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Post by hi224 on Mar 18, 2019 18:54:15 GMT
Granger Was MVP, but what did everyone here think of Stewart.
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Post by politicidal on Mar 19, 2019 15:53:01 GMT
Honestly I found John Dall the most interesting. Stewart was alright I suppose.
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Post by delon on Mar 19, 2019 17:52:38 GMT
Jimmy Stewart himself felt he was miscast in the role and I agree with him. I think actors like James Mason or George Sanders could have played smug intellectual that was Rupert much more convincingly than him. Perhaps even Ray Milland.
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Post by vegalyra on Mar 19, 2019 18:02:53 GMT
Jimmy Stewart himself felt he was miscast in the role and I agree with him. I think actors like James Mason or George Sanders could have played smug intellectual that was Rupert much more convincingly than him. Perhaps even Ray Milland. I like Stewart in just about anything, but I agree with you, James Mason would have been ideal.
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Post by hi224 on Mar 20, 2019 2:02:49 GMT
Jimmy Stewart himself felt he was miscast in the role and I agree with him. I think actors like James Mason or George Sanders could have played smug intellectual that was Rupert much more convincingly than him. Perhaps even Ray Milland. what about Fredric March? Grant was the original choice as well.
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Post by fangirl1975 on Mar 21, 2019 19:27:04 GMT
James Stewart was ok in his role, however James Mason or perhaps Joseph Cotton (dang auto correct) would've been ideal.
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Post by Isapop on Mar 23, 2019 23:05:12 GMT
Jimmy Stewart himself felt he was miscast in the role and I agree with him. I think actors like James Mason or George Sanders could have played smug intellectual that was Rupert much more convincingly than him. Perhaps even Ray Milland. I also agree about the miscasting of Stewart. His modest, down to earth quality makes him the unlikely sort of person that two arrogant students are going to be out to try to impress. A star with a more patrician bearing was needed, and there were certainly A-list film stars who fit the bill: Joseph Cotton, as mentioned. Laurence Olivier, Clifton Webb. (The blessed James Mason hadn't arrived in Hollywood yet.)
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Post by twothousandonemark on Mar 24, 2019 4:14:53 GMT
Well, Stewart brought me into the movie in the first place, so that's a win for him.
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Post by petrolino on Mar 24, 2019 4:37:18 GMT
I thought Jimmy Stewart stole it.
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Post by Prime etc. on Mar 24, 2019 7:28:08 GMT
It's not as bad miscasting for him when compared to the clean-shaved mountain man in How The West Was Won!
But his charisma erases whatever misgiving there were--and I think for ROPE the idea was to make him the repentant voice of righteous indignation and I think he does work for those scenes.
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Post by telegonus on Mar 27, 2019 8:46:03 GMT
It took me a dog's age to finally catch Rope, and while in its static aspects it was somewhat of a disappointment the central story grabbed me. Jimmy Stewart was somewhat miscast, but not 100% IMHO. He was believable as a professor type, All-American division; and as such he was good for Hitchcock in this the way Fred MacMurray's more breezy (that's putting it mildly) professor-inventor type in the Disney Flubber series was a good fit.
Most of the other suggestions don't feel right to me if only for the lack of charisma and strong screen presence, and that includes, for me, George Sanders. Fine for Oscar Wilde, not for this one. Joseph Cotten was a Hitchcock guy, a point in his favor; however his screen presence was unexciting; and his blandness and his being charisma challenged would have hurt the film. This is where Stewart, while a dicey choice in theory was in fact a good one in the actual movie.
James Mason was still somewhat of a glamor boy back then, and he was himself at the time a specialist in often sinister, somewhat ambiguous and romantic roles. This would have worked against him as the professor, who needed a moral center (I don't think) I've ever seen in Mason, do see in Stewart.
Fredric March: a fine actor, there was an equivocal, somewhat amorphous quality to him on screen. I find his later work in Executive Suite and The Bridges At Toko-Ri too neurotic to be credible; and I actually dislike this otherwise likable actor's work in both films. Nor do I care much for his put upon suburban family man terrorized by a criminal gang led by Humphrey Bogart in The Desperate Hours. The fire, such as he had any, was gone from March in films. He got it back for Seven Days In May (and what else?). I'd say that Robert Montgomery might have been a fine choice for the part of the professor
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Post by hi224 on Mar 27, 2019 18:45:53 GMT
It took me a dog's age to finally catch Rope, and while in its static aspects it was somewhat of a disappointment the central story grabbed me. Jimmy Stewart was somewhat miscast, but not 100% IMHO. He was believable as a professor type, All-American division; and as such he was good for Hitchcock in this the way Fred MacMurray's more breezy (that's putting it mildly) professor-inventor type in the Disney Flubber series was a good fit. Most of the other suggestions don't feel right to me if only for the lack of charisma and strong screen presence, and that includes, for me, George Sanders. Fine for Oscar Wilde, not for this one. Joseph Cotten was a Hitchcock guy, a point in his favor; however his screen presence was unexciting; and his blandness and his being charisma challenged would have hurt the film. This is where Stewart, while a dicey choice in theory was in fact a good one in the actual movie. James Mason was still somewhat of a glamor boy back then, and he was himself at the time a specialist in often sinister, somewhat ambiguous and romantic roles. This would have worked against him as the professor, who needed a moral center (I don't think) I've ever seen in Mason, do see in Stewart. Fredric March: a fine actor, there was an equivocal, somewhat amorphous quality to him on screen. I find his later work in Executive Suite and The Bridges At Toko-Ri too neurotic to be credible; and I actually dislike this otherwise likable actor's work in both films. Nor do I care much for his put upon suburban family man terrorized by a criminal gang led by Humphrey Bogart in The Desperate Hours. The fire, such as he had any, was gone from March in films. He got it back for Seven Days In May (and what else?). I'd say that Robert Montgomery might have been a fine choice for the part of the professor Cary Grant was Hitch's first choice, do you think perhaps he would've added anything at all?. speaking of which a prequel detailing debates between the two men and the professor would be interesting.
