User reviews

This 1948 Hitchcock film is mostly noted for its technical achievements. Hitchcock filmed this story, about two well-to-do rich kids who decide to commit a murder for the fun of it, as a play. Which, it in fact, originally was, though based in London and not New York. Technical limitations did not enable his original vision of making the entire picture one continuous long shot. Instead it is made up of several 8 minute continuous shots. This was the length of film that fit into one reel. Using some very inventive cutting techniques the film appears as if it was filmed all in one take. This is more impressive when you see the actual size that color film cameras were during this time period. They were absolutely enormous, bigger than a man standing. To move the camera in and around the small stage space, many of the set pieces were set on casters and rolled about to keep out of the way of the camera. Some of the actors were noted in saying that they worried every time they sat down, that there might not be a chair for them to fall into. Another achievement of the film is in terms of lighting. The apartment that the entire film is set in has several large windows overlooking the city. As the movie is more or less uninterrupted from start to finish we see the lighting change as the sun begins to set and night falls. It is a testament to this achievement that upon first viewing you don't really notice the effect. Yet, the filmmakers took great pains to get it to look realistic, staging numerous re-shoots for the final few scenes.

Though the technical achievements are quite wonderful, it is a shame that they have overshadowed what it really a very good bit of suspense. It seems the two high society murderers have planned a dinner party just after the murder. They store the corpse in a wood box that is featured prominently in the midst of the dinner. This creates an excellent mix of suspense and the macabre. Throughout the party the murderers become more unraveled even as they are enjoying their little game.

All of the acting is quite good. The two murderer (John Dall and Farley Granger) do a fine job of playing intellectual, society playboys, with a desire for excitement. It is slightly annoying watching their excited, nervous mannerisms (especially some stuttering by Jon Dall) but it is fitting with the characters. Their former instructor, Rupert Cadell, is played magnificently by the impeccable James Stewart. This is a bit of departure from Stewarts typical roles. Here he is a tough, cynical intellectual. This was his first of four collaborations between Stewart and Hitchock and it is hard to imagine his role as Scottie in Vertigo without having first played in this movie.

The story unravels in typical Hitchock fashion. The suspense is built, then lessoned by some well timed comedy, and then built again to a final crescendo. Hitchcock was excellent as a technical director and allowed his actors the breathing room they needed for fine performances. In the end I left the picture feeling more excited about the superb storytelling than any particular technical achievement. It is a testament to his craft, that Hitchock allows you to leave a picture being enamored with his story over his technical achievements. Some of the greatest effects are those you don't notice because they seem so natural and real.

Alfred Hitchock manages a triumph of technical brilliance and suspense in Rope. It's influence in the technical realm of cinema far outshines any effect the story has on future movies. This is a shame, for the story being told is one of suspense, macabre and excitement.

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You know the quote about Actors being cattle. Hitchcock corrected saying he never said that actors were cattle what he said was that actors "should be treated" like cattle. Great actors give perfect performances in Hitchcok films. Think of Grant and Bergman in Notorious, Cotten in Shadow Of A Doubt not to mention Anthony Perkins in Psycho. Often the improbabilities of the plot become totally credible by the credibility of the performances. Here, John Dall and Farley Granger act and act to outrageously that it's impossible to believe they can get away with it for more than five minutes. Their characters are impossible to warm up to like it happened with Anthony Perkins in Psycho or with Colin Firth in Apartment Zero, no matter how sickly those characters are you can't help connect with their humanity. Hitchcock in Rope seemed much more taken by the technical wizardry and it is unquestionably fun to watch. So Rope provided me with superficial pleasures and sometimes that's enough.

I have seen several negative comments about the eight 10-minute takes and three fade cuts that comprise this film, and many of them seem to miss the point. For example, bob the moo said, "but I don't understand why he didn't just accept that he would have to make do with 10 [actually, eight] different shots instead of trying to hide the edit. Each time he does it by zooming in on a black jacket and then pulling out again after the edit."

