Review – Rope

This is more of a gimmick than it is a movie. Alfred Hitchcock decided to shoot this as if it had been done in one long continuous take. Of course camera technology at the time didn’t allow him to actually film uninterrupted for an hour and a half, so every ten minutes or so he has to pull a trick such as zooming in on a table centerpiece in order to stop filming and change the film. And of course careful viewing will uncover a couple of cuts, which tend to take place just as Jimmy Stewart’s character has a flash of insight about the puzzle he’s trying to unravel. The tale is a murder mystery that was obviously a stage play before it became a movie. A pair of snotty rich youths pull a Leopold and Loeb on one of their acquaintances. They stuff his body in a trunk. Then they hold a dinner party with food served on the resting place of their victim. As the dinner party takes up the bulk of the screen time, the production naturally is far too “talky” and more than a little dull. That’s the price that even a director as good as Hitchcock pays when a technical trick becomes more important than plot and character. Mildly amusing