MovieChat Forums > Rope (1948) Discussion > Completely missed supposed homosexual vi...

Completely missed supposed homosexual vibe


The thought never entered my head. Not even an inkling. Then I watched "Rope Unleashed" and they discussed "it" as a big part of the movie.

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I'm surprised that there is any doubt that they are gay. Sure, the way the act around each other can be seen as just circumstantial evidence. But 1 key word in the movie, which spoken twice, gives it away without a doubt.

A couple people in here mentioned it but didn't really detail it. They live together in a 1 bedroom apartment. When the guests need to make a phone call Brandon says the phone is in "THE" bedroom. Not "my" bedroom or "Philips" bedroom, but "THE" bedroom. That 1 word says a lot. It says they are clearly gay, in a relationship, and everyone must know about it because nobody says a word about there being only 1 bedroom.

Janet even says something like "well that's cozy" when Brandon says the phone is in "THE" bedroom.

That's where Hitchcock was a master, that 1 simple word, seemingly missed by a lot of viewers, says a LOT.

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Let's see, Lived with an adult friend when I was in my twenties.....We argued a lot and even went on a vacation together once.....Neither of us is homosexual......a lot of people, mostly gays, want there to be homosexual undertones in every movie.....If you went by Hollywood's figures on the amount of gays in the world, you would think that about a third go that direction when in reality its only about one to three percent.......

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Well that is your story and good for you. But we are talking a movie with homosexual undertones. Meaning subtleties. And the two men were based on two famous homosexuals, Leopold and Loeb.

Swing away, Merrill....Merrill, swing away...

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I think anyone who reads up on the Leopold and Loeb case and then immediately watches Rope would find it impossible not to notice the homosexual undertones.

The very first scene--the murder--is a symbolic orgasm shared by the murderers; strangled, intense, and shameful. The murder is a stand-in for a sexual encounter between the two men. The way they discuss what has just happened during daylight, with the shades drawn, is as explicit as a film from 1948 possibly could be about gay sex and gay desire.

This is not a case of viewers "reading something into" a film that isn't there. It's there. Hitchcock was a master at representing sexuality through images, symbols, innuendo, etc.

Here's something everyone who's interested in this subject should check out: http://www.awardsdaily.com/blog/2011/03/30/farley-granger-hitchcock-th e-making-of-rope/

Quoted in that piece:

"Hitchcock took the script and put back in all the English phrases from the original play, such as “my dear boy,” that Laurents had removed. The censors circled all of these phrases as being “homosexual dialogue” and missed everything else. Hitch could be quite clever."

http://ocdviewer.com

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I am heterosexual and you usually have to hit me over the head before I pick up on anything others pick up on in a movie. Yet, I thought they might be gay, from the first scene. So much so that I wondered how Hitchcock got away with being so blatant, in those times. It is the way they acted towards each other felt like how couples act around each other both heterosexual and homosexual. I don't see how others did not pick up on this. I appreciate the other posters bringing out how some details in the scenes were symbolic because I did not pick up on those but I definitely picked up on the "couple vibe."

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[deleted]

Watched the film this morning. I missed it as well, and I'm usually the one who sees things like this before anyone else. But I knew about it, my mum's boyfriend who recommended it and is a huge Hitchcock fan, he told me all about it. He knows that I'm obsessed with implied gayness in films ^_^

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Wikipedia says Stewart's character was gay too, I didn't pick up a "gay vibe" with him.

Y'know, I could eat a peach for hours

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He was gay in the play, but i don't think they played him gay in the movie. Supposedly, he had had an affair with one of them.

Swing away, Merrill....Merrill, swing away...

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Do you think that this could play today? Two gay men killing a classmate. I don't think this film would be made on a lot of levels today. The continuous long shots. The subject manner. The whole concept doesn't seem like it would play today. I think the only way you would have a gay man involve in a killing today would require him to be the victim.

I don't remember how I learned these two killers were gay. I don't think I figured it out on my own, but I certainly knew something was up with them and I think a lot of people were like me and they confused their reasons to kill someone with them being gay so much as it clouds the issue. Obvious we knew there was something wrong with them, deeply wrong with them and it clearly had nothing to do with them being gay. The first just covered the second. I most likely thought they were really good friends.