The whole idea was to build the suspense and make the action appear to take place in "real time" by not having the camera appear to blink. Thus the 10-minute takes (and three fade cuts at approximately 20-minute intervals); and I think it works very well. It also makes one appreciate the excellence of the acting. It is extremely difficult for actors to execute a film flawlessly in only eight 10-minute takes, and the three principal actors did a fantastic job under very stressful circumstances.

I think the reason the film was not a big box-office success is that people were expecting the usual Hitchcock action (think of earlier Hitchcock films such as Saboteur, Foreign Correspondent, The 39 Steps or The Man Who Knew Too Much). But any serious film buff should not miss this film.

I generally like "real time", "single take" films (Birdman, Victoria, and the more recent Boiling Point spring to mind), so it was very cool to see what is presumably one of the first attempts at that particular style of filmmaking, executed by the legendary Alfred Hitchcock no less.

A quick bit of research reveals that this movie was in fact shot in 10 takes, ranging from 4 minutes to just over 10 minutes. The transitions between those takes are quite easily spotted, as Hitchcock alternates between having the camera zoom into a dark object, totally blacking out the lens, and making more conventional cuts. This little "deception" (if you could even call it that) to make it seem as if the film consists of one continuous take didn't bother me at all. After all, what is a film but a series of illusions being played on the viewer?

'Rope' is undeniably still the result of a filmmaker who is eager to experiment with the medium and who has confidence in his stylistic prowess. However, when watching films that are considered radically innovative and highly influential, I sometimes find myself appreciating their inventive nature more than really loving them. But with 'Rope', Hitchcock delivers a film that is stylistically inventive while being utterly compelling as well. It's a case of style enhancing substance, as I enjoyed this film for more than just its technical bravura.

About that technical bravura though. The long takes may give this film the feel of a recorded stage play but calling it that would be selling it short. The camerawork is awe-inspiring here, not only in how it navigates the different players and spaces within the single location setting, but also in its framing of certain objects or people in order to manipulate the viewer and generate tension from seemingly ordinary situations.

In addition to the virtuoso long takes, there is also great use of color and lighting in this film. 'Rope' was Hitchcock's first color film, and he seamlessly integrates this added opportunity for visual flair into his trademark style, especially during the suspenseful climactic sequence, where you have those red and green neon lights flickering outside the apartment window. The reflection of these neon lights tinges the proceedings with a hint of surrealism (something Hitchcock would later return in Vertigo). Furthermore, the movie lasts 80 minutes and appears to take place in "real time", but the time frame it is covering is longer. For example, the actual dinner lasts only 20 minutes in the film and the sunset happens way too quickly. Though I am not technically proficient enough to discern exactly how this effect was achieved, I'm pretty sure it involved some inventive way of lighting the scene. The film ultimately concludes with a breathtaking final frame, a remarkable combination of perfect composition and vibrant colors. The exaggeratedly stilted look of that frame adds to the feeling that you're watching the re-enactment of a painting.

To my surprise, I found out that Hitchcock himself later dismissed his experimentation with 10-minute takes in this film as a stunt. Like I mentioned earlier though, I found much more to latch onto in this gripping film than just an appreciation of the innovative filmmaking. All the actors shine in their respective roles, and I thought the 3 central characters had great chemistry. Thematically, it fascinated me how obviously fascist philosophies, like the idea of murder as a privilege of the superior few to do away with inferior beings, are openly discussed only 3 years after World War II had ended. Hitler is even mentioned by name. The blunt way in which the sociopathic Brandon repeatedly talks about the "intellectually superior individuals" and "inferior beings whose lives are unimportant" first struck me as darkly humorous, a satire of how preppy, private-schooled, upper-class brats think of the rest of the world. There is some slick screwball dialogue at other moments that seems to hint at that comedic approach. But the repeated discussions about superiority, followed by that final moralizing monologue by Rupert made me realize that Hitchcock is in fact issuing an explicit warning about the dangers of such philosophies. It is probably exactly because this film came out right after WW II that a genuine fear of fascist ideologies still looms large over 'Rope'.

