Hitchcock’s first technicolor film begins with one of the director’s most horrifically affecting and memorable openings as a strangulation occurs behind a Manhattan apartment’s closed curtains. But how did we get here, and who is to blame? To celebrate the 75th anniversary of the experimental yet tightly controlled, psychological thriller, we’re exploring the candidates most deserving of “the real villain” title.
Brandon Shaw: A Deadly Entertainer
A narcissist with a penchant for danger who believes himself “a superior being,” Brandon (John Dall) masks psychopathy with perfectionism, ego, and an unquenchable desire for recognition. Brandon’s most valuable weapon is his “charm,” referenced on multiple occasions. A charm which he uses to both disarm and deceive. The orchestrator of murder: “for the sake of danger and for the sake of killing,” he can also easily transition from watching a man’s last breath to hosting a social gathering, even stooping to making light-hearted jokes about it.
Brandon demonstrates a coolness and an ability to detach, matched by a sense of elevated smugness, which he is less adept at controlling. Although the murder is meticulously planned, Brandon’s desire for danger unnecessarily puts himself and his accomplice, Phillip (Farley Granger), in increasing jeopardy. It is Brandon who suggests they serve dinner from the chest in which David’s lifeless body now rests, and it is Brandon who invites Rupert Cadell (James Stewart) to watch events unfold- both choices that lead to the eventual exposure of the murder.
Above all else, Brandon seeks acknowledgment for his perceived accomplishment, a crime that he mistakes for genius and artistry. Hitchcock spent his early years under the instruction of Jesuits and noted that this taught him organization and control . As a perfectionist who exercises self-composure and hyper-fixated on aesthetics, Brandon resembles a Hitchcock stand-in. In opening the curtains at the beginning of the film and through his interest in performance and affect, much like the director, he creates a spectacle and watches eagerly for the reaction. He is the master of ceremonies (at least, in front of the camera)- putting on a show for his guests and, by extension, for us as an audience.
Ever the meddler, Brandon is not satisfied with directing the tragedy of David Kentley as his appetite extends to “working the other two sides of the triangle,” instigating a romance with a macabre twist between Janet (Joan Chandler) and Kenneth (Douglas Dick). With multiple plots in play, he takes on an Iago-like Shakespearean villainy that exceeds that of Phillip and Rupert. When the party concludes, he reclines blissfully, celebrating his victory with self-congratulatory glory, showing no sign of remorse or regret for the ruined lives. Brandon values self-preservation above all else, as his handling of a crumbling Phillip illustrates. To accompany the psychological bullying he dishes out to Phillip, we see Brandon’s violent side when he slaps his friend coldly across the face. Furthermore, when Rupert’s suspicions are on the precipice of confirmation, and Phillip reaches the peak of hysteria, Brandon elects to continue the faรงade, using Phillip’s alcoholism as a last chance to evade conviction-his priority is to save himself, no matter the cost to others.
However, Brandon’s ideas of moral superiority are not a product of his own thinking, as we hear that the Nietzschean theories nesting in his brain were fed to him by Rupert. At: “Rupert’s feet,” student Brandon would sit until all hours. The ex-teacher was clearly a master to the now-graduate in more ways than one. A paragon of self-assurance and measured articulation, the cracks in Brandon may not be as easily detectable as they are in Phillip. Still, we see them emerge in tandem with Rupert’s appearance at the gathering. An affirmation of the elder’s powerful influence, Brandon displays a nervous breathlessness and excitement, stuttering somewhat with apprehension in Rupert’s presence. Brandon’s power and control over Phillip is mirrored in what Rupert exerts over his ex-pupil. If then, we are so keen to look upon Phillip with a degree of empathy, is there room for reading Brandon as an influential student, caught amidst the admiration and hero-worship of his superior, as someone whose actions are being controlled by an even higher force?
Phillip Morgan: A Broken Glass
As a fellow participant in this monstrous double act, have audiences overlooked the role played by Brandon’s accomplice Phillip? He is often read as a sympathetic character but can hardly be rendered an innocent bystander. Although meek and fragile, it is interesting to note that it is Phillip’s hands tugging firmly on the rope around the neck of a fading David Kentley in the film’s opening, meaning he commits the act of strangulation.
