Rope

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

1948 / 80min / 35mm

Queer-coded college boy killers John Dall and Farley Granger throw a dinner party for a group that includes former headmaster James Stewart in their Manhattan apartment, one of the most beautiful soundstage confections in cinema history, but this get-together has a novel twist—unbeknownst to guests, the meal will be served on a trunk containing the body of the boys’ murdered friend. Hitchcock’s adaptation of Patrick Hamilton’s 1929 stage play of the same name was the director’s first Technicolor film and a virtuoso technical experiment, designed to play out in what appears to be a single real-time take.