I keep wanting to write blog entries even though I barely do more than 1-2 things each day and those things are too boring to blog about, but they take up so much mental room in my brain that I feel I am not even having interesting thoughts to muse upon either. Like all I think about is my job, global warming, and police brutality. All we talk about is police brutality. We teach all day then we get in the car and the old man is like “they shot another kid in St. Louis” and then we are off. It is surreal to be privileged white professors talking passionately about racist police murders. Luckily it does come up in class, as one of my students said something about Ferguson and another one didn’t know what that was, so I got one of my prized chances to subtly indoctrinate. And by “subtle” I mean saying “the police system is a racist racket that protects private property, not citizens”
We watched “Rope” last night, which is not in chronological order. I hadn’t seen it since college. The funny thing about Rope is that everyone makes this big deal out of how it’s done in one shot! When first of all, there are quite famously these several moments throughout where the camera zooms all the way in to the back of someone’s black jacket, clearly to provide a place for an edit–a technique that has been much parodied and that is really obvious and funny each time it occurs in the film. But furthermore, there are just straight-up cuts! Like regular cuts, shot-reverse-shot stuff. I don’t get it. “Was that a cut?” the old man kept yelling. There are at least three cuts. It’s truly amazing how film lore gets passed down. Like the one about how Birth of a Nation is the first narrative film. It’s just simply not true! There are tons of storytelling films from before 1917. And like, even DW GRIFFITH HIMSELF had ALREADY MADE NARRATIVE FILMS before he made Birth of a Nation. Long ones, too! Or people also say Birth of a Nation was the first film to have its own specially-constructed score that traveled with it. Also untrue. But still you see these “facts” repeated everywhere, even in legitimate film criticism, and EVEN in legitimate film SCHOLARSHIP. It’s incredible. So Rope being filmed in one shot is just a thing everyone knows about Rope, even though a simple viewing the film proves almost immediately that it’s just not the case. I also don’t understand why he did the zoom-ins on black jackets to provide places to cut when he also just had regular cuts. Did he just hope no one would notice? Well, he was right, so I guess it all worked out.
Anyway, Rope. The performances are wonderful, as is all the contemporary fancypantsing (“it belongs in a museum except that it’s such nice crystal and I hate to break up the set”) and talking about drinking (like they are all surprised when he serves champagne even though literally every other conceivable type of booze is also being offered and swilled in enormous amounts). Jimmy Stewart is weird and creepy in it, a very different character from the one he usually plays (aside from his role as Ultimate Creepster Of All Time in Vertigo of course), and they talk about pop culture! “I went to the movies once. I saw Mary Pickford.” “Oh, I ADORE her!” Plus a heated debate about the foxiness of Errol Flynn.
I really wish the movie WERE shot in one shot though because it would mean the actor who plays the guy they murder in the opening scene–who has no lines–would have had to stay folded up in that trunk for the duration of the shot.
It’s a really great movie until Jimmy Stewart’s dumb enraged speech at the end. “How could you have taken what I said and twisted it so that it could justify murder?” “You mean all that stuff you said about how murder is justified?”
When it was over we discussed it.
“It’s a Crime and Punishment story. It’s a dumb story.”
“I thought you just said it was a good movie except for Jimmy Stewart’s speech at the end.”
“It is a good movie, but the Crime and Punishment story is a dumb story, I just realized.”
“Well it’s an allegory.”
“Everyone says that, but what’s it an allegory FOR?”
“…..”
“It’s dumb”
THE TWO CENTS OF SOMEONE WHO READ DOSTOEVSKY ONCE FOURTEEN YEARS AGO
make sure to watch shadow of a doubt! it’s one of my favorites, and filmed in my hometown!