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Rope
on DVD (1948)
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| Starring: |
James Stewart, John Dall, Farley Granger, Cedric Hardwicke, Constance Collier, Reese Witherspoon, Douglas Dick, Edith Evanson |
| Director: |
Alfred Hitchcock |
| Studio: |
UNIVERSAL PICTURES UK |
| Run time: |
77 mins |
| Certificate: |
 |
| Collections: |
100 Top Thrillers |
| User collections: |
Superb Films of the 1940's, A Filmmaker's Selection, Handule, Lesser-known gay gems, THE classics, Best FREAKIN films EVR!!!, My favourite Directors |
| Genres: |
Thriller |
| Languages: |
English |
| Released: |
21/04/2003
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Brief synopsis of Rope
Based on the famous Leopold and Loeb murder case (from which two other films, COMPULSION and SWOON, were also derived), ROPE both challenges and terrifies the audience. Alfred Hitchcock disdained the whodunit crime story, which he felt lacked emotional force, and ROPE shows the director's preference for letting the audience know more than the characters onscreen. The film opens as two young men (Farley Granger and John Dall) strangle a friend just to prove they're intellectually capable of committing the perfect crime. To add to the amusement, they hide the body in a trunk that will serve as the dinner table for a party honoring the deceased. The film hones in on an hour and a half of the party, with the constantly moving camera capturing the changing emotional atmosphere as the guests grow increasingly concerned about the fate of the missing boy. ROPE is a directorial tour de force, blending complex camera movement with intricate staging to present the entire story in near-real time in one location. Notably, the adaptation of the play by Patrick Hamilton was written by perennial Hitchcock actor Hume Cronyn.
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Related
Critics Reviews
Radio Times
Alfred Hitchcock here places a pair of homosexual student murderers (Farley Granger and John Dall) in a fashionable New York apartment, where they give a party for academic James Stewart and relatives of the young victim, whose body is present in a trunk from which they serve the drinks. Curiously devoid of suspense, the film is more of an intriguing cerebral exercise, famous as an experiment in the technique of the continuous take than a characteristic Hitchcockian entertainment or character study. Based on the real-life Leopold and Loeb case, it remains historically interesting, but both subject (see Richard Fleischer's 1959 film Compulsion) and technique have moved on, and Rope, today, disappoints.
Halliwell's Film Guide
An effective piece of Grand Guignol on the stage, this seemed rather tasteless when set in a New York skyscraper, especially when the leading role of the investigator was miscast and Hitch had saddled himself with the ten-minute take, a short-lived techni
Time Out
One of Hitchcock's more experimental films, with the tale of two young gays, keen to prove their intellectual and...
Read more on www.timeout.com
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