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Post by telegonus on Mar 28, 2019 7:29:18 GMT
Cary Grant is a favorite actor of mine; especially as a star player. His likability and innate charm would have worked somewhat against him as a highly opinionated (albeit grounded) professor. I just can't see him "playing serious", as Stewart did in Rope nearly so well as Stewart.
Grant was a sublime player, and one of the greatest of all the great superstars of classic American film IMHO; however, drama was not his strong point. He could do it; and he could express strong emotions, too, notably, anger.
Yet Rope was, while an interesting project, also a humorless one. There was no room at all for an actor to display charm in that play, which would have left Mr. Grant coming across as looking nearly stranded as a March or a Montgomery would have seemed at home in the play's milieu.
The aforementioned are simply my opinions, and not intended as lecturing or a pompous holding forth. The larger issue in casting for the film of Rope probably still needs to be addressed. Two actors who strike me as good potential choices for the professor are Burgess Meredith and Melvyn Douglas.
Meredith's short stature would have worked against him as an authority figure, yet I believe that Meredith had the chops, more specifically the classical training, to have pulled it off. Douglas strikes me as a more journeyman character man, good at what he did well, not in Meredith's league as to talent.
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Post by Doghouse6 on Mar 28, 2019 23:34:10 GMT
I've said in other posts on long-ago threads that I found Stewart miscast. His all-American farmboy earnestness - or as Isapop put it, "his modest, down to earth quality" - is at odds with Rupert's edge of lacerating superciliousness and questionable sincerity. As we see him at Brandon and Phillip's party, he's a provocateur who enjoys disarming people with outrageous assertions in order to mess with their heads and observe their reactions. James Mason and Clifton Webb, mentioned on this thread, are among those I've suggested, but delon 's submission of Ray Milland may be the best fit. His roguish charm is suitable for a man about whom others can never quite tell if he means to be taken seriously, in spite of any claims that he should. Ultimately, though, the role would be a challenge for any actor due to an inherent deficiency at its core as written: it's hard to accept that a man of such supposed analytical intellect could be so obtuse as to never have considered the effect his philosophies and pronouncements might have on the impressionable minds of students. When he tells Brandon with righteous moral outrage, "You've given my words a meaning that I never dreamed of, and you've tried to twist them into a cold, logical excuse for your ugly murder! Well, they never were that, Brandon, and you can't make them that," it simply doesn't ring true. What on earth did he think he was selling to Brandon, Phillip and any number of other students all those years? He not only lets himself off the hook too easily, he has the hypocritical gall to accuse, "By what right do you dare say that there's a superior few to which you belong? By what right did you dare decide that that boy in there was inferior and therefore could be killed?" He suddenly expresses "shame" for his own words, but without any sense of contrition or responsibility, it all comes off as contrivance for the sake of dramatic denouement. At the very least, Rupert should at that point be a broken man, brought low by the realization of what he created, rather than the holier-than-thou voice of right, justice and social responsibility. Note: Isn't it interesting that both Cary Grant and James Mason are mentioned by characters during a conversation in the film about actors? |
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Post by BATouttaheck on Mar 28, 2019 23:59:24 GMT
Gee, he'd fit right in, I wonder what screen name and avatar he would use to post on IMDB-V2 , Doghouse6 .
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Post by Doghouse6 on Mar 29, 2019 0:08:38 GMT
Gee, he'd fit right in, I wonder what screen name and avatar he would use to post on IMDB-V2 , Doghouse6 . Hmmm...anyone we know?
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Post by BATouttaheck on Mar 29, 2019 0:16:32 GMT
Doghouse6Several regulars on the Politics Blood Bath Board come immediately to mind as possible Ruperts. 
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Post by Doghouse6 on Mar 29, 2019 0:24:53 GMT
Doghouse6 Several regulars on the Politics Blood Bath Board come immediately to mind as possible Ruperts. I'm happy to say I've weaned myself from that particular "guilty pleasure" indulgence for the foreseeable future. I hope.
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Post by BATouttaheck on Mar 29, 2019 0:27:49 GMT
Doghouse6 That'll do wonders for the ol' blood pressure level ! Reading there is like rubber-necking at a highway accident as you drive by … don't want to but yet somehow do.
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Post by Vits on Jul 3, 2019 20:39:07 GMT
I was relieved to read that ROPE was going to be only 80 minutes long because, a few days earlier, I had seen an almost 2-hour-long stage production. Unfortunately, the plot structure has the same problems. You see, 2 students invite people over for dinner as a way to feel superior ("We'll have the body of the person we murdered hidden very near and they won't even notice"). There are casual conversations to show a normal dinner. This should be building up suspense for a confrontation, which should be the main plot. The former ends up being a lot longer than the latter. That creates pacing issues, and it all leads up to a bland ending. I will give the movie credit for create suspense from time to time just by having characters gazing. A big stage-to-screen change is that the students' professor isn't pessimistic. Alfred Hitchcock wanted the movie to be filmed in 1 continuous shot, but the cameras had a time limit. He filmed a series of long takes and he had objects blocking the screen to hide the transition. Did people back then really not notice? It wasn't quick or subtle. It's not like one has to be a film expert to notice that the entire screen is pitch black. I'm not trying to diminish the merit of continuous shots though. 5/10 ------------------------------------- You can read comments of other movies in my blog. |
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