Francesco Gagliardi’s FILM: ROPE
Dangling That Rope
Essay by Andrew James Paterson
Edited by Chris Gehman
FILM: ROPE
Performed by Francesco Gagliardi,
Michael Caldwell, Marcin Kedzior & Cara Spooner
Presented by FADO Performance Art Centre at the 26th Images Festival, Toronto
April 11 to 20, 2013
Francesco Gagliardi’s performance Film: Rope is one of a series of
performances in which Gagliardi breaks down seminal — or at least
recognizable — film texts into recalled or recollected movements
in relation to selected audio components.1 The performers, whether
they are actors, dancers or performance artists, move through the
sets carrying old-fashioned tape recorders in their hands. These tape
recorders play back audio dubs from DVDs of particular scenes from
the selected movies.2 It is recommended in Gagliardi’s instructions
that the duration of a scene be at least three times the duration of the
corresponding scene from the source film.
For some of the scenes, the performers consent to having
their performance interrupted by a clock, which signals them to
move on to the next scene, while for others the performers have the
option of ending prior to the clock’s signal. Fulfilling a scene before
the alarm sounds is not necessary artistically preferable to having
the clock inform the performers that it is time to begin a new scene.
As far as the performers are concerned, either ending the scene
before the bell or not completing the scene by the time the bell rings
is perfectly acceptable. The clock does not provide a deadline; it is
simply a structural event.
In Film: Rope, Gagliardi has accentuated the simultaneous
clash and fusion of different disciplines by using as source material
a film that has been controversial at a number of different levels:
Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (1948). Rope is something of an anomaly
within the Hitchcock canon, as it is directed to appear as if consisting
almost entirely of one continuous shot.3 In this respect it breaks the
modernist dictum that film should not appear simply to be recorded
theatre. The film eschews montage altogether. It is also controversial
for reasons related to tone and subject matter. Rope is a film about
two rather naughty boys named Brandon Shaw and Philip Walker
(played by John Dall and Farley Granger respectively), who kill a
young man they consider their inferior for the sheer thrill of it.4
They conceal his corpse right under the noses of their dinner guests,
among them their mentor-cum-professor Rupert Cadell (played by
James Stewart), who slowly comes to realize what his protégés have
done. It dawns upon the professor too late that extremist ideologies
should never be taught to impressionable, precociously bright
young things.
Of course, Rope is not really composed of one continuous shot.
The eighty-minute film requires eight ten-minute rolls of film, and
part of the fun for the viewer is watching for the transferences: the
points where Hitchcock directs the camera behind a character’s dark
jacket or a chair in order to stop, reload the camera, and then resume
filming. Another part of the fun of watching Rope is noting furniture
and other set discontinuities as a result of the constant rearrangement
required to accommodate the roving camera as it moves through the
set. Hitchcock tended to talk about Rope in strictly technical terms, as
a stunt,5 but the nature of the stunt created recurring points at which
concealment became necessary. Rope is a film about confinement
and concealment, in which the reel changes are not unlike exchanges
of illicit currency or weapons. Hitchcock’s emphasis on his own
formal audacity also served to partially mask his own fascination/
revulsion with male homosexuality, which he associated with
amoral superiority and outright criminality. The very title Rope is so
appropriate; it refers to more than just the murder weapon. Pull that
rope tighter; stretch the shot as far as possible; dangle the evidence
right in front of the fools while smirking in their innocent faces.
Just as Rope only appears to be composed of one continuous
shot, so the idea that it could be accurately described merely as
“recorded theatre” is a clear misperception; rather, it has been called
“one of the most cinematic of films, carrying one of the defining
characteristics of the medium — its ability to use a camera as the eye
of the spectator, to take him right into an action, show him around
inside it as it were — to its ultimate conclusion.”6 But of course the
camera sees what Hitchcock directs it to see. The camera movements
are thus choreographed; and the word “choreography” is central to
the vocabulary of dance, a live art form. Ropemay have been adapted
for the screen from an original stage play, but the fluid camera
movements so necessary to counteracting the inherent staginess of
the script practically beg the question of how the performers adapt
to the camera’s movements. The camera in Ropemay function as a
substitute for the eye of the spectator, who is accustomed to moving
his or her head and entire body in order to follow some visual trajectory
through space, while the actors’ movements have been blocked
so that they are either dancing with or avoiding the camera.
