Highly Overrated But Still Good

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

"'Rope' Unleashed" is an American English-language documentary film by French filmmaker Laurent Bouzereau and he made quite a few of these Hitchcock documentaries back then when this one came out, namely in 2001, so it has its 15th anniversary this year. This one here runs for approximately half an hour and focuses on Hitchcock's 1940's film "Rope", a murder story involving two best friends. I have not seen the film that this is about, but this documentary only partially got me interested. I did not like how it focused so much on the protagonists' homosexuality and I am not sure how much this was a crucial factor in "Rope" as none of it is mentioned in the basic plot of the film's IMDb profile page. All in all, just like with some other stuff I watched by Bouzereau, I cannot say this got me curious at all about the film sadly. I also feel that it lacks a bit in terms of telling us anything that goes beyond the basic story and some interpretations, like Hitchcock's personal connection with this film for example. That's why I give it a thumbs-down.

. . . (STRANGERS ON A TRAIN includes a far better one by Laurent Bouzereau, who wrote, directed and produced that one, this one for ROPE, and many others for both Hitchcock flicks and movies by other directors), but at least it is adequate. Hume Cronyn, one of the actors in Cocoon (as well as being Mr. Jessica Tandy), wrote the screen adaptation for ROPE and appears as one of the "talking heads" for this extra. ROPE screenwriter Arthur Laurents also puts in more than the proverbial "two cents worth," and Farley Granger--who played the pianist thrill killer Phillip in the feature--also sheds some light on his role (the consensus seems to be that the cast and crew were much more in the closet about ROPE's psycho-sexual overtones in the late 1940s during the actual filming than they are now, or than people would be today if they remade this movie). Alfred Hitchcock's daughter Patricia also puts in an appearance here.

Despite many of the particulars involved with the production being dead before this film was made in 2001, it's a very good making of featurette. In fact, it's better, in my opinion, than the feature about which it talks! Now I need to mention that I am far less a fan of "Rope" than most folks and I listed quite a few mistakes with the film in my review of it. So, despite being made by the great Alfred Hitchcock, I really think it's overrated. BUT, this small film about the movie was excellent.The film features three of those who helped make the film--Hume Cronyn (who adapted the screenplay) and Arthur Laurents (the writer) and Farley Granger (who starred as one of the two killers in "Rope"). Most of the time, however, it's Laurents who talks during the film--and he looks amazingly good for a man his age--as did Granger.The film is packed full of background material that bring the actual movie to life. I enjoyed Laurents' discussion of the obvious gay subtext of "Rope" and how that was handled. I also agreed with a few of the criticisms it had of the film--and any negative criticism of the feature is rare in a making of film--very rare. For example, Laurents feels that Hitchcock should NOT have shown the murder, as it took away from the level of suspense in the film--and I heartily agree. Also, he felt that James Stewart was wrong for the role--mostly because he was a 'boy scout' playing the morally ambiguous and presumably gay professor--a strange fit, indeed! Overall, there is a lot more information--including a few clips with Hitchcock's daughter, Patricia, (who played supporting roles in a few of his films).

This is the featurette on the DVD of Rope. It consists of interviews with one of the stars, the two writers and the daughter, as well as clips of the film(it spoils it, of course, in fact, it does so in the first of the 32 and a half minutes of the running time of this). The main subject here is that the movie was really clearly about homosexuality(as the two leads' roles are, and as Stewart's character was at least meant to be... once he was cast, it kind of went away, because, well, he was a boy scout, nearly anything you saw him in... R.I.P.), at the time referred to as "it", since no one could handle that it even existed(and that may be the main reason it bombed), and then various things where Laurent is refreshingly(for a Bouzereau documentary, those usually steer clear of controversy) honest about and critical of Hitchcock(R.I.P.), including his direction and, as he points out, some tension is lost because we know that there's a dead body in the chest, on account of the first thing we see after the opening credits. This is interesting and informational. There is disturbing content and a little violence in it. I recommend this to any fan of Alfred. 7/10