I’ve been finding myself watching more and more classic shows. Be it television or movies. The main reason for doing so is because of the extremely poor quality of writing that is coming out of Hollywood these days.

Anyways I found myself rewatching Rope the 1948 Alfred Hitchcock movie. The way he filmed it was quite interesting. He did it with long takes and instead of editing had the camera point to where he wanted the audience’s attention. With it all taking place in a single apartment as the setting, it comes across more as a stage play than a movie. In fact, the script was adapted from a stage play.

The plot is about two spoiled rich boys who murder an old school mate of theirs.’ (I can’t really say friend since they did murder him.) Their motive was the desire to demonstrate to themselves that they were the superior beings to whom concepts of right and wrong, good and evil, had no bearing. Therefore, it was perfectly fine for them to kill an inferior being, such as their old school chum. To them it should be seen as the moral equivalent of wringing a chicken’s neck. The method of the murder was strangulation with a rope. Thus, the title.

Of course, being 1948, they had to be discovered. The one who discover their crime was an old school master who introduced these Nietzschean ideas to them. He had told them long ago how there were elite or superior people that were above the mundane to whom nothing should be seen as immoral. During the dinner conversation, he half-jokingly, half seriously, talked of how even murder should be allowed at certain times for the elite few. This discussion scandalized an older gentleman with more traditional views. (The man also happened to be the victim’s father.) Later when the crime is uncovered, the murderers explain themselves to their old mentor using his same arguments and words. He was of course horrified to see the end results of his intellectual musings. He rejects his philosophy of the superior man and has the murders arrested.

While watching this movie it dawned on me just how applicable it is to our times. We live in an era where many elites don’t see such things as tradition, morality, or even common decency applying to them. Such things are for the deplorable bitter clingers in rural fly over country. They are the same as those spoiled rich boys in Rope. There is, however, one difference between now and 1948. Today their mentor wouldn’t be horrified. No, he would congratulate them and help dispose of the body.

#Rope, #Alfred Hitchcock, #Elites