Gagliardi’s performance Film: Rope explores this peculiar
relationship between actors and camera. The performers react to
the audio taken from the film by attempting to recall gestures made
by their characters in the film, and also enact (or reenact) the spatial
relations between themselves as performers and the shifting positions
of the camera in the original cinematic space. The performers have
both viewed and rehearsed with selected scenes from the source
film, and they have worked out individual blocking and gestures in
relation to the camera’s movements as well as the character’s gestures
or mannerisms in relation to the sound on their tape recorders. If
they can’t quite succeed in enacting the movements they recall from
the film, they make another attempt. And often another and another
and another.
In the performances in Gagliardi’s series, dramatic time
becomes skewed, through repetition, into something so much
slower than real time that it becomes spatial rather than temporal.
Narrative film compresses time in ways rarely used in live theatre
(except when a play is attempting to be cinematic). Here, these
options are reversed, until dramatic scenes oscillate between the
status of tableaux and the cacophony of a kindergarten classroom.
Words either become converted to mechanized gibberish or are
repeated beyond their capacity for signification. In many scenes
there is more than one character in the performing space. The
busier the scene, the busier the audio, and Film: Ropemoves toward
cacophonic sound or concrete music, and away from theatrical
dialogue. This also happens in scenes where the characters are
blocked into a tight playing area. Sometimes snippets of dialogue,
or even single words or syllables, are repeated to comic effect, as
repetition tends to create absurdist humour.
The effect of the performance will vary significantly between
viewers who are familiar with the source film and those who are not.
I know Hitchcock’s film, so I do find myself placing these scenes in
relation to the plot. But those viewers who have not seen the film
will see these scenes independent of their narrative function within
the source film’s structure, merely as isolated scenes.
In Rope, the camera’s generally tight framing amplifies the
actors’ gestures and movements. In Film: Rope, Gagliardi has
refashioned Hitchcock’s film into an ensemble dance work, one
in which performers attempt to recall movements in their own time
and in their own space within the overall performance space.
Although the performers share the space, most of the time their
actions do not mesh or cohere. The performative premise of Film:
Rope and Gagliardi’s other film-based performances does not
prescribe set scores or determinant scripts or seamless ensembles.
What is seen in Gagliardi’s performance is several degrees
removed from the once-controversial film which two prominent
actors quite emphatically did not want their names associated with.7
The film’s dialogue, perversely blending Agatha Christie, Oscar Wilde
and Friedrich Nietzsche, in the performance becomes primarily
sound, only revealing its inherently campy flavour at relatively calm
moments in the performance. Especially in the scenes involving
several characters blocked into a tight space within the cinematic
frame, sound tends to override meaning, as gestures usurp spoken
language, and movement is accentuated where it was previously
subdued or even concealed. A highly formal exercise in tight control
has been radically altered so that it now provides a loose and undefined
structure for chance encounters and unpredictable tableaux.
Gagliardi has selected scenes from Hitchcock’s film not for
dramatic reasons, but rather for formal concerns:
In terms of sound, I was interested in segments that contain very
specific “accents” or “marks” (diegetic music, a doorbell, a car horn,
gunshots, a distinctive pitch in the articulation of a line of dialogue),
and in how those accents would recur and combine in the performance,
creating random, yet distinctive, effects of repetition, phasing, overlap,
echo, hiccup, etc. In terms of movement, I composed the selection
considering the juxtaposition of “busy” scenes with more static
ones, and scenes involving wide, cross-stage movement with scenes
encouraging a focus on small actions and gestures (playing with a rope,
drinking, lighting a cigarette, shooting a gun). I was also considering
how these more recognizable actions would punctuate an overall
texture of less specific, less recognizable movement.8
The performing arts, almost by definition, set up expectations of
proficiency and accuracy. In film, take after take is necessary until
those in charge feel that they have “got it right.” What might seem
like a perfect take to an actor could appear a failure to the camera
operators, lighting people, continuity experts and other technicians.
