Since arriving in cinemas in 1948, film academia has used Alfred Hitchcocks’ ‘Rope‘ as a lesson in editing, camera movements, and the vital role rehearsal of actors and set action can play in a film. ‘Rope‘ deserves every mention it receives in film criticism and analysis and as Hitchcock’s first foray into Technicolor, ‘Rope‘ is a flawless example of a major film director using new technology and taking great risks with experimentation within the rigid world of 1940s Hollywood.
Over the course of ‘Rope‘ there are only ten edits each roughly ten minutes long — the length of a film magazine. The film plays out in ‘real time’ as Hitchcock’s central characters ready their apartment for a dinner party just moments after murdering a friend as an intellectual exercise. In search of the beauty and thrill of a perfectly executed plan, the aesthete murderers challenge their own acumen and wit against that of the unwitting family and friends of their victim.
Belgian illustrator Jack Durieux does away with the technical prowess and experimentation of the film and focuses on the casual sadism of killers Brandon Shaw and Phillip Morgan. Durieux’s illustration finds us mid-dinner party, the corpse hidden, Shaw and Morgan’s suppressed glee in getting away with murder plays out on the floor in the wire champagne topper, a trophy for the gentlemen — their callous intellectualism is celebrated with raised glasses, a toast to the hidden dead.
Jack Durieux’s ‘Rope’ is available at Mad Duck Posters.
‘Rope’ (Regular Edition) by Jack Durieux
‘Rope’ by Jack Durieux
24″ x 36″ 9 Color Screenprint
Regular Limited Edition of 225
$65
‘Rope’ (Variant Edition) by Jack Durieux
‘Rope’ by Jack Durieux
24″ x 36″ 9 Color Screenprint
Regular Limited Edition of 125
$85