Unfortunately, that ending is the one thing about this film that didn't work for me. First, it is clearly established that Rupert is the one who has planted his theory about murder being justifiable for a few "superiors" in the boys' head and that Brandon and Phillip put his idea into practice mostly to impress their former headmaster. When we hear them discuss the topic at the party, it first seems as if Rupert is being facetious, but he goes on to explicitly state that he is not kidding. But later still, when he finds out his former pupils have put his theory to the test, Rupert makes a 180-turn, saying that they "twisted his words". He goes on to give a big heavy-handed, moralizing speech that spells out the exact noble principles that we are supposed to take away from the film. I didn't like that sudden shift into didactic moralization and the fact that it comes as the result of such a strange and inconsistent character turn kind of muddied the social commentary for me. I think I would have liked the film better had it indeed been that sharper dark satire I first thought it was intended to be, with Rupert as the half tongue-in-cheek, half serious instiller of fascist ideologies in rich and spoiled upper-class brats. But given the broader context at the time of the film's release, its more explicit approach to that dicey topic is certainly understandable.

Overall, watching 'Rope' was a very enjoyable experience. As a fan of films that use long takes (be it one continuous take or multiple longer ones), it was cool to see the film that undoubtedly influenced many of them. Despite Hitchcock's own dismissal of his visual experiment as a 'stunt', 'Rope' emerges as a daring exploration of style and substance. In addition to the technical mastery, the film boasts excellent performances from its main cast and includes some surprisingly open discussion of fascist ideologies, offering us a glimpse into post-World War II anxieties. The unsatisfying ending, with its inconsistent character turn and heavy-handed moralization, keep the film from being a legit masterpiece in my book, but 'Rope' remains a compelling and largely successful cinematic experiment from a master storyteller unafraid to challenge stylistic and thematic conventions.

What an unusual Hitchcock film... such a small cast, and the whole film consists of long takes. Before seeing this, I had heard enormously positive things about it... most of them coming from my father, who hadn't seen it for about fifteen years. I had high expectations for the film, but I must say it exceeded them. Though there are only a few cuts in this film, meaning the camera is running almost non-stop, Hitchcock makes great use of it; he manages to fit in many of his trademark angles and closeups in, without it seeming forced. At one point, the camera focuses for a minute and a half on an inanimate object with only one visible character moving back and forth near it, and he manages to drench the cut in suspense, leaving even the most calm and collected of viewers at the edge of their seat, biting their nails. Only the fewest directors could make that sequence work, and luckily Hitchcock is one of them. The plot is great. It's interesting and it develops nicely. The pacing is perfect. I was never bored for a second. The acting, oh the acting... John Dall is excellent as Brandon, the intellectually superior and very smug main character. Makes me wonder why he didn't get more roles in his career. Stewart is great, as usual. The rest of the acting is very good as well. The characters are well-written and credible. For such an unusual film, and despite the heavy feeling of watching a stage play rather than a film, it's very entertaining and effective. If for nothing else, watch this to enjoy Dall as the cold, calculating and manipulative psychopath. I recommend this to fans of Hitchcock and Stewart. 8/10

Wonderful use of 'invisible' cuts to give the illusion of one take, going back to its original form of being a play. The acting also had a feeling of their being on stage, and so gave the impression of watching them act immediately before you, despite the camera movement. It is an interesting experience having the murder happen first, so we know 'whodunnut', but the suspense instead comes from the question, 'will they be found out?' Very entertaining performance by Phillip as he becomes more and more agitated by Brandon's flippant attitude to the murder.

This has to be one of the most amazing films I will ever see in my life! I don't say that lightly, but when I saw this movie for the first time in film class, I walked out that theater a changed person! I've never been so lost for words at how brilliantly a movie was shot! Hitchcock is one of my absolute favorite directors and this is yet another one of his films that just hit the nail right on its head!! It is filmed as if it was done in one long shot, and it's mesmerizing to watch!

One scene in particular involved a swinging door and some well timed choreographed movements which created the most tense atmosphere I've ever felt while watching a scene!

