Rope (Warner Bros.) (1948)

FEATURE IDEAS FOR EACH Useful too for Heralds, School Distribution, Lobby Blowups ORDER MAT NO. 358-401X Months of Planning and Precision Rehearsal Responsible for ROPE’s New Film Technique ON THIS PAGE: 4-Col. Sunday Feature Mat Hitchcock Achieves Continuous Action by Perfect Integration A great battle may be only two or three days in the fighting, Intensive Preparation was the keynote for months as work went forward on Transatlantic Pictures’ $2,000,000 Super-suspense thriller, “Rope,” which Alfred Hitchcock directed for Warner Bros. release. In this candid shot taken on the set of the Technicolor film, Hitchcock, master of Suspense (leaning on table, center), discusses the action a8 Large Portion of Film's $2,000,000 Cost Went To Pre-production Work place as long as it was being photographed. with cast and crew, months before a camera started rolling. Cameramen, electricians, sound men, technicians attended daily rehearsals with members of cast for a long time before actual shooting began, assuring perfect co-ordination. but the logistics and planning consume many months. What might be called “Operation Rope,” in Hollywood, has a point In addition to devising a new camera dolly, the Warner technicians had to set up a new system of sound pick-ups, since it 28 of similarity with the battle. It was months in preparation, but it only took thirteen days to shoot. Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rope,” produced for Warner Bros. by Transatlantic Pictures Corp. at the Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, Cal., created a tremendous stir in the film colony during production. It used an entirely new production technique. Stop-watch Timing As a result of months of intensive pre-production planning and painstaking rehearsals, until every member of the company from the assistant electrician to the star, James Stewart, had achieved stop-watch timing and blue-print precision, Hitchcock was able to complete the $2,000,000 production in the shortest shooting time and with the least number of expensive retakes ever required for a multi-million dollar effort. “Rope” is Hitchcock’s first film in Technicolor, which makes the production achievement even more notable. The shooting schedule was only one of the wonders of “Rope.” Another, of virtually equal importance, was that absolutely no cutting was required for the picture. When the camera stopped turning on the final day of shooting, all that had to be done was to assemble the reels of film. and cement them together. Not one foot of film could be cut out because the action of the picture is continuous. There are no dissolves, no abrupt cuts from a closeup of one person to another. Except for the addition of a very, very brief musical score to accompany the opening titles, there was absolutely no further work on the picture after the thirteenth day of shooting. But before the shooting began, more than a year: of planning and preparation had preceded it. The casting — James Stewart, John Dall, Farley Granger, Edith Evanson, Douglas Dick, Joan Chandler, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, William Hogan and Constance Collier —was the least of the pre-production problems. The screenplay by Arthur Laurents, based on Hume Cronyn’s adaptation of Patrick Hamilton’s stage-play, was designed to accommodate Hitchcock’s new technique of continuous action within the three-room New York apartment which is the setting for the picture. The walls of the “Rope” apartment were “wild,” to use a technical motion picture term. That means they were hung on Overhead tracks and mounted on rollers so that they could be pulled aside noiselessly from room to room. After the camera’s movements were plotted, the studio crew had to rehearse the movement of “wild” furniture as well as “wild” walls, so that when the camera crossed a room, nothing would be in its way, but everything would appear to be in would be almost impossible for an individual microphone to follow the camera around the room, Another production engineering problem was that of planning all the individual lighting setups needed as the camera shifted position, and of insuring a smooth shift from one set of lights to another. An electrician sitting at a “light organ” used 47 different switches to control the illumination. Weeks of Rehearsals Finally, when all these advance preparations were completed, Hitchcock brought his cast on to the set and went into weeks of painstaking rehearsals —rehearsals just as much for the cameraman and the sound man and the electrician as for the actors. The film editor, who normally does not take over until all the pictures have been shot, did just the reverse on “Rope.” He sat in with Hitchcock before a single foot of film was exposed, helping to plan so that the close-ups and the long shots would all occur in proper sequence.