In live arts (theatre, dance, and live music) mistakes are made and
mistakes therefore must be incorporated into the live performance.
The performers and technicians must persevere without blinking
in front of the audience, some of whom will recognize a mistake
and some of whom will remain oblivious. With certain forms of
live or recorded performance involving improvisation (jazz or other
improvised music, films without scripts, improvisational theatre,
etc.) there is still an imperative for performers and crew to arrive at
a coherent result. There will always be wrong notes and other errors
that are to be avoided in anything other than rehearsals. But what
about chance music or dance forms that permit and even encourage
performers to work individually in a collective format? What about
works that are structured to permit indeterminate movements and
gestures from the performers? What here constitutes a cohesive or
coherent result or “product”? If process is the point, then what
constitutes the end product, or is there one at all? The question is
not entirely rhetorical: if there is a public presentation, then the
answer is yes, a product or offering is created.
In Film: Rope, Gagliardi and his performers are working in a
form in which nothing can clearly be identified as a “mistake.”
Performers try to recreate gestures and spatial relations in response
to their individual audio triggers; they attempt to remember specific
pictures or images, but they do not have automatic recall. The
performers go through a process in which they do not feel satisfied
that they have successfully recreated the appropriate movements,
so they make another attempt. But their process is not framed or
presented in a format that creates audience demands for perfection
and accuracy. Here, a not-quite-successful attempt at recollection
does not constitute a mistake in any technical sense of that word.
There is no authority figure lambasting performers for making
mistakes.9 The concept of a “mistake” implies right and wrong, and
thus morality.10 But in Film: Rope, a failed attempt might itself be
interesting; it is not wrong but rather tentative, and tentativeness and
hesitation are intrinsic to the performance. In the making of Rope,
numerous takes were surely required because of technical glitches,
even when the performers had their lines and movements down
pat. Film: Rope, in contrast to Rope, encourages accidents, which are
easily incorporated into its form or shape. It is up to the performers
to decide when they have accurately portrayed a particular source
gesture in relation to the replayed dialogue. The performers are
working individually: they are certainly aware of scene blocking
and they know their workings will be perceived in relation to those
of the other performers, but they are not under obligation to form
an identical collective tableau for each performance.
Process is not separate from product in Film: Rope, whereas,
in classic cinema and in most professional theatre and even dance,
process is called rehearsal and is not open to the public. A cinematic
work devised by one of the all-time masters of control has been
perversely converted by Gagliardi into a vehicle for unpredictable
recollections and movements, in which the performers take responsibility
for their own decisions in the performance, rather than
following the detailed instructions of a director, writer or producer.
Improvisation is fairly common in dance, whether in sections
of a work in which the performer is free to execute spontaneous
movements or choreography, or in works in which a minimal
structure is present only to frame improvised passages. Improvisation
in dance, as with improvised music, traditionally permits the
performer to execute his or her own ideas or movements, and thus
the performers tend to be expressive. In Film: Rope, the performers
are not free to invent and then execute their own gestures, although
the performers recall different aspects of their characters’ scene
trajectories in different performances. What is paradoxical in
Film: Rope is the emphasis on expressive gestures, which exists
parallel to the performers’ obligation not to express themselves —
to suggest only the emotions of the characters in the film, never
their own feelings. No two performances of Film: Rope will ever be
identical, but this work is devoid of improvisation, at least in the
sense of self-expression. Yet it does not entirely eliminate or reject
emotion. The characters’ gestures are often caused by either emotional
vulnerability or (particularly in the case of the Brandon Shaw
character) by a suppression of emotion. But the actual words of
the characters, spoken in tandem with what are often emotional
gestures, are not always clearly audible in the performance. And
these gestures are quite removed from the emotional trajectory of
the source film, which is an exercise in the manipulation of audience
points of identification and character sympathies.
