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Post by deembastille on Sept 1, 2017 17:35:46 GMT
How about the dudes from Strangers on a Train? Miriam... promiscuous wife of an up and coming tennis star who gets knocked up [happily it seems] by someone else and won't divorce tennis star. then you get to the part where they take her to an amusement park and she turns from promiscuous to needing a nursemaid. god she was stupid borderline special needs.
why helloooo..... screeching laughter and tickling. you have to wonder.
I root for the Strangers on said Train!
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Post by BATouttaheck on Sept 1, 2017 22:48:50 GMT
Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird. Not to put you on the spot BUT how do you see BOO in any sense a "villain" ?
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Post by Nalkarj on Sept 1, 2017 23:31:39 GMT
Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird. Not to put you on the spot BUT how do you see BOO in any sense a "villain" ? Not to speak for someone else, Bat (I say right before I do so), but I think bravomailer meant not that Boo is a villain but rather that Scout, Jem, and Dill originally believe him to be a terrifying figure.
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Post by Nalkarj on Sept 1, 2017 23:41:43 GMT
However one feels about Hitchcock's experimental continuous-take execution of Rope, the question you pose represents what I've always felt is the film's (and presumably the play's) biggest flaw. Rupert's outraged protestations that Brandon and Phillip have twisted his words into something he never intended ring completely hollow and self-serving. Not at all shy about rejecting major elements of original text when adapting other works, it rather surprises me that Hitchcock, also very fond of themes of "transference of guilt" and moral ambiguity, didn't see to it that Rupert's dialogue was re-crafted to incorporate some acknowledgment of, at the very least, irresponsibility and regret if not culpability. That weakness is exacerbated by Stewart's earnest - and a bit overplayed - delivery of that dialogue. Make no mistake, I think he was a fine actor; there was no one better at conveying sincerity, but that very sincerity is inappropriate in this instance. What the part required with that dialogue intact was one who could have added a subtext of conscious self-deception; that is to say, someone able to convince viewers that, even as he spoke them, he no longer believed his own words. Perhaps a Claude Rains or James Mason. Thanks, as always, for food for thought, Doghouse! Now, I'm not entirely sure that Rupert's words aren't supposed to ring completely hollow and self-serving. He's not a sympathetic character, I think, a facet that may be negated, I think, by Stewart's playing (as you note--and Stewart's my favorite actor, so I'm not criticizing him either, but I agree with your point here). I believe the question, aside from the acting, centers on whether or not Rupert genuinely recognizes that he is in many ways responsible, albeit indirectly, for Brandon and Phillip's action. Being, as I believe, not a sympathetic character, he could be self-justifying his words and teachings to assuage any of his own guilt about his students' murder, I suppose. Which in many ways reflects the question I was pondering before: is Rupert a villain? I'm not quite sure myself, one way or the other.
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Post by bravomailer on Sept 2, 2017 0:31:46 GMT
Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird. Not to put you on the spot BUT how do you see BOO in any sense a "villain" ? I took "villain" in a general sense to mean a neer-do-well or bad guy. The kids are afraid of Boo as a dark, foreboding figure – a boogie man. Update: I see that Salzmank has made this point above!
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Post by BATouttaheck on Sept 2, 2017 0:37:28 GMT
bravomailerK then. Boo as imagined Boogie man will do. We know that he was a good guy in reality and watched over the kids and ultimately was the hero . Such a great way to make one's screen debut, eh ? And nary a word of dialogue to have to remember.
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Post by Staccato on Sept 2, 2017 17:05:21 GMT
Burt Lancaster/Seven Days in May Lee J. Cobb/12 Angry Men Morgan Freeman/Gone, Baby, Gone I read that there is going to be a remake of "Seven Days in May". But this time the heroes will be the generals.
