Rope

Two well-off young men (John Dall and Farley Granger) kill an acquaintance for the thrill, then throw a party and serve drinks off the trunk containing the corpse.

Rope is often dismissed as little more than an experiment, even by director Alfred Hitchcock himself. The goal, to shoot the entire movie in one continuous take, required the director to find creative ways to work around the ten minute shot length imposed by the amount of film cameras were able to hold at the time. Usually, novel techniques like these result in a gimmicky picture, but Rope is the exception to that rule.

Running a brief 80 minutes Rope moves in almost real-time (Hitchcock plays some tricks with time, condensing what would really be over 100 minutes of real-time into 80) and, as such, is very efficient. Add to that a truly disturbing performance by John Dall, and a solid performance by James Stewart opposite him and you’ve got the makings for a good movie.

Granted, Rope does have its flaws. The movie doesn’t really kick into gear until James Stewart appears, and Farley Granger’s character is unhinged right from the get-go, ultimately becoming more of a plot-device than anything else. This, more than anything, is the film’s biggest weakness as it undoes some of the intense realism Hitchcock works so hard to generate.

Still, Rope is one of Hitchcock’s underrated thrillers, and well worth a look.