Two young men strangle their “inferior” classmate, hide his body in their apartment, and invite his friends and family to a dinner party as a means to challenge the “perfection” of their crime.

Rope is a 1948 American crime film based on the play Rope (1929) by Patrick Hamilton and adapted by Hume Cronyn (treatment) and Arthur Laurents, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and produced by Sidney Bernstein and Hitchcock as the first of their Transatlantic Pictures productions. Starring James Stewart, John Dall and Farley Granger, it is the first of Hitchcock’s Technicolor films, and is notable for taking place in real time and being edited so as to appear as a single continuous shot through the use of long takes.

The original play was said to be inspired by the real-life murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks in 1924 by University of Chicago students Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. Rope has similarities to Agatha Christie‘s short story “The Mystery of the Spanish Chest” from the collection The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding.

On a late afternoon, two brilliant young aesthetes, Brandon Shaw and Phillip Morgan, murder a former classmate, David Kentley in their apartment. They commit the crime as an intellectual exercise: they want to prove their superiority by committing the “perfect murder”.

After hiding the body in a large antique wooden chest, Brandon and Phillip host a dinner party at the apartment which has a panoramic view of Manhattan’s skyline. The guests, unaware of what has happened, include the victim’s father Mr. Kentley and aunt Mrs. Atwater (his mother is not able to attend). Also there is his fiancee, Janet Walker and her former lover Kenneth Lawrence, who was once David’s close friend.

In a subtle move, Brandon uses the chest containing the body as a buffet for the food, just before their maid, Mrs. Wilson arrives to help with the party. “Now the fun begins”, Brandon says when the first guests arrive.

Brandon’s and Phillip’s idea for the murder was inspired years earlier by conversations with their erstwhile prep-school housemaster, publisher Rupert Cadell. While at school, Rupert had discussed with them, in an apparently approving way, the intellectual concepts of Nietzsche‘s Übermensch and the art of murder, a means of showing one’s superiority over others. He too is among the guests at the party, since Brandon in particular feels that he would very likely approve of their “work of art”. As Brandon becomes increasingly more daring, Rupert begins to suspect.

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.

Though the technical achievements are quite wonderful, it is a shame that they have overshadowed what it really a very good bit of suspense. All of the acting is quite good.

Interesting fact: critic Robin Wood points to several instances in the film that could be interpreted as homoerotic. He suggests the opening strangulation reflects the euphoria of an orgasm and the subsequent limpness; and Wood sees masturbatory overtones to the scene in which Brandon excitedly fingers the neck of a champagne bottle.

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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