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Post by Doghouse6 on Sept 2, 2017 17:42:40 GMT
Thanks, as always, for food for thought, Doghouse! Now, I'm not entirely sure that Rupert's words aren't supposed to ring completely hollow and self-serving. He's not a sympathetic character, I think, a facet that may be negated, I think, by Stewart's playing (as you note--and Stewart's my favorite actor, so I'm not criticizing him either, but I agree with your point here). I believe the question, aside from the acting, centers on whether or not Rupert genuinely recognizes that he is in many ways responsible, albeit indirectly, for Brandon and Phillip's action. Being, as I believe, not a sympathetic character, he could be self-justifying his words and teachings to assuage any of his own guilt about his students' murder, I suppose. Which in many ways reflects the question I was pondering before: is Rupert a villain? I'm not quite sure myself, one way or the other. The question as you pose it - "whether or not Rupert genuinely recognizes that he is in many ways responsible" - is what I perceive as the thematic hole at the center. I know neither what playwright Patrick Hamilton's nor Hume Cronyn's and Arthur Laurents's intentions were, and the text as written for the film gives no clue. Without any changes to it, it could have been played in any of the three ways you and I have suggested: with a "what have I done" undercurrent of self-revulsion that Rains could have managed beautifully; as a desperate and self-deceptive attempt to assuage his guilt that might have been right up Mason's alley; with a supercilious and caddishly unconcerned sense of personal infallibility that Rex Harrison or Orson Welles did so well (and which would more pointedly have raised the question of Rupert's culpability, leaving audiences with the sort of intriguing little twist that became such a hallmark of Hitchcock's TV series). Lacking any such subtext, the heroically portrayed moral outrage of Stewart's performance renders Rupert little more than obtuse. I can guess only that Hitchcock became so wrapped up in the film's technical challenges that he was willing to accept any 10-minute take that was accomplished with mechanical success rather than call for another in order to nuance an actor's delivery. I'd guess also that the financial considerations of Rope being his first film as his own producer under the newly-formed Transatlantic banner may have figured into such decisions.
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Post by BATouttaheck on Sept 2, 2017 21:48:09 GMT
Doghouse6 and Nalkarj Thanks for your wonderful exchanges. They are a joy to read. Quick .... think of something else to get them going !
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Post by Doghouse6 on Sept 2, 2017 22:45:29 GMT
Doghouse6 and Nalkarj Thanks for your wonderful exchanges. They are a joy to read. And that's a joy to hear for someone who likes getting down into the weeds; I'm always grateful to all those willing to do it with me (and who don't mind picking up a burr or two).
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Post by BATouttaheck on Sept 2, 2017 22:48:59 GMT
(and who don't mind picking up a burr or two). or even dealing with some puns occasionally Doghouse6 .
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Post by Doghouse6 on Sept 2, 2017 23:25:22 GMT
Doghouse6 and Nalkarj Thanks for your wonderful exchanges. They are a joy to read. Quick .... think of something else to get them going ! Well, you know me: it doesn't take much encouragement! In fact, I got to thinking that what I find missing from Rope is something that Hitchcock made central to Strangers On A Train just a few years later: that theme of "transference of guilt." Beyond simply his panic at being suspected by police of his wife's murder, Guy's horror stems from his realization of having given Bruno unintentionally tacit approval of the crime by good-naturedly humoring him rather than telling him right off the bat how insane he sounded, and his feelings of guilt are compounded by the heat-of-the-moment desire to strangle Miriam that he had explicitly shared with Ann. As with many such favored themes, it was one Hitchcock liked to revisit occasionally. He'd most recently done so in Spellbound, contriving amnesia for Gregory Peck as a shield against guilt he felt over his brother's accidental death which had been triggered by the trauma of witnessing a murder, and effecting a "psychic erasure" of the crime by assuming the victim's identity (itself a device Hitchcock would reactivate in Psycho, after having explored something similar in Vertigo, in which Scotty "erases" guilt over Madeline's death by attempting to return her to life in recreating her). See? There you are: you got me going.
