. Brandon hardly ever shows his emotions, keeping them hidden behind a veneer of slippery charm, but Phillip cannot help but broadcast his alarm and inner feelings in his expression. The already-suspicious Cadell notes Phillip’s excitability, and it only makes him more and more anxious to learn the truth. Phillip and Brandon are complete opposites, even though they have collaborated on the murder. Phillip’s excitability and sensitivity only makes Mr. Cadell more uneasy, and more suspicious.
Brandon is the complete opposite, an ostentatiously irreverent and unflappable liar. While Phillip nervously plays the piano and deflects questioning, Brandon almost invites their discovery. He tempts fate time and time again, as exemplified by the fact that he ties up the books for Mr. Kentley in the rope with which they strangled David, the man’s son. As things get more and more tense, Brandon becomes more and more smooth and unfeelingly calm. Part of his joy in getting away with the murder comes from his ability to have done so while also giving himself away at every turn without being apprehended. He relishes his ability to get away with things while flirting with discovery.
The two men, Phillip and Brandon, are shown to be at odds with one another in the moments of tension, which undermines their plot. Indeed, while they fancy themselves to be superior gentlemen capable of the murder, we find that as the pressures increase, they become rather inferior to their understandably suspicious guests. Their plot has numerous holes in it. It seems that they have not adequately thought the evening through, getting hung up on the style of the murder rather than the actual course of events. Indeed, they have not anticipated that anyone would find their behavior or the peculiarities of the evening suspicious. Their belief in their own superiority is also the source of their hubris. They believe that no one will apprehend their plot and that they can “play God” with their party guests, and in so doing, they overlook the possibility of their own guilt and apprehension.
This section includes yet another instance in which a conversation is going on in one part of the room, but the camera shows something entirely different. As the party guests discuss the possible whereabouts of David, the camera follows Mrs. Wilson as she begins to clear the chest of the serving plates. By showing the chest being cleared, Hitchcock shows that Phillip and Brandon’s murder is becoming more and more vulnerable to being found out. As everyone wonders where David is, the audience is privy to the fact that David is nearby, stuffed into the nearby chest that the housekeeper is so blithely cleaning. This storytelling tactic echoes the moment from earlier, when the camera settled on Mr. Cadell as he watched Phillip and Brandon argue. In both, the audience is let in on a kind of narrative perspective, which heightens the tension. Instead of seeing the main action, we see what is happening beneath the surface.
The film is notable not only for its innovative photographic techniques—the entire film seems like one long shot, and the events unfold in real time—but also because it forces an alignment between the viewer and the murderers. Because we saw Brandon and Phillip kill David in the very first scene of the movie, we as viewer spend the entire time wondering anxiously if they will be found out. Part of the reason that Hitchcock chooses to show Mrs. Wilson bringing the books back to the chest and cleaning it up, rather than showing what is a rather tense and pivotal discussion between the party guests, is because the audience already knows David’s whereabouts, in contrast with everyone else at the party, save for Brandon and Philip. In aligning the audience with the murderers, Hitchcock creates something of a conundrum, as the viewer is asked to become anxious about the revelation of Brandon and Phillip’s crime. The dramatic irony is irregularly palpable in this film, because we as audience members know so much. In a regular whodunit, the viewer is aligned with a more noble-hearted protagonist, usually someone who is trying to solve the crime, so the revelation of a murder serves as a kind of relief or a resolution to the conflict. In Rope, the conflict itself becomes the threat that the murderers will be revealed. While the viewer is not necessarily asked to sympathize with Phillip and Brandon, and they are clearly misguided and diabolical, the fact of our having been privy to their plight makes the question of who is right and who is wrong rather more ambiguous. Thus, the film maintains an unusually amoral position, one that presents the crime as crime, but that gives more insight into the deeds and concerns of the criminal than the victims.