This movie is an underrated and undiscovered gem by many, and that's just baffling to me! Everyone should watch his masterpiece at least once in their life because of how truly spectacular it is!

It's a crime thriller/drama that keeps you right on the edge of your seat from start to finish!

If I could rate it higher than a 10 I would!

I just saw this movie for the first time this year. I was amazed. Alfred Hitchcock does an absolutely amazing job of making the audience cringe. I read reviews about this movie saying that it wasn't well accepted by the audience when it first came out. But that is understandable because a lot of great classics aren't accepted when first released. One big example is The Shawshank Redemption, which didn't do as well as it should have in the box office. That doesn't make the content or the worth of the film any less. Rope was the twisted story based on the real life murder case of Leopold-Loeb. Two college students commit the "perfect murder" and invite the friends and family of their victim over for dinner. The acting is superb, especially from everyone's favorite, James Stewart. The fear builds slowly as this movie keeps you interested by morbid discussion that everyone has thought at one time or another. This movie really did creep me out, and although it might not be as thrilling as Rear Window or North by Northwest, it will not disappoint. You will be biting your nails for sure waiting to see what happens to the seemingly "perfect murder". I would easily give this movie an 8 out of 10.

Alfred Hitchcock broke boundaries in the movie making industry. He overcame the odds to create not just film, but works of art. He could tell a story like no other and it has been copied ever since. Horror, thrillers, crime, and mysteries were his specialties. His unique sense of how a film should look is unparalleled by any other. One of the most creative and interesting to watch has got to be Rope.

Rope is the story of two young men, Brandan and Phillip (John Dall and Farley Granger), who come together to perform the perfect murder. They're only motive is that they are superior beings like Nietzsche says. So why do they kill they're friend David? Are they really that much above everyone else? They seem to think so, and they're old school master Rupert (James Stewart) gave them the idea in the first place. It seems that Brandan and Phillip have taken it too far.

After strangling David with a piece of rope, they must prepare for the party they are throwing. The food is set, David is placed in a chest in the parlor, and the guests will be arriving soon. One more change is needed to really make this a work of art. The food is moved from the dinning room and placed on top of the chest where David is resting in peace. Mrs. Wilson, the maid, doesn't seem to understand but it is not her job. Now everything is set. All that are needed are their guests, including David's father!

Their friend Kenneth, David's girlfriend/Kenneth's ex-girlfriend Janet, David's father, Mrs. Atwater, and Rupert all arrive and begin to eat. Phillip is in a daze because of the whole situation before hand. He still hasn't quite settled down yet and is very uneasy. Branan on the other hand is quite chirpy, stuttering with so much excitement. The party includes some musical accompaniment from Phillip and talk of David's whereabouts, for he was supposed to be there...alive. He can't believe that he actually pulled it off. All that needs to happen is for the guests to leave and off to the country-side to dispose of David.

Hitchcock has taken Patrick Hamilton's play and made it into an absolute masterpiece. Hitchcock had to take out some elements to the characters of Brandan and Phillip, mainly their homosexuality. Originally on stage the two are homosexuals but because of the time in which the movie was made in, it had to be adjusted to suit American standards. Europe already had addressed the issue in movies, but the US hadn't made it that far yet.

The real standout of this picture has got to be the cinematography. The entire movie is basically filmed in one continuous shot. The camera moves around with the characters over the apartment. It is made to look like you would see it on stage. You see everything going on and hear everything, just focus your attention on the characters that are speaking of moving around. The only time Hitchcock would stop the camera was when a person would walk by it would zoom in on their back for a second of two, just so the whole movie wasn't filmed non-stop, and made editing very simple. There is only one setting for the whole movie so you know exactly what is going on everywhere at all times. You can feel the suspense thickening as the men's secret is close to being exposed.

