Am I the only person in the Rope (1948) fandom whose headcanon is that Brandon actually treats Phillip well? I don’t mean during the movie, but I’d like to think on the average day when they’re not plotting, committing, and hiding a murder, that Brandon and Phillip don’t act in such extremes all the time.
I feel like we get some glimpses of their everyday relationship. Nobody talks about the fact that Brandon had arranged a piano debut for Phillip and is driving him to his mother’s house to stay there and practice. Or how he offers to take Phillip on a trip wherever he’d like to go after Phillip has started to snap on him.
I just get the sense in their dynamic that Phillip is totally devoted to Brandon and obviously the submissive one, but Brandon absolutely adores Phillip and would do and probably does do quite a lot for him. He can’t say enough how superior they both are. Brandon also seems so easily affected by what Phillip says and thinks about him. When Phillip says he’s always been frightened of Brandon, Brandon looks like he could cry, until Phillip says it’s part of his charm, and then Brandon totally melts. Brandon then brings it up again later and looks elated when Phillip says Brandon astounds him.
I just like to think that their dynamic maybe isn’t as fucked up on a normal day and that they really do love each other 🤷🏻♀️
I know they’re murderers but also like… I love them and like to think of them as happy before that
Rope (1948) directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Adapted from a play by closeted Gay writer Patrick Hamilton, it was loosely based on the real life murderers Leopold and Loeb, who were thought to have been homosexual. The screenplay was by Gay writer Arthur Laurents. Both John Dall and Farley Granger were Gay. In the play the murderers are explicitly homosexual, and although no mention of this is in the movie it is considered to be fairly obvious to anyone who looks beneath the surface. Arthur Laurents is quoted as saying "I don't think the censors at that time realized this was about gay people. They didn't have a clue what was and what wasn't, that's how it got by."