ABSTRACT
As Patrick Deer points out in Culture and Camouflage, the word blackout was used in a variety of contexts in the first half of the twentieth century: theatrical, psychological, military, and political, each of which Patrick Hamilton materializes in his fiction and stagecraft. Hamilton’s main psychological interest is in dominance and subordination within individual and group relations. In Rope , the case in point is the homosexual tie that links the two murderers. Psychological blackouts are to the fore in the play. For example, Anton (named Manningham in Angel Street, the play on which the film is based) attempts to drive his wife insane by claiming that she unconsciously hides household objects and personal possessions such as his pocket watch. This chapter considers the unconscious trauma that Anton repetitively re-enacts in his own behavior. The film, however, focuses on his wife’s trauma.
