David, Brandon and Philip are meeting for cocktails in a fancy
Manhattan apartment.
But Brandon and Philip strangle David and heave his body
into a sturdy wooden chest.
This is the commencement of one of the most unusual of
Alfred Hitchcock’s works, Rope (1948).
It was the first Hitchcock movie to
feature James Stewart and is certainly the most underrated of the four movies
they made together.
It might not be classed as film noir by everybody ―
Hitchcock’s films are sometimes seen as existing as semi-isolated in their own
genre.
And it’s also in colour ― unusual for a film noir.
But even if you argue that this is not film noir and that it never will be, discussions are never that exclusive, and Rope still shines bright light on many of the interesting movie-based fixations of the late 1940s.