Rope is a perfect film and couldn't have fallen into better hands than Alfred Hitchcock. His vision to make a movie based on a play surpasses all other attempts at making this conversion. The film runs only 80 minutes but nonetheless is exhilarating from beginning to end. Unfortunately due to the homosexual references, the movie didn't do as well as it should have, but left its mark in cinema history. Don't let this one get away!

Rope is generally regarded as one of Hitchcock's failures, but many reviewers on this site have attempted to rescue its reputation. I find their arguments interesting but not convincing. There is too much wrong with this picture. The source material is weak, the screenplay is inadequate, the casting is hopeless and Hitchcock's technical experiment is misconceived.

I have never seen it, but Hamilton's play probably ran about two hours. Hitchcock has trimmed it to a brisk 75 minutes. However, this undermines his decision to 'preserve the unities', because the whole party scene is now unrealistically abbreviated. It also means that information is given in such a rush that very little of the sub-text is actually on screen.

The play is based on a classic 'folie a deux', where two people form a bond against the rest of the world and egg each other on to do something that neither would have done alone. In this case, the killers' antagonism is partly rooted in their sense of rejection and isolation as homosexuals in a censorious society.

It is also about a schoolteacher's moral crisis as he comes to realise that his cynically playful philosophical speculations have been taken seriously, with tragic results.

However, by beginning the story with the murder the actual relationship between Brandon and Phillip is never really explored and the homosexual undertones are so deeply buried as to be effectively non-existent. Instead, the relationship and its consequences have to be explained retrospectively though stolidly expository dialogue. Similarly, Rupert's background, character and former relationship with the killers is hardly touched on and he has barely expounded his cynical views when he is forced to recant them.

The focus of the story, therefore, shifts from the characters and their relationships to Rupert's suspicions about what has happened. Consequently, the suspense is mostly to do with whether the killers can get through the evening without anyone discovering the body in the trunk.

In short: the movie is interested in the inherent suspense of the situation, rather than in how that situation came about, or how it affects the people involved.

This would be OK, except that much of suspense lies in the verbal duels between Rupert and Brandon, but they are not very well written. The dialogue is generally very flat and prosaic. There is a lot of it, but it is strictly functional and there is scarcely a line that really sparkles with wit or menace. As a result we get no sense that Rupert is an aloof armchair philosopher who enjoys outraging convention with his wild free-thinking, or that Brandon is a clever, bitter psychopath. A psychopath, yes: but clever?

This is not helped by the casting.

Jimmy Stewart was a competent actor, but clearly miscast. He is too folksy to play a character like Rupert. We believe his shocked denunciation of Brandon at the end, but not his earlier pseudo-Nietzchean speculations. The part had been turned down by Cary Grant (who would also have been a disaster) and should probably have been offered to someone like Ray Milland, Frederick March, James Mason or George Sanders.

At 30, John Dall seems too old for Brandon. He comes across as arrogant and rather stupid. The screenplay saddles him with an irritating stutter which he uses throughout. He would have fared better if someone had simply told him to use it more sparingly (only when under pressure) but nobody did.

Farley Granger was a limited actor and it shows. He plays Phillip all on the same note and his continual panic is both wearing and implausible. We never believe in his relationship with Brandon because it has effectively broken down by the time the movie begins. How he came to acquiesce in Brandon's murder plan is a profound mystery. We can only speculate how things might have turned out if Montgomery Clift had accepted either of the two main parts.

Nobody else registers.

To make these performances work, despite the miscasting and the inadequacies of the screenplay, Hitchcock needed to spend a lot of time with the actors, but his attention was elsewhere.

This was not the first play he had shot. In the early Thirties, he had filmed Juno and the Paycock in a very conventional way. Here he wanted to do something different: to shoot it in 'real time' with a single camera and no editing. He could have elected to have his camera tracking up and down outside the set, shooting through the 'forth wall' and simply recording the actors, but that is not how he liked to work. At heart, Hitchcock always remained a silent movie maker. He liked to tell a story visually and manipulate the audience's response through his choice of lenses, camera angles, framing and lighting of shots, tracking, panning and editing.

