IMDb ??? Review: Rope (1948)

Source: Wikipedia

Nothing kills the mood of a murder scene like a party. Especially inviting the unsuspecting friends and family of the very recently deceased.

Unless you’re the protagonists of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope.

Two Ivy League college students kill a peer on a whim and tackle the consequences with aplomb. One, a worrywart with a conscience; the other, a smarmy devil in a nice suit. Harvard’s Hitler waxes eloquent about murder as an art form, a right the intellectually superior supposedly wield over inferiors. His actions, such as sabotaging his cushy life out of sheer hubris, call into question the intelligence he assigns himself.

Through what seems like one gruelingly long take, Hitchcock, the master of suspense, casts his spell. And nothing spells “old movie” like grainy Technicolor, credits at the beginning, and a parade of cigs and hats and booze.

Most of the movie is dull and/or uncomfortable conversation. Old ladies natter about food, astrology, movie stars. The Ivy League stranglers alternate between insisting there’s nothing wrong and insinuating, “HE’S DEAD AND WE KILLED HIM AND I’M SMARTER THAN ALL OF YOU DUMBASSES AHAHAHAHAHA.”

So much potential. Add brisk editing and a slide-whistle soundtrack, and it’s a forties-era cringe comedy; kill the music and substitute a droning voiceover, and you have a systematic documentary guide to failing at crime and throwing shitty parties.

Overall, I'd say it examines the difference between preaching a philosophy and living it out. Like the difference between tenured poli-sci profs who shill Marxism in the classroom and their comrades who gnaw off their own frostbitten fingers in Siberian gulags.

Recommended for sadistic party animals, anti-social Darwinists, and fulfillers of both categories, such as Alfred Hitchcock.

80 minutes.