Film: Rope is certainly a dance-flavoured performance piece,
but it also musical in its structure and execution. (Dance, of course,
generally implies musical presence even when it is not accompanied
by music.) Gagliardi himself sees his role as that of a performing
composer.11 His fellow performers manipulate the volume controls
on their tape-recorders in a way similar to the effects-pedal
manipulations of some electronic keyboards or guitars. They may
be following cues or directions, but they are not adhering to a fixed
score as classical musicians do. They will rewind the tape to roughly
the same point in time, but seldom, if ever, to precisely the same
point. Nor are they improvising, as the contents of their “instruments”
have been determined prior to the performance (and indeed prior
to the rehearsals).
The composer-cum-philosopher (or vice versa?) John Cage
composed works featuring tape recorders, record players and radios
as manipulated instruments in performance situations. Cage also
had a complex history and shifting relationship with concepts of
improvisation. Although some of his early prepared piano pieces
were composed by his improvising and then notating the successful
or interesting parts of the improvised exercise, Cage came to disdain
improvisation for its reliance on memory and personal taste, which
he saw as preventing the creation of something unprecedented.
Cage became suspicious of improvisation (and especially jazz),
because he had come to reject music based on both personality
and emotions.12 Through various strategies, including the use of
“chance operations,” he eliminated deliberate relationships between
sounds and created a novel type of abstract musical continuity
largely “free of individual taste and memory (psychology) and also of
the literature and ‘traditions’ of art.”13 This new kind of objectified
musical continuity seemed to counteract all types of communicative
improvisation based on common idioms or phraseology as they
are found in improvised traditions such as jazz, flamenco, Indian
classical music, and so on. Improvising musicians (even the best?)
tended to fall back on what they remembered would “work” within
a given structure or situation.
In Film: Rope it is bodily movements, gestures and spatial
dynamics that the performers are in the process of remembering
and recreating. The sound itself repeatedly plays back phrases or
speeches from the source film, but the phrases are rarely if ever
repeated identically. (As noted above, the performers cannot roll
their tape recorders back to exactly the same point, although they do
attempt to retain a fairly consistent touch.) Also, each performer’s
tape recorder contains the dialogue and noises made by specific
characters, so the performers work in parallel within the playing
space, sometimes relating to each other, but frequently not. Thus
the performance tends to be cacophonous, and never quite the same.
The audio resulting is not chamber music and not ensemble jazz,
but rather a sound or noise sculpture based on indeterminacy, as the
performers are not working from instructions designed to guarantee
a specified, cohesive result, but rather one permitting variant collisions
in non-scripted tableaux. The performers are not improvising
or self-composing, but at the same time they are not adhering to
rigid stage directions or a fixed notated score. Gagliardi tries not to
over-rehearse the performers: he is wary of having them fall into
the trap of habitually repeating what worked in previous renditions.
Film: Rope is anything but body-averse. The not-quite-repetitive
movements of the performers’ bodies are the most prominent
components of the presentation — certainly more apparent than the
dialogue, and probably even the cacophony into which the dialogue
mutates whenever there is more than one performer in the playing
area. Is the body not expressive? Well, the performers, whose
thoughts are focused on remembering previously seen images or
character dynamics, are not expressing themselves, except for the
inescapable fact that it is their bodies interpreting the speech and
gestures of the corresponding Hitchcock film characters.
I look at a clip from a similar performance based on Ozu’s 1953
film Tokyo Story, and I hear noise in tandem with the movements I
see.14 I don’t speak Japanese, and I’m not as familiar with this film as
I am with Rope. The performers move across what appears to be a
wide but shallow playing area; they are often relatively distant from
each other, but the sounds I hear are not comprehensible as words.
