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IMDb > Rope (1948)
Rope
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Overview

User Rating:
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Up 4% in popularity this week. See rank & trends on IMDbPro.
Director:
Alfred Hitchcock
Writers:
Patrick Hamilton (play)
Hume Cronyn (adaptation)
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Contact:
View company contact information for Rope on IMDbPro.
Release Date:
28 August 1948 (USA) more
Genre:
Crime | Mystery | Thriller more
Tagline:
The guest who's dead on time more
Plot:
Two young men strangle their "inferior" classmate, hide his body in their apartment, and invite his friends and family to a dinner party as a means to challenge the "perfection" of their crime. full summary | add synopsis
Plot Keywords:
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Awards:
2 nominations more
NewsDesk:
(5 articles)
15 Bloody Box Sets
 (From Fangoria. 19 January 2009, 8:00 AM, PST)

Claustrophobic Cinema - From Rear Window to The Ox-Bow Incident
 (From amctv.com - Future of Classic: Westerns. 19 December 2008, 9:01 PM, PST)

User Comments:
Innovation can't quite make this a masterpiece - but it's still worth watching more

Cast

  (Complete credited cast)

Additional Details

Also Known As:
Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (USA) (complete title)
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Runtime:
80 min
Country:
USA
Language:
English
Color:
Color (Technicolor)
Aspect Ratio:
1.37 : 1 more
Sound Mix:
Mono (RCA Sound System)
Certification:
USA:Approved (PCA #13027) | USA:PG (TV rating) | Portugal:M/12 | Spain:T | Iceland:L | Brazil:14 | South Korea:18 (2003) | New Zealand:PG | Portugal:(Banned) (original rating) | Argentina:13 | Australia:PG | Canada:14A (video rating) | Canada:AA (original rating) | Finland:K-16 | Germany:16 | Norway:16 | Sweden:11 (re-release) | Sweden:15 (original rating) | UK:PG

Fun Stuff

Trivia:
When Janet and Mrs. Atwater are discussing their favorite leading men in movies, they bring up Cary Grant, and how brilliant he was in "that new thing with (Ingrid) Bergman." Neither can recall the title, but it's just plain "something" (meaning only one word). This refers to Alfred Hitchcock's earlier movie, Notorious (1946). Grant had also been Hitchcock's first choice for the role of Rupert Cadell. more
Goofs:
Continuity: During the party, the chest that houses David is tall enough to serve food from. However, by the end, as Rupert crosses to the chair next to it, the chest is only as tall as Rupert's knees. more
Quotes:
[first lines]
Brandon: Open it.
more
Movie Connections:
Referenced in Destination Hitchcock: The Making of 'North by Northwest' (2000) (V) more
Soundtrack:
I'm Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover more

FAQ

Was Rope filmed in a single take, with no cuts?
A Note Regarding Spoilers
Were Brandon and Philip gay?
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37 out of 60 people found the following comment useful:-
Innovation can't quite make this a masterpiece - but it's still worth watching, 23 April 2002
Author: Aidan McGuinness from Dublin, Ireland

'Rope', as many reviews here point out, is shot in a "real time" format. The movie lasts 80 minutes and takes place over a period of 80 minutes - with 10 8 minute takes spliced together smartly (such as switching when focused on a back) to give the appearance of one long take. Even current "real time" dramas such as "Nick of Time" or "24" use cuts - and perhaps justifiably.

"Rope" is about two college students - the slimy Brendon Shaw (John Dall) and his friend and sub-texted-gay-partner Phillip Morgan (Farley Granger) who murder an old college mate and then, minutes after, host a dinner party to prove their calm, intellectual superiority and their "right" to kill off the lower echelons of society - they believe they are exempt from common morality. Central to this is their smug desire to show off their theory to their old mentor, Rupert Cadell (James Stewart), who is attending the party, and to get him to agree with their theories.

As the movie is essentially confined to one room, and one take, there's a definite "play" feel to the movie. While this worked wonderful with "12 Angry Men", the script and character interaction isn't quite smart enough here to sustain it. There's a lot of pontificating by Shaw, and some fine retorts by Cadell but there's a sense of forcedness about it at the same time. Only 3 of the characters are drawn with enough conviction, and it is only Cadell who we can really admire (Granger's Morgan seems to be too much of a nervous twitching type to add much to the movie). The script does allow us to gape with incredulity at the Nietzsche-esque theories of the "superman" espoused by Shaw, and the gay subtext is amusingly, and cleverly, done but there's an inevitability about the whole story - we know what will happen, it does, and this creates an ultimate lack of tension (when compared to, for example, Hitchock's "Vertigo").

The direction is, as would be expected, smart and - naturally - innovative here. The camera drifts about from character to character, as Hitchock tries his "one cut" approach, and there's some nice background detail (such as Hitchcock's flashing neon signs) to show the passage of time/current theme. Overall "Rope" is well worth seeing - it's not quite a failed experiment, nor a successful one. It's a "curio" which is worth appreciating for realizing why it was never really emulated since.

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