Rope

Hitchcockian suspense is characterized by the McGuffin and of course, the gaze. In Rope, the viewer will find that the McGuffin is actually David Kentley and his whereabouts, the discussion of which is important in driving the plot forward but is in itself irrelevant to the audience. However, although David as a person may be unimportant to the audience’s understanding of the film, his corpse plays a crucial role in heightening the audience’s fears throughout the story and commanding the gaze of the camera.

For example, the scene in which Mrs. Wilson is clearing the dishes off the cassone (that is doubling as David’s coffin) feels fraught with peril. The suspense painstakingly mounts as Mrs. Wilson’s dull action is juxtaposed with a terrifying possibility—that she will eventually open the chest and find the fresh corpse inside. Off-screen, the secondary characters continue to speculate where David could be, reflecting a cluelessness that the audience cannot relate with. The mundane background action and dialogue intensify the tension of the moment. The shot is also quite long (nearly 2 minutes), showing Mrs. Wilson simply making several rounds from the kitchen to the living room and back. But one cannot be fooled into thinking that the camera’s focus, or gaze, is on this minor character for such an extended period of time. On the other hand, Hitchcock in this scene once again reminds us of the overbearing presence of the dead, particularly in domestic settings (similar to in Rebecca). Indeed, it is the cassone containing David’s corpse that is in the foreground of the shot, while the unfaltering Mrs. Wilson is in the background.