Tonight (Thursday 23 August) the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts presents the world premiere of a stage adaptation of the ROPE screenplay by Arthur Laurents (as opposed to the original play by Patrick Hamilton). Reportedly, the stage adaptation makes explicit what was at best only hinted at in Hitchcock's film, that Rupert (played in the film by James Stewart) had once had an affair with his student Brandon (John Dahl in the film). The Hitchcock Scholars/'MacGuffin' website's News and Comment page has been running a series of items about the validity/effectiveness of such an explicit interpretation. The latest entry follows. Hollywood correspondent for 'Cahiers du Cinéma', Bill Krohn ('Hitchcock at Work'), has emailed us to the effect that ah, well, that's the new trend - 'to turn connotations into denotations'. We'll publish on the website Bill's full comments, perhaps with comment, too, from the stage version's director, Jack Shouse. Further details, including details of performances at Solvang and Santa Maria, California, are on the above-mentioned website (link follows). The 'MacGuffin' editor invites comments from readers (<[log in to unmask]>). - Ken Mogg (Ed., 'The MacGuffin'). http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~muffin ----- August 22 This matter of Rupert and Brandon - did they or didn't they? - in Rope, is crucial to Hitchcock's method of filmmaking. After all, as I've often pointed out, there's an ambiguity in his films that goes right back to The Lodger (1926) where we can't be certain that the Ivor Novello character may not be 'The Avenger', his sister's murderer - though an apparent 'happy ending' ultimately deflects our attention away from such a possibility. Similarly, in I Confess (1953), the scene in the summer-house is allowed to remain unresolved by an expedient fade-out and fade-in. Of Michael Logan (Montgomery Clift), who was newly returned from war service at the time, we may ask: did he or didn't he have sex with the married Ruth Grandfort (Anne Baxter)? Of course, we're told that he hadn't known that Ruth was married, which raises the further question even more 'shocking' (if you're so inclined): did she or didn't she lead him on? (When asked about this scene, Hitchcock added an ambiguity of his own, replying to the effect that he was a non-judgemental recorder of events, but that he naturally wished the pair well!) So you may see why I question a stage production of the Rope screenplay that too explicitly indicates that Rupert and Brandon had once had an affair. At best, the possibility should hang in the air. That possibility was always there (despite what I wrote yesterday, school teachers have been known to have affairs - of whatever degree of involvement, including homosexual involvement - with students, and I believe there was a 'school' of lesbian writing in England that showed as much at about the time Patrick Hamilton's 'Rope' appeared), but to spell it out is counter-productive to the dramatic effect. At least, Hitchcock appears to have thought so. True, perhaps he was equally concerned to find his away around censorship rules (and by the time of Frenzy [1972] he was prepared to take advantage of a perceived easing of those rules), but certainly part of the 'Hitchcock touch' was to positively delight in hinting at the 'unthinkable'. When, in Saboteur (1942), a car-load of (male) fascists starts singing 'Tonight We Love" to the melody of Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto, this is more than an illustration of actor Norman Lloyd's observation that Hitchcock liked to leave audiences a bit puzzled. (At other times, when suspense was paramount, he liked to be as crystal-clear as possible.) It also hints, for those prepared to take Hitchcock's point, at how these men are gay. Indeed, to drive home the point, one of the men is heard saying that his mother had dressed him as a girl until an abnormally late age! Likewise, in Under Capricorn (1949), made the year after Rope, there are the merest hints that in the years when husband (Joseph Cotten) and wife (Ingrid Bergman) had been separated while he served his sentence as a convict, she had survived by prostituting herself and he meanwhile had practised homosexuality. (But, the film implies, there's no blame - only the feeling of shame that has created the 'great gulf fixed' between them.) Accordingly, it worries me that the director of the stage production of the Rope screenplay has seen fit to 'go explicit' about a matter that Hitchcock intended to be otherwise. After all, it's the emotional truth in these cases that is important, not their possible physical basis ... ---- For past messages, visit the Screen-L Archives: http://bama.ua.edu/archives/screen-l.html