One-Shot Wonders!
In this charged thriller inspired by the notorious case of Leopold and Loeb, two Manhattan college friends (John Dall and Farley Granger) strangle a classmate for intellectual kicks and then proceed to invite his family and friends for dinner—with the body stuffed inside the trunk they use for a buffet table. It was a film of firsts for Hitchcock, including his first collaboration with Jimmy Stewart, who co-stars as a former teacher who slowly becomes aware that something strange is going on. This macabre chamber piece is more darkly funny than usual for Hitchcock (which is saying something). Rope is striking for both its daring queer subtext and its experimental visual style, in which a series of elaborately choreographed long takes are carefully edited to create the illusion of one continuous shot (which is what Hitchcock would have done had the technology been available at the time). In another first, this is Hitchcock’s initial outing with color film, which he mastered quickly, creating a handful of the most sumptuous Technicolor flicks ever made during the 1950s.