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 Set-Up

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. This week, we’re diving into the other aspects that make this movie queer: five elements—apart from Brandon and Philip’s relationship and the themes it invokes—that makes Rope Hitchcock’s queerest film.

That Apartment

The entirety of Rope takes place in a single location, in real time, and is shot as if it were one single, long take. Not to sound cliché, but Brandon and Phillip’s apartment is another character in the story; the place where their perfect crime is planned, executed, and eventually thwarted.

From the moment Brandon opens the curtains to let the sun in after the murder, we know this is the apartment of someone with taste. Wide windows overseeing the city skyline. Antique chests filled with first edition books. Fancy china, candelabras, and a grand piano. It’s assumed—though never discussed—that Phillip and Brandon live together, but it’s clear that the décor was as carefully thought-of as the murder that took place there.

The Art Of Throwing A Party

The premise of the film revolves around a dinner party. But not just any dinner party; a party that has been planned to fit Brandon’s morbid vision of a perfect crime. He has invited David’s father and aunt (Sir Cedric Hardwicke and Constance Collier), as well as David’s fiancée Janet (Joan Chandler)—he’s orchestrating setting her up with Davids’s former best friend Kenneth (Douglas Dick). And the cherry on top is bringing over their former headmaster from their schooldays, who Brandon is certain would be proud at the feat he pulled off.

This is to say, this is a detailed and curated party, where every guest has been thoughtfully thought out, and past relationships, grudges, and anticipating what might happen when people meet are all taken into account. How is that different from planning a Sunday brunch with a group of gay men that have known each other for years?

Astrology & Horoscopes

One of the standout characters of the movie is Mrs. Anita Atwater (Collier), David’s kooky aunt who attends the party in lieu of his sick mother. A snobbish, slightly clueless rich older dame, she is obsessed with astrology and the influence that the stars have on people.

She tells Janet her compatibility with David means wedding bells are near for them, she judges movie stars based on their signs, and when she reads Brandon’s palms, she tells him his hands will make him famous. We’ve all attended a queer party where someone goes around asking about natal charts and exact times of birth.

Cultural Chit-Chat & Commentary

A lot of the brilliance of the film comes from the tension of knowing there is a dead body hidden in the middle of the room, and that at any point one mistake or slip-up could lead to the discovery.

This means that a lot of the actual dialogue the characters have is just regular party talk and seemingly innocuous conversations. Most of them revolve around art and culture, the most recent movies that people have seen, their thoughts on celebrities, and the books they’re enjoying. And not to say that entertainment chatter is inherently queer, but in the context of these characters and the time the movie was made, moving around culturally-savvy social circles just adds more to the impression of these character’s identities.

The Excitement Of Danger

Brandon claims at the beginning of the film—right after strangling David with the titular rope—that he did it as an intellectual experiment to prove he could and should be able to get away with it; that some people deserve the right to kill others, and others deserve to be killed. But also, he did it because the danger—the thrill of the forbidden and the taboo—excited him.

Being queer is obviously not synonymous with being a murderer. But being queer has been equated with something taboo and forbidden for a long time. For many years, especially at the time Rope was made and released, gay people had to operate under the shadows. There was an inherent risk of being discovered while trying to meet others like you. Things like cruising and going to bars had this element of danger. But there was also excitement in participating in them. And this dichotomy is perhaps one of the queerest sentiments explored in the film.

For further studies, this YouTube creator has uploaded a handy supercut featuring all of the movie’s moments of gay innuendo:

Rope is available for digital rental or purchase via Amazon Prime Video, AppleTV, Google Play, Vudu, and YouTube.