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Nah, it could be made today (Where's DePalma? -- ouch!). I can see it being made, maybe not as rough as Hitchcock did it. He was actually trying something new and that's why it's so rough. He wanted it to be an actual play on the screen -- interesting concept.

Look at how long it took The Children's Hour to become actually what it was about. That could even stand another remake and be done properly, as well as some Tennessee Williams plays.

The gays no longer have to be victims these days. They can plan and plot someone's murder just as well and deviously as anyone else. Remember Basic Instinct?



Swing away, Merrill....Merrill, swing away...

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It has been a while since I have seen Basic Instinct, but I don't remember anyone who was gay in that film. I certainly don't know who you are talking about.

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Aren't lesbians homosexuals?

Swing away, Merrill....Merrill, swing away...

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I thought the lead actors were heterosexual. I googled it. It looks like I was wrong from what I read. I suppose I don't recall the plot to that movie all that well. But I wasn't too wrong about public opinion based on this article.

http://articles.philly.com/1992-03-15/entertainment/26018983_1_gay-act ivists-gay-community-national-gay

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Moose! Yep, they lesbians and gays etc. etc. etc. are homosexuals. I think Bugs Bunny was gay and Elmer Fudd were gay too.

It's entirely possible that I am missing the point of your message.

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Basic Instinct? I don't recall. What are you talking about?

It's entirely possible that I am missing the point of your message.

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Do you think that this could play today? Two gay men killing a classmate. I don't think this film would be made on a lot of levels today. The continuous long shots. The subject manner. The whole concept doesn't seem like it would play today. I think the only way you would have a gay man involve in a killing today would require him to be the victim.

Oh, I strongly disagree. Of course you could have a gay man be a murderer, and yes, this story (or one like it) would still work. Look at Murder by Numbers with Sandra Bullock, which was a riff on the Leopold-Loeb story — it wasn't a great movie, but the story idea wasn't what hampered it. The murderers in that weren't overtly gay, but the homoerotic tone was definitely there, and definitely intended.

The difference between now and Hollywood of the mid-20th century is that back then, with the so-called moral code, the character would be a murderer because he was gay, no other explanation needed. One of the quietly revolutionary things Hitchcock did with Rope was to have the murder be unrelated to their sexuality. They murdered because of their intellectual arrogance, not because they were gay.


You might very well think that. I couldn't possibly comment.

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I got the feeling that the real reason Rupert returned after everyone had left was the hopes of a romantic interlude between the three of them.

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Brandon was obviously the top.

I wish I could eat you so I could vomit you

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Your post about missing the homosexual relationship in this film started a long discussion of the question, Is it really there or not?

There are two perfectly valid approaches to a question like that. One is to imagine that there is no information available about the filmmakers' intentions and enjoy theorizing about the film from internal evidence. The other is to learn more about the film by looking up the available information. The best, really, is a combination of the two: first make what we can of the film from internal evidence, and then see what the filmmakers had in mind. If it turns out to be different from what we theorized, it doesn't mean we're absolutely wrong. It just means we've done what literary critics and film critics do that makes their essays more interesting than mere reviews -- produced new meaning from the book or film in question.

As for the relationship between the two murderers in Rope, the filmmakers' intentions are a matter of record. In Donald Spoto's book The Dark Side of Genius (1983), we find this:

In late autumn of 1947, Hitchcock invited Hume Cronyn to work on a prose adaptation of the play. The story -- about homosexual lovers who murder a friend.... (p. 320)

And again:
The central characters of the story were presented none too subtly. According to Laurents:
We never discussed the homosexual element of the script, but Hitchcock knew what he wanted to be able to get away with. He was as intrigued by the varieties of sexual life and conduct as he was by the varieties of movie-making methods.... (p. 322)

As others have noted, the play from which the film was adapted and the accounts of the true case that inspired the play definitely contain a homosexual element. To Americans watching the film in 1948, when the joint name "Leopold and Loeb" was still part of everyone's vocabulary, that element would have needed no introduction. It couldn't be mentioned outright in the film, but it would have been a presumed subtext.

So case closed as far as the filmmakers' understanding of their project is concerned. We're still free to make the film our own and understand it differently if we like.

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