Playing With Ironies

After the shocking and deplorable murder by Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb of a young boy in 1924, it is not surprising that famed director Alfred Hitchcock would be attracted to this controversial material as the subject of his next cinematic endeavor. Hitchcock’s Rope, originally a Broadway play written by Patrick Hamilton and based on the Leopold and Loeb murder case, follows the events of one evening in the lives of Brandon Shaw and Philip Morgan after they have murdered David Kentley, a mutual friend, in order to prove themselves members of an intellectually superior faction of society. Brandon and Phillip’s former housemaster, Rupert Cadell, who had previously condoned the theory of murder by intellectual superiors, grows more suspicious that his hosts have committed a heinous crime. Hitchcock tactfully maneuvers through the story, weaving his world-renowned tactics for suspense with a gripping moral core.

Besides its obvious message concerning the ramifications of committing murder itself, Hamilton also addresses the fallacious ideals of the Nietzschean philosophy of a societal “superman” or Übermensch. In his work Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche delineates his concept of a futuristic and superior individual who transcends the moral laws that govern society by creating his own moral and judicial concepts by which he dictates his own actions. In the film, Brandon echoes this morally relativistic philosophy when he explains that the “supermen” or the superior beings “are those men of intellectual and cultural superiority that they are above the traditional moral concepts. Good and evil, right and wrong were invented for the ordinary man […] because he needs them,” implying that men such as himself are in no need or societal norms but may instead break civil law without fear of apprehension. For Brandon and Phillip, this arrogant belief that they are above moral and societal laws justifies David’s murder as simply the elimination of a “lesser being.”

However, Nietzsche’s philosophy is often utilized by individuals like Hitler to justify his merciless slaughter of Europe, or by Brandon and Phillip to justify their own homicide. Not only does poses a serious threat to the very foundation that supports humanity. C.S. Lewis, in his book The Abolition of Man, paints a rather disturbing image of what would befall humanity if the philosophies of Nietzsche or Brandon and Phillip became realities. Lewis argues that all of mankind is governed by a universal moral code called the Tao, and that the Tao governs man’s sentiments, which in turn should also guide man’s intellect (Abolition 24-26). However, many existential philosophers, including Nietzsche have attempted to separate the intellect from the sentiment and the Tao, thereby creating their own relativistic morals code that would allow them license to perform any action, or in the case of Rope, any crime that they so desire. One must recognize that “the Nietzschean ethic can be accepted only if we are ready to scrap traditional morals as a mere error and them to put ourselves in a position where we can find no ground for any value judgments at all” (Abolition 46). Outside of the Tao, Lewis validly declares that there can be no basis for judgment either by society or the individual man, which will eventually cause the abolition of man altogether.

For Rupert Cadell, Lewis’ fears concerning mankind’s lack of foundational moral grounding slowly become a tangible reality. Once Rupert has discovered the corpse of his former pupil, murder becomes personalized and he is struck with the realization that his own theories and philosophies have become a perverted and evil actuality, and consequently he vehemently castigates Brandon and Phillip telling them, “there must have been something deep inside you from the very start that would let you do this thing, but there’s always been something inside me that would never let me do it.” Rupert very clearly and obviously points to a moral code within himself that all men are called to abide by and is therefore disgusted and appalled by Brandon and Phillip’s blatant contempt for humanity. David’s murder not only represents a disdain for humanity and the conventions that govern it, but also a desire to control the lives of others, and to essentially become God. In Rope, the audience witnesses the progression of the Nietzschean ideals as they are transformed from theoretical concepts of a utopian world governed by “superior beings” to a horrifyingly tragic and cold-blooded murder.