In Rope he wanted to discard editing but retain everything else. This would have been feasible if he had access to a Steadicam, but he didn't. What he had instead was a massive Technicolor camera dollying through the set in eight or nine minute takes. This was a huge logistical challenge that occupied all of Hitchcock's attention and energy. He managed to achieve some striking and revealing set-ups, but the camera has to plod ponderously from one to the other so that the overall pacing is noticeably draggy.

Meanwhile, his actors are left struggling with their inappropriate and underwritten parts, trying to give engrossing performances while stepping over cables and watching an army of stage hands pull the set apart in front of Hitchcock's lumbering Technicolor juggernaut.

Rope usually gets a mention in any overview of Hitchcock's work on the basis that it is an interesting experiment. In fact, it is an uninteresting experiment. There are great Hitchcock pictures, good ones and not-so-good ones, but he only made a handful of boring movies.

Rope is one of them.

Rope is one of the finer films that Hitchcock made. Philosophy, sociology and psychology are contained in equal parts. The plot is simple, the characters are complex and Hitchcock's treatment of the Leopold and Loeb parallel quite deft. The final soliloquy from Jimmy Stewart's character, Rupert, is not only one of the finest examples of Stewart's acting abilities but also of film-making.

On the subject of filmmaking - Hitchcock filmed this in as much of a single take as possible. I believe there are only five edits in the whole thing. I can wholeheartedly tell you that it was no gimmick on Hitchcock's part. The play's plot requires that a certain amount of tension be maintained. Tracking shots are used for this purpose and quite well in my opinion. Timing, position and prop movements alone are to force us to stand in awe of a logistical challenge. All the actors are played superbly. The dialogue is natural and flowing. The finest bit of timing involves a swinging kitchen door, the rope, and the fear of discovery.

In short, this is a fine film that cannot disappoint. Highly recommended and will be well worth your time.

Two men are convinced that they've commited the perfect murder, but to test out their theory, they hold a party straight after committing the deed, their mission to hold their nerve, and not give the game away.

The Master of Suspense serves up one of the best games or cat and mouse ever made, this is a tantalising thriller, for my money it's one of the best.

I make no secret of the fact that I love Hitchcock's catalogue of films, there are some truly glorious names on that list, Rope is definitely one of the best entries on that list.

The way this is shot is so unusual, the scenes are long and dialogue heavy, but so absorbing, the tension is incredible, you're just waiting for someone to crack, someone to slip up.

I'm always struck by how short this film is, it really does pass by at a flash, just about 75 minutes long.

James Stewart delivers once again, the whole cast are immaculate in their delivery.

Rope is without any doubt, a classic.

9/10.

If you forget for a moment (or somehow didn't notice) the unique spectacle of HOW this film was made... it is still an absolute masterpiece of character study & a suspenseful thriller.

Brandon plays as cold & diabolical a villain as I've seen in a movie, his chilling role heightened by his easy schmoozing & the way he continues to push it just a little bit further in every scene.

The tension as he continues to move them closer & closer to the edge is unlike anything I've seen in cinema. You know in the opening 30 seconds of the movie what the tension will resolve around... yet you feel it anyway, or perhaps that much more acutely because its in plain sight from the beginning (literally & figuratively).

Phillip's part as the degenerating man-with-a-conscience is brilliant as well, he completely falls apart on screen in the most tragic & convincing ways.

But the star of the show is still Jimmy Stewart as Rupert, the only man who truly changes in this relatively short (80 some minute) thriller. His aristocratic superiority is on display at first, but as the movie unfolds, we see the "master" torn down by his "apprentice." Being confronted with the monsters he helped to create gives us the juiciest moments in the film. As he begins to realize the gravity of his careless, cold philosophy we finally get some heart & humanity exposed from beneath the horror.

Similar psychopathic monsters have been on screen since - American Psycho & Silence of the Lambs come to mind as great examples - but never does a monster face its maker in such an intimate & intense moment.

