But These Guys Aren't Like, Actually Gay, Right

Oh, but they are.

            When Rope begins, we know nothing of the relationship between Brandon and Philip. All we know is that two, well dressed young men have just murdered a third, equally well dressed young man by method of strangulation in an elegantly furnished apartment. Hitchcock never explicitly defines the relationship- as in neither one of the characters comes out and says “I’m gay!”- but provides visual and vocal clues that hint at their homosexuality. Many of theses occur in the first ten to twenty minutes of the film.

     Note the position of Brandon behind his victim. Both of his hands are placed on David’s chest. He’s clutching him to his body. It’s a very homoerotic stance. Immediately after the murder, both men pant heavily, as if they’ve just finished having sex. The skeptic may be thinking “wait, these guys just murdered someone. That takes effort- they’re panting because they’re tired, not because they’re recovering from the throes of sexual passion.”

            There’s more.

The stereotypical, post sexual encounter cigarette smoking scene. How often have we seen two lovers lying next to each other in bed, each a little weary from their recent activity. The man, satisfied with himself, casually lights a cigarette. Both remain silent, perhaps reflecting on the encounter or simply because no exchange of words is necessary. These two shots evoke that same tone of post-intercourse haziness and satisfaction. Brandon, the dominant “male” in the relationship, smokes a celebratory cigarette while Philip, the submissive “female”, appears exhausted, leaning on the chest and breathing heavily. If the murder is a metaphor for the physical act of homosexual intercourse and the crime is homosexuality, than it can be interpreted that Brandon and Philip have just concluded having sex and are recovering from their encounter in a very Hollywood cliché way.

            Note also, that the blinds are closed. Brandon explains that they “couldn’t have done it in the bright sunlight” and Philip is expressly averse to opening the blinds even after the “murder” has been committed. Since Hitchcock doesn’t define what “it” is,  viewers can take this lack of specification as an innuendo. “It” is referring to sex, implying that Brandon and Philip could not have had sex in the bright sunlight. Just as they have to keep the murder hidden, so must they keep the nature of their relationship. The two are still “in the closet” about their homosexuality. They had to be. Being a homosexual in 1948 was considered as bad as being a murderer. Their sexual activities had to be completely hidden, for discovery would mean being labeled as a diseased sexual deviant- a societal outcast in need of medical help. This is why Philip is so uncomfortable with opening the blinds. He fears exposure and discovery not only as a murderer, but as a homosexual as well.

In the 1940’s, straight men didn’t remove the gloves from the hands of their straight male friends. This scene suggests that there is a level of intimacy that exists between Philip and Brandon. Brandon, the dominant figure in the relationship, takes care of Philip. Philip submissively obeys. He appears to be at the mercy of Brandon, hunched over and non-resistant to his partner’s touch.

            Shortly after the murder is committed, the men leave the living room and enter the kitchen to drink champagne and celebrate their murderous success. It is in this scene that Philip and Brandon engage in the most homoerotic conversation of the entire film.

 Philip asks “how did you feel… during it?” to which Brandon responds “I don’t know… I don’t remember feeling very much of anything. Until his body went limp and I knew it was over.” Philip: “And then?” Brandon: “And then, I felt tremendously exhilarated.”

            Once again, the ambiguity of “it” urges Hitchcock’s viewers to interpret this conversation as a reflection on a highly erotic homosexual experience. The dialogue certainly alludes to it.  The sexual exhilaration experienced by Brandon draws a rather titillated reaction from Philip, who seems to quiver as if aroused by the story. The homoerotic tension between the two is off the charts.

Once Brandon is finished describing his side of the event, he asks Philip to do the same for him. It seems almost like foreplay. The two are standing so close to one another that the viewers half expect Brandon to grab Philip and engage in some form of sexual congress. This is how the audience sees the two men before the camera pans away from them and over the dining table in front of them. When it pans back, the tension seems to have dissipated and relatively normal, considering the circumstances, conversation resumes.

            Alfred Hitchcock is a master at building suspense. For example, through much of the film viewers are just waiting for someone to open the chest and discover that it’s actually David’s casket. There is one scene in which Mrs. Winston, Brandon and Philip’s housekeeper, walks back and forth between the chest and the kitchen. She removes the food, the tablecloth, and then the candlesticks that sat upon David’s grave. She and Rupert lift the lid of the chest ever so slightly in order to place a stack of books in it, but Brandon intervenes and closes it before they can see anything. The whole time the audience anxiously awaits the look of fright and shock on Mrs. Winston’s face when she discovers the dead body in the chest, which she is sure to do. The suspense only subsides when Brandon intervenes. Hitchcock builds the same suspense in the relationship between Brandon and Philip. In scenes like the one depicted above, the sexual tension is high. The viewer anxiously awaits Brandon’s next move. Will they get closer? Will they prove their homosexuality with a kiss or an embrace? Just when the suspense has reached its climax and it appears as if Brandon is going to pounce on Philip, the camera pans away, slowly eliminating the tension that seemed almost electric just a few seconds prior. Still, the audience is left to wonder what happened in that one short instant before they were forced to look away.

            Another thing we never get to see? The bedroom. Are there two separate bedrooms, one for each man, or is there a singular bedroom with two beds? We are led to believe the latter because of a conversation that occurs between Janet and Brandon. She asks to use the telephone and he tells her that it’s in the bedroom. Not “my bedroom” or “Philip’s bedroom”, but“the bedroom”, indicating that there is only one. To this Janet replies “how cozy” and leaves to find the phone. Just how cozy is it? Are there two beds in the room, or one that both men share? This can never be confirmed because the audience is never allowed to see the bedroom, a location commonly associated with intimacy and sexual activity. Perhaps Hitchcock is choosing not to reveal the entire truth of the relationship in order to spark imagination and keep his viewers guessing, another method of adding suspense to the apparently homosexual relationship between Philip and Brandon.