Likewise, watching Film: Ropemust be very different for someone
who knows the source film and the language than it is for someone
who doesn’t, or is indifferent to the source material. I observe the
rehearsal for a scene Gagliardi has selected because in it Hitchcock has
violated his own formal strategy. At the top of this scene, Brandon
and Philip’s housekeeper, Mrs. Wilson (filtered through performer
Cara Spooner in Gagliardi’s performance) decides to move down a
hallway, and there is an edit in the film, forcing all of the other
performers in Film: Rope to shift their positions, as this edit occurs
within the selected scene. In Film: Rope, this selected scene stands
out for its formal absurdity — as Mrs. Wilson commences to wheel
her tray down the corridor all the other characters must suddenly
shift from her left side to her right. Small wonder that Hitchcock
cheated with a forced edit in the original film. In Rope, Mrs. Wilson’s
curiosity about unusual dining arrangements becomes a source of
serious concern for Brandon and Philip, especially when they overhear
her talking to Rupert instead of just doing her job. In Gagliardi’s
performance, these scenes are stripped of their suspense elements
and become abstracted into not-quite exactly-repeated small and
insignificant actions or gestures.
In rehearsal, I watch another scene in which I know that the
Brandon character (as reenacted by performer Marcin Kedzior) is
going to slap Philip (as reenacted by performer Michael Caldwell), so
that his quivering partner-in-crime will not break down and confess
to their Mentor Superior (James Stewart, filtered through Francesco
Gagliardi). I know this confrontational moment is going to occur,
so I watch the performers seemingly trying not to build up to it, but
I also want it to happen. I pay close attention to this particular scene,
in which only Brandon and Philip appear, a scene that utilizes a
tigher playing space than many of the other Rope scenes Gagliardi
has incorporated into his performance. Because of these factors, the
repeated dialogue from the source film is clearer in this scene than in
others, where there are more characters compressed into a smaller
playing area. Although the repeated dialogue does become fragmented,
the words do not convert into pure sound as much as in other scenes,
so surely elements of suspense must come across to the audience.
Philip’s voice must sound paranoid; and will they or will they not
answer the damn telephone? Surely the fact that Rupert has left
something behind and is returning for it is a bad sign?
I watch the scene that begins with Gagliardi miming Rupert’s
firing of three bullets on the soundtrack, meant in the film to draw
the outside world’s attention to the crime that has been committed
in this perfect penthouse. Beginning (rather than concluding) this
final scene of the performance with the three climatic shots diminishes
its climactic quality, but I still detect emotion in the size of
the gesture and the sound of the gunshots. Because these shots are
directed to the world outside the apartment, the outside noises and
sounds that have occasionally entered the soundscape now become
amplified. One can even make out functional dialogue from “the
street” as Brandon and Philip move forward, and then backward and
forward and backward, but inevitably toward the performance’s and
the film’s conclusion. This final scene of Film: Rope will undoubtedly
seem more abstracted to a viewer who does not recall the source
movie, yet audible gunshots are always gunshots, and they tend to
determine actions and reactions occurring in their wake. At the
conclusion of this final scene of both Rope and Film: Rope, the
music for the final credits takes over the soundscape. In Film: Rope,
this transition from the body of the film into the final credits is
repeated and repeated as many times as the performers feel necessary.
Perhaps, even at the end of the line, Gagliardi’s film performance is
not literally linear, although it is certainly temporal. The closing
music, which is so glaringly opposed in tone and emphasis to the
sirens that signal the imminent arrest of the two murderers, starts
and then stops again and repeats this starting and stopping as the
characters advance and back away from their final positions. The
performers may or may not bow; and they don’t need obvious
orchestral cues to inform them when their performance is over.
-Andrew James Paterson
ENDNOTES
1. Other films used as source material for performances in this series
include Tokyo Story (dir. Ozu Yasujiro, 1953), East of Eden (dir. Elia
Kazan, 1955), La Dolce Vita (dir. Federico Fellini, 1960) and The Birds
(dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1963).
2. It is recommended that the duration of the piece is at least three times
the duration of the scene from the source film. Quoted from film {progressive
number}: {number of film} document sent to me by Francesco Gagliardi.
3. Actually, there are four ordinary cuts in the film, in addition to the
disguised cuts necessary for the transitions between camera rolls.
4. The film was adapted from a play titled Rope’s End (1929), by Patrick
Hamilton, which was based on the Leopold and Loeb murder case in Chicago
in the 1920s. Other films based on this case are Compulsion (dir. Richard
Fleischer, 1959) and Swoon (dir. Tom Kalin, 1992).