Nor do any of the "killing for fun" contemporaries find a way to bring out humanist ideals in the end like Rope. Which means Rope alone seems to expose & condemn the actual evil in these villains - while movies like "Silence of the Lambs" & "American Psycho" seem to celebrate & idealize their blood-lusters. Those movies (which I hold in high esteem) now feel like cheap "ambulance chasing" thrills in comparison to the final confrontation here. Even the final seconds of Rope, the quiet, still moment in the apartment, is full of weighty implications. I can think of very few scenes in any movie that do so little, yet say so much.

But on top of all of this, the film is shot in "real time" as if one cut, a technical marvel for the time & a huge acting challenge for any time. If this movie were half as good, it would still be a miracle that they could pull it off in such a cinematic style... the fact that it IS excellent regardless makes it all that much more impressive that it was shot that way. 1917 recently garnered a lot of attention for its one-cut style, like Birdman a few years ago. Neither of those movies (again, both of which I loved) would be nearly as good without that filming/editing flair. But I think Rope could be nearly as good without it - which makes me that much more impressed that Hitchcock managed this in 1948. A style that is still wowing audiences & winning Oscars 70 years later.

I'm not sure how I rank this compared to Hitchcock's other top masterpieces (which I'd consider Vertigo and Rear Window). But it might have just become my favorite pure thriller.

If you haven't seen it, watch it. Set aside the mere 80 minutes & truly watch it. You won't be disappointed.

It's a psychological murder mystery set in the 1940s in an apartment in New York City. It takes place in one afternoon and evening, with the audience knowing the murderers and victim from the very beginning.

Brandon Shaw (John Dall) and Phillip Morgan (Farley Granger) are upper-crust college students. Brandon is the more assertive personality and a strong believer in Nietzsche's "Superman" theory that some people transcend good and evil, justifying killing lesser people. Their target for a perfect murder is David Kentley (Dick Hogan), who they strangle with a rope in the opening scene.

Brandon has invited guests to a party at the apartment he shares with Phillip. Guests include David's parents, and an old girlfriend, Janet Walker (Joan Chandler), who is now engaged to David. Another guest is Kenneth Lawrence (Douglas Dick), who Brandon believes Janet has just dumped. Finally, he invites his old prep school teacher, Rupert Cadell (James Stewart), who introduced him to Nietzsche's ideas. David's father (Cedric Hardwicke) comes to the party with his sister-in-law, Anita Atwater (Constance Collier), as David's mother is ill. Brandon's maid, Mrs. Wilson (Edith Evanson), helps with arrangements.

"Rope" follows the events just before and during the party. Concern increases as David, who Brandon also invited, does not appear or call to explain his absence. The tension for the audience is whether Brandon and Phillip will get away with David's murder. Rupert Cadell's observations at various points lead to a final confrontation.

"Rope" is more a movie about technique rather than plot. Although the original play included the theme of a homosexual relationship between Brandon, Phillip, and possibly Rupert, it is absent in the film. This omission makes the Rupert character more one-dimensional, making the script somewhat more artificial. The technique of long film shots up to 10 minutes in length creates interest. Some humor (trying to remember the names of films and actors) provides some release. It's OK Hitchcock, but again not his best.

I place this one in my list of films anyone should watch. That is, in order to understand some fundamental issues on film-making and films in the last 50 years.

What i'm least interested in here are the technical innovations. Those represent today a curiosity, a museum fact, worth being remembered and credited to those who worked for them, but just it.

I'm also not so interested in the underlying taboo subjects, namely those regarding the homosexuality issue. In respect to that, i even think the whole film construction, from casting to scene writing threw away many things. I'll get morecontroversial. I think Hitchcock in fact despised those messages (the writers were worried in exploring them, not Hitch), he was not after meanings or controversies, he was after something far more ingenious and influential. I'm talking about his camera eye.