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Post by BATouttaheck on Sept 2, 2017 23:30:09 GMT
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spiderwort
Junior Member
@spiderwort
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Post by spiderwort on Sept 2, 2017 23:54:29 GMT
Well, you know me: it doesn't take much encouragement! In fact, I got to thinking that what I find missing from Rope is something that Hitchcock made central to Strangers On A Train just a few years later: that theme of "transference of guilt." Beyond simply his panic at being suspected by police of his wife's murder, Guy's horror stems from his realization of having given Bruno unintentionally tacit approval of the crime by good-naturedly humoring him rather than telling him right off the bat how insane he sounded, and his feelings of guilt are compounded by the heat-of-the-moment desire to strangle Miriam that he had explicitly shared with Ann. As with many such favored themes, it was one Hitchcock liked to revisit occasionally. He'd most recently done so in Spellbound, contriving amnesia for Gregory Peck as a shield against guilt he felt over his brother's accidental death which had been triggered by the trauma of witnessing a murder, and effecting a "psychic erasure" of the crime by assuming the victim's identity (itself a device Hitchcock would reactivate in Psycho, after having explored something similar in Vertigo, in which Scotty "erases" guilt over Madeline's death by attempting to return her to life in recreating her). See? There you are: you got me going. And beautifully, too. Nalkarj, where are you?
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Post by BATouttaheck on Sept 2, 2017 23:59:11 GMT
Nalkarj , where are you? ^^^
Probably off somewhere posting impossible Riddles or somesuch folderol !
Now I'm going to have to watch ROPE again to catch up on the twist this thread has taken. YAY !
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Post by Nalkarj on Sept 3, 2017 0:15:44 GMT
Doghouse6, spiderwort, BATouttaheckMy apologies, folks—I'm away for the holiday weekend and only have intermittent wifi, so I can't respond as I'd like. I will say that I think Doghouse and I are pretty much in agreement here. I remember reading once that both Stewart and Hitchcock hated this movie, but I always thought it had to do with the problems, practical and artistic, of the 10-min. takes. I wonder if what Doghouse articulated is, in fact, a major reason as well—it would certainly make sense to me. Again, sorry about my absence—I'm back on Labor Day itself and then the week following!
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spiderwort
Junior Member
@spiderwort
Posts: 2,523
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Post by spiderwort on Sept 3, 2017 0:28:53 GMT
Oh, so sorry to intrude, Nalkarj. Hope you have a great holiday!
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Post by deembastille on Sept 3, 2017 4:23:12 GMT
Come to think of it... the Wizard of Oz... the WW of the west... all she wanted was those shoes. She had legal rights to them. I don't see the problem. and Glenda was a little pushy with the 'hang on to those' saying to Dorothy.
yeah, I saw Wicked [with the original gals] and I read the book and it really opened my eye with the 'other side of the story' stories out there.
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Post by Nalkarj on Sept 4, 2017 19:33:31 GMT
spiderwort, Doghouse6, BATouttaheck, et al. OK, folks, I'm back! No worries at all, Spider--I did disappear for a while there, and apologies for the lack of explanation. My trip was a weekend getaway more than anything, but I really enjoyed it. I hope all of you are having a nice Labor Day as well. (Oh--and, as you know, Bat, I too like a good pun as much as the next person. ) Thanks for the kind words, everyone, though I truly don't think I deserve them. Doghouse, if I may so suggest, I believe there's a fourth way that the part could have been played: as Rupert's lack of understanding ("obtuseness," possibly) that what he taught could be reified. Now, that's not to say that Rupert was himself foolish, or even obtuse, but more simply that he was so caught up in ivory tower theorizing that, even at this point, he cannot see the logic that leads from his Nietzschean musings to real-life actualization. I believe that that was what Stewart was going for, even if (as you and I agree) it doesn't much come out in his performance. As for your second point-- --I quite agree, and, now that I think of it, Dial M for Murder also lacks this Hitchcockian theme, though in some ways it comes closer (purposive transference of guilt, from the perspective of the police [originally], from Swann to Margot--though of course it's all set up by Tony). I wonder if the connection is their being adaptations of pre-existing stage properties? Hitchcock and his writers often altered literary source materials for their film adaptations, but adaptations of plays tended to be relatively faithful. That I find Rope (and Dial M) very enjoyable probably comes from the well-written sources as well as Hitchcockian direction and (despite our qualms with Stewart's climactic scene in Rope) the actors' playing. With that said, I think a reason many see them as second-tier Hitchcock probably results from what you've articulated so well, the gap here between director and directed. As always, definite food for thought. Again, thanks so much for the kind words, everyone!
