ROPE

Les Jones has a Nietzschean take on a Hitchcock thriller.

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It’s shrouded by darkness, but it is there: the tear that wells in the eye, then slowly rolls down the cheek, silently drops and splashes into the already soggy bag of popcorn on the cinema-goer’s knee.

Cinema can often create this ‘sadness’ effect on people — as well as elation, excitement, or magic. But why? This is known in philosophy as the paradox of fiction: how can we experience genuine, sometimes powerful, emotions towards characters that we know perfectly well are not real?

Often such emotions arise from movie directors’ deliberate cultivation of their audience’s propensity for sympathy or empathy. This raises questions about manipulation or emancipation, and about the ethics of storytelling. As that tear in the eye tells us, film is far from passive. Fundamental feelings are unleashed and perhaps for certain people this is the only situation in which particular passions are unleashed. If we can engage with such visceral feelings we may inculcate notions of fairness, empathy, and other aspects of morality into viewers. Wouldn’t that be good? Or would it be kind of sneaky? Let’s consider a movie that in the opinion of many has much to contribute to film as morality.

Rope was a 1948 Alfred Hitchcock film, famed among film buffs for having been shot in a very small number of continuous takes. Its central characters are two clever and assured young men, Brandon and Philip.

They have been taught about Nietzsche’s philosophy, and it seems to them to dovetail with their own views of themselves as being superior to the common crowd. In other words, they choose ideas that support their own predilections.