Rope (1948)

Two friends Brandon and Phillip (John Dall and Farley Granger) have killed their 'inferior' friend David and now plan to relish it by having a dinner party with David right under nose of his fiancé, parents, and their former professor, Rupert Cadell (James Stewart). Have the two committed the perfect murder? Only the night will tell. Odd clues lead Rupert to question the entire evening; he wonders if his former students have taken his academic theories a little too far.
Alfred Hitchcock's Rope is a Technicolor masterpiece. Though it’s never quite as suspenseful as Hitchcock’s other, Rope is masterful for what it accomplishes nonetheless. Set in one room, the camera never seems cut off. Each frame feels like one continuous motion. That alone is amazing. As the gentlemen scheme, we get a sense of the diabolical. True to form, Hitchcock doesn’t spell it, trusting his audience to connect the dots.

The friendship is fascinating in itself. Brandon, the dominant one, oozes evil and obnoxious. Phillip, the submissive, is a mere boy. David is strangled with a rope and placed in a chest. The friends then set candelabras, plates, and food on the grandiose chest. Janet—his fiancé, his father, the cynical Professor, all invited under a ruse, dines in the presence of this chest.

As the evening continues, Brandon parades about. Every second brings more confidence to his step in Nietzsche-esque repose. Phillip quickly begins to crumble. Agitated, sweaty, stumbled words—combined with his unusual outburst, it’s enough for Cadell to ask questions.

It’s not until the dinner guests leaves, that Rope amps up. Returning to the apartment under the guise of forgetting his cigarette case, Cadell slowly picks the two friends apart. Jimmy Stewart brilliantly executes his role of learned professor and social misfit to a tee. Slowly plotting, encouraging the boys to comfort, Cadell nails the murders through their own missteps.

The period setting is one of refinement. The backdrop of NYC plays from day to night in the windows of the apartment. In retrospect, prop usage is remarkable, seamless, really. The dialogue is wickedly humorous and comfortable. Rope’s climax—Stewart’s soliloquy—is a brilliant piece of writing.

As I see it, Alfred Hitchcock's Rope is yet another exquisite film from the master director. Technically seamless, engaging from the start, movies like Rope, is why I watch.