Is ‘Rope’ Hitchcock’s gayest film? 5 signs that make it glaringly obvious
Welcome back to our queer film retrospective, “A Gay Old Time.” In this week’s column, we revisit Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1948 thriller Rope, long cited as a thinly veiled queer allegory.Every week on this column we explore an old movie that has an unlikely or under-discussed angle on queer culture.
We’ve talked about movies by queer directors, featuring queer actors, and featuring queer relationships and friendships that culture seems to have overlooked throughout the years.But this week we are doing a bit of a pivot, and talking about a classic movie whose gay undertones have been extensively discussed for quite some time now: the 1948 Alfred Hitchcock classic Rope.The movie follows Brandon (John Dall) and Phillip (Farley Granger), two college students that murder one of their friends and prep-school classmates, David (Dick Hogan), and throw a dinner party quite literally over his dead body—just for the thrill of it.
However, when their former housemaster, Rupert Cadell (James Stewart), starts to suspect something is wrong, the situation quickly spirals as they try to cover their crime.Much has been written about the queer subtext of the relationship between Brandon and Phillip; the play that the movie is based on was supposedly inspired by a similar story between two lovers (infamous murderers Leopold and Loeb), and the writer even claimed he had a romantic backstory for them.
The power dynamics between thee two reflect romantic and sexual baggage, and there are many parallels between being discovered committing the crime and being outed.However, these discussions have been done before by many others, from amateur critics to academics.