Such a fact may have been the intended design of the scheming Brandon, but nonetheless, it undeniably renders Phillip a murderer. With David’s body stored in the chest, the converse nature of the friends’ reactions is revealing. While Brandon rises, exhilarated, Phillip sinks, hunched over the chest. Unlike Brandon, who, when questioned by his accomplice about how he felt afterward, recalls, “I don’t remember feeling very much of anything.” Phillip is a man who feels, as shown through his regret and self-loathing, signaling a human ability to self-reflect as his last words confirm, “‘I hate both of us.”
Phillip fears his friend, “You frighten me, Brandon. You always have.” We hear how, after the party, he is to be “locked away” by Brandon, a passing remark that reveals the extent of coercive control in their relationship, adding evidence for reading Phillip as being not just a villain, but to some degree, a victim too. Phillip displays deceptive capabilities- his lie to Mrs. Wilson (Edith Evanson) about the key and keeping himself together at the beginning of the party in the presence of the murdered man’s fiancรฉe Janet, and ex-friend, Kenneth. However, this collected and congenial outward demeanor soon diminishes as we watch him crack in moments of panic like the dinner glasses he smashes, as he breaks from the inside until he can no longer handle it.
Rupert Cadell: A Man With A God Complex
Audiences watching Rope in the late 1940s would have found it almost impossible to condemn Rupert, not because of his character but because of who played him. In casting James Stewart, the epitome of the all-American man whom audiences knew had served in the war, Hitchcock plays another masterful hand at calling in our complicity and responses to his hero/anti-hero.
“Did you think you were God, Brandon?” is Rupert’s mighty and apprehending question for the man who has been his disciple for many years. As the source of Brandon’s preoccupations and theories, without Rupert, we could ask ourselves whether this murder would have even taken place. Rupert is “a very serious fellow” who is comfortable sharing his view of murder as “a privilege for the few,” not just with Brandon but with the entire party gathered, evidence of his commitment to what he preaches and to the notion of him embodying a god complex. However, He is careful to share these fascist-leaning philosophies in a dry and tongue-in-cheek manner, making a reading his intentions a problematic and difficult task.
In a position of power and authority and as a role model to his students, we have already listened to how Rupert told an attentive Brandon “the weirdest things.” But while Rupert is at ease talking about such things, he never takes the leap to put his ideas into practice. He is, without doubt, living and speaking different lives, a hypocrite who sets up the shot for others to fire before running clear. Rupert and Brandon share some similar traits; both enjoy “fencing,” as Rupert calls it, and both are excellent deceivers. Note Rupert deceives Brandon and Phillip by pretending he returns to retrieve a cigarette case he has had in his possession the entire time. Like Brandon, Rupert cares greatly about self-preservation, apparent through his choice to expose the pair to save himself, acting as a transference of guilt. However, both Phillip and Rupert express fear at different moments, which serves to align them. While Phillip declares to his friend, “I’m glad it excites you, it frightens me,” in the final act, we see Rupert order Brandon to stand back because “in a way I’m frightened.” When Rupert finally opens the chest to confirm his suspicions, his reaction reads as a genuine expression of horror and anguish as he declares a feeling of shame, which Phillip also shares.
Admittedly, Rupert’s delivery is patronizing, and there is more than a touch of the sanctimonious in him revealing the crime while simultaneously washing his hands of any culpability. In doing so, Rupert is the agent of justice who brings the murder out into the open. However, he does not have to wear the guilt of their punishment, “It’s not what I’m going to do, Brandon, it’s what society’s going to do. I don’t know what that will be, but I can guess, and I can help.” Thus, he gives the impression of assuming the moral high ground but not the responsibility of answering to the consequences of his words, which the pair have given “a meaning I could never dream of.” As a publisher, it is darkly ironic that Rupert did not heed the consequences behind the interpretation and meaning of his own words more carefully. Although Rupert did not physically commit the crime, he bears some moral responsibility for its occurrence.
If Rupert represents society and the decent and moral amongst us, then, upon recalling Brandon’s line, “perhaps what is called civilization is hypocrisy,” these words suddenly become prophetic. While Rupert’s hands may be clean (metaphorically at least), how culpable is he when the police sirens ring out by the film’s end, and how enlightened has he become? What Hitchcock has achieved here is more than simply a technical feat or a throwaway drawing room drama. Whether you believe that the villain of Rope is the gleefully psychopathic Brandon, the coerced and crumbling Phillip, or Rupert, the originator of the theories put into practice, there is no doubt that the film exposes the blurred lines that exist between culpability, moral responsibility, and hypocrisy, masterfully illustrating that villainy exists in many forms.
If you’re in the mood for more Dinner Parties To Die For, or perhaps a bit more Hitchcock, we’ve got you covered.