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Post by Doghouse6 on Sept 5, 2017 0:38:57 GMT
Doghouse, if I may so suggest, I believe there's a fourth way that the part could have been played: as Rupert's lack of understanding ("obtuseness," possibly) that what he taught could be reified. Now, that's not to say that Rupert was himself foolish, or even obtuse, but more simply that he was so caught up in ivory tower theorizing that, even at this point, he cannot see the logic that leads from his Nietzschean musings to real-life actualization. I believe that that was what Stewart was going for, even if (as you and I agree) it doesn't much come out in his performance. That would seem to be the one most supported by the text; perhaps I've been too rough with ol' Rupert. And it may be that my problem with Stewart isn't so much with that climactic scene itself, but with what went before it: he never seems as fully committed to Rupert's earlier slyness as he does to his last-minute horror and outrage. I'd heard that Cary Grant had been Hitchcock's ideal casting, and have had trouble imagining it, but the sort of amusingly inscrutable opaqueness of Rupert's diatribes now seems to me more in Grant's line, and I can as well imagine him delivering that final dialogue with gravitas that might have been more credible with his brand of contained intensity than from Stewart's histrionics. Your remarks in an earlier post about Stewart's and Hitchcock's regrets about the picture reminded me about the star's reported complaints that the camera got more rehearsal than the actors, and indeed, the director subsequently withdrew it from circulation. I liked what you said about Dial M For Murder's "purposive transference of guilt," and comparisons with Rope are natural, aren't they? Beyond their stage origins, Hitchcock again saddled himself with a technical challenge: that of photographing the later picture in the "Naturalvision" 3-D process. Rather than becoming a slave to it, however, he followed his usual practices of fully employing angles and montage for emphasis and pace, using pronounced 3-D effects only as occasional punctuation. Just the same, as much as I enjoy it and find it the more watchable, Dial M oddly feels the more atmospherically constricted of the two. There's an airiness to Rope that's aided by technique: it's somewhere between a filmed stage performance and a traditional cinematic construction, as though the audience has been invited within the proscenium to roam among the players, wandering from one conversation or event to another, just as one does in life at a social gathering. I wonder if it strikes you that way. An aside: there was a fascinating theatrical experiment (and a successful one; it ran for nine years) in Los Angeles back in the '80s: Tamara, a murder mystery taking place at an Italian villa, which was staged at Hollywood's American Legion Hall. Rather than a single stage, the hall was divided into multiple rooms with different scenes taking place simultaneously, and audience members were free to follow selected characters from one room to another, remain stationary to see who came or went and what developed or do either at will. At almost any given moment in the play, you were seeing something others were missing, but also missing something others were seeing. At the time, I lived less than a mile away, but never got around to experiencing it even once (much to my regret). You're better-versed in the whodunit/howcatchem canon than I; does it seem to you that both Rope and, even more so, Dial M are rather like templates for the later Columbo series, with its elaborate setups and cat-and-mouse (shades of Phillip) maneuverings? I note in passing that the very first Columbo drama was a 1960 episode of The Chevy Mystery Show (and which was adapted eight years later as the Columbo pilot, Prescription: Murder), with the burlier but equally rumpled Bert Freed . And the title of that episode was Enough Rope.
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