Rope

Rope was the first film Hitchcock produced himself and over which he had complete creative control. The result is a disturbing and distasteful story (two young men strangle a friend and stuff his body into a chest, on which they serve dinner to his family and fiancée) as well as a famous experiment in film form. Rope appears to be shot in one continuous take with no cuts-like an unbroken rope. Poulenc's Mouvement perpetuel is the fitting musical accompaniment. William Rothman wrote: “The deliberateness of every move the camera makes creates a state of perpetual tension. . . . At the center of Rope there is a secret-there will be no cuts, only camera movements-that is no secret at all. This . . . defines the film's conception (and) makes its execution a virtuoso performance.”

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