5. François Truffaut. Hitchcock, revised edition (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1983), p. 179-184.
6. Robin Wood. Hitchcock’s Films (New York: Castle Books, New York,
1965), p.33.
7. “Hitchcock approached Cary Grant and Montgomery Clift for two of
the three key roles, but both declined, at least partly out of concern for
their images. The roles of the young murderers went to gay actors John
Dall and Farley Granger. James Stewart played their mentor (the role
Hitchcock wanted for Cary Grant).” Glen Johnson. “Homosexuality in
Hitchcock Movies,” http://faculty.cua.edu/johnsong/hitchcock/pages/
homosexuality/homosexuality.html (accessed March 2013).
8. Francesco Gagliardi, e-mail correspondence with the author,
March 17, 2013.
9. Francesco Gagliardi may be the director and conceptualist of Film: Rope,
but he is also engaged with his own performance, referencing character of
Rupert Cadell from the film, and not placing himself in a superior role in
relation to the other performers.
10. The source material, of course, dangles amorality before us, but must
chastise it, according to the stipulations of both Alfred Hitchcock and the
Hays Production Code, which was in force in Hollywood at the time of
the filming.
11. “Although performers focus exclusively on the task/process they are
carrying out, without any concern for the final ‘effect’ of each segment of
the performance, in choosing the scene/segments that we work on I was
thinking of the spatial and aural ‘feel’ that might emerge from each segment.
We were talking last time about my role as a director/composer: I suppose
that this is the one aspect of the piece where I exercise the most control in
that capacity.” Francesco Gagliardi, e-mail correspondence with the author,
March 17, 2013.
12. Cage’s notions of experiment and improvisation are not compatible, due
to his belief that improvisation “does not lead you into a new experience,
but into something with which you’re already familiar” (Darter, 1982:21).
Many other composers and improvisers, however, see experimentalism
and improvisation as related to one another. See Tom Darter, “John Cage,”
Keyboard 8 (9) (1982), p. 21, cited in Sabine M. Feisst, “John Cage and
Improvisation: an Unresolved Relationship,” in Musical Improvisation:
Art, Education and Society, eds. Gabriel Solis and Bruno Nettl (Chicago:
University of Illinois Press, 2009), p. 38-51.
13. John Cage. Silence. (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University
Press, 1961), p. 57-59, cited in Feisst.
14. Francesco Gagliardi. Film 7: Tokyo Story, performed by the Ensemble
for Experimental Music and Theater at Esorabako (Kagurazaka, Tokyo),
http://music-theater.tumblir.com/.
BIOGRAPHIES
FRANCESCO GAGLIARDI is a performance artist and occasional
filmmaker based in Toronto. Programs of his work have been
presented in San Francisco, Berlin, Tokyo, Milan, Turin, Los Angles
(The Wulf, 2008; Sea and Space, 2009; Pieter, 2011), and New
York City (Ontological Theater Incubator, 2009; The Stone, 2009;
Presents, 2011; Willow Place Auditorium, 2012). His film Short
Sentences: 1993-2005 was awarded the NOW Magazine Overkill
Award at the 2006 Images Festival. As well as performing his own
work, he is active as an experimental music performer, and has
premiered work by a number of composers including Jennifer
Walshe, Mark So, Adam Overton, Travis Just, and G. Douglas Barrett.
ANDREW JAMES PATERSON is a Toronto-based interdisciplinary
artist working with video, film, performance, writing, and music.
His works have played locally, nationally, and internationally for
over thirty years. His videos have largely been concerned with
boundaries between what is public and what is private, and also
with shifting relationships between bodies and technologies. He
has edited publications by YYZBOOKS in Toronto and contributed
to periodicals such as Impulse, FILE, C Magazine, Lola, and FUSE.
Paterson has also presented performances which investigate archives
and institutional collections. He is currently the coordinator for the
8 Fest Small-Gauge Film Festival.
PUBLISHED BY FADO PERFORMANCE ART CENTRE, April 2013
www.performanceart.ca