Before this one, all Hitch's work was something between a classical construction and some exploration of the camera as carrier of a character's (and the audience's) emotion/feeling/sensation. The library scene in 'Shadow of a doubt', for example, is the perfect example of what i'm talking about. Anyway, that will Hitch had of making the camera follow around characters, sets, and reveal what a character (or "god") had to reveal was already notable. In here, he made that the theme of the picture. One single set, very few characters, a clear as water story (which he made even clearer by not throwing any doubt about the destiny of the murdered boy). The sexual issues also go to second importance issues. The apartment is at once simple enough to solve the technical difficulties of filming it, and large and divided enough to allow the camera to explore it, searching for elements, for dialogues or for actions. The camera has curiosity, it is almost a character, a character called audience. Years later, in different molds, Hitch would place Stewart behind the camera and definitely assume it as a physical character in the plot (Rear Window). In here what we get is fully a camera that moves to the whishes of the director. The curious, ever searching camera that dePalma would reinvent and Polanski master shows up here.

I believe the work of dePalma, in a way Polanski, Chabrol and even some Godard (Le mépris is filled with this) all derive from what happened here. Hitchcock would probably hit the top with Rear Window, but here is where he becomes an inventor.

My evaluation: 5/5 . one of the cinematic manifestos

It's the below goof, read on: "As the movie begins, the murder victim is heard to shout, and there is an instant cut to the murderers, who have just completed strangling the victim with the eponymous rope still around the victim's neck. If the victim was being strangled, he could not have shouted."

Well, this is not really a goof because as Rupert later explains towards the end of the movie, and he does give a detailed explanation on how he would go about murdering David, he explains that since the victim is pretty strong he would first hit his head very strongly with a heavy object, before finishing him off by strangulation. The head trauma is probably where David's scream comes from, which was probably not strong enough to kill him but he screams in pain.

It is impossible not to admire anything Alfred Hitchcock did, and if you are a fan of Jimmy Stewart as well, "Rope" would seem to be a must-see. Unfortunately, the film is a flawed effort, worth taking the time to view if only to marvel at the camera angles Hitchcock used and the brilliance of the color cinematography -- this was Hitchcock's first use of technicolor.

What redeemed the film for me was the extra feature on the Universal Pictures DVD: "Rope Unleashed." This is worth the price of the DVD all by itself. It is a background documentary on the film, with numerous still photos of the production process. It is nothing less than awesome to see the size of the camera with which Joseph Valentine and his crew worked, and to imagine the effort required to plan and execute scenes that required that camera to move about. The documentary does a great job of describing the way in which Hitchcock pulled this off, beginning with the meticulous detail with which each scene was planned.

"Rope Unleashed" provides two other valuable insights to the movie as well. First, it describes how Hitchcock made the film into a personal directorial challenge, as he chose to shoot it as if one were watching a play, with 10-minute takes on the set. Second, we learn just why the movie itself is somewhat dissatisfying, as we hear how hampered Hitchcock was by Hollywood's homophobia in 1948 (a problem the playwright of the British original did not have to be as concerned about). It is also clear that Hitchcock and the studio's choice of Stewart as the "name" actor was most likely ill-chosen, since the views of that character simply do not fit with our conceptions of what Stewart should be like. This in turn forced the inclusion of the preachy monologue at the end of the film, when the former teacher renounces the beliefs that led to his students' tragic poor choices.

I give this a 7/10, though my vote is certainly biased upward by my love of both Hitchcock and Stewart. Were it not for that bias and the inclusion of "Rope Unleashed" I would probably knock the rating down to a 6, and that only because of the awesome achievement of cinematography.

(49%) More or less a filmed stage play using one take camera trickery with joins you could park a bus between. At less than 90 minutes long this still struggles to fill what little it has to say, much of which is centred around two friends who commit "the perfect murder". The glaring problem here is that the perfect murder is one that involves both the killing and disposal of the victim without any incriminating evidence upon the killers at all, so the very idea of strangling someone (not a spoiler as it happens within the first five minutes) then putting the corpse inside chest could only be considered perfect by a couple of idiots. There is some interest involving the ethics of the state power over the lives of the masses, but overall I found it hard to care about anyone or indeed anything. For cinema fans this is of course worth a look, but for me I'd stick with some of Hitchcock's less monotonous offerings.