Rope

Star Rating: 3

Length of Film: 80 minutes
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: James Stewart, John Dall, Farley Granger, Cedric Hardwicke, Constance Collier, Douglas Dick, Edith Evanson, Dick Hogan, Joan Chandler







Rope is a movie about two friends, Brandon (John Dall)  and Phillip (Farley Granger) who are apart of high class, who listened to their college professor saying that, that superior individuals are more privelaged and everyone else inferior and unimportant. With this bit of information, they decide to kill their friend David Kentley (Dick Hogan), just for the sake of killing him, and they did it with a rope.

Brandon Shaw is the leader, and Phillip is just the sucker who follows his orders. He's nervous from the start. They decide to stuff their friend David in an ottoman, the body hidden, but out in clear site for their dinner party, where Brandon invited David's  parents Mr. Kentley (Cedric Hardwicke) who brought Mrs. Atwater (Constance Collier), David's Aunt, Mr. Kentley's sister-in-law; Mrs. Kentley had a cold and was sick at home. There's also Janet Walker (Joan Chandler), David's girlfriend, her former lover Kenneth Lawrence (Douglas Dick), and prep-school housemaster, publisher Rupert Cadell (James Stewart).

Brandon decides to serve dinner not in the dining room, but make a place setting over the ottoman. Which causes maid, Mrs. Wilson (Edith Evanson), to have to move everything from the dining room, to the sitting room. His reasoning was he wanted to use the dining room, to view the 1st edition books. The girlfriend and David's father got really worried, and kept calling home to see if he has arrived there, but nothing, which of course, worried his mother. Brandon was calm and proud of himself for what he's getting away with, but Phillip's emotions are completely the opposite. As Mr. Kentley leaves, Brandon hands him a stack of 1st edition books tied together by THE ROPE, as he leaves. Mrs. Wilson hands Rupert his hat, but Rupert notices that the initials are D.K. He immediately becomes suspicious...Rupert makes up an excuse to come back to the apartment, and well... things get a little heated.

Rupert: But by what right do you *DARE* say that there's a superior few to which you belong??!! By what right did you *DARE* decide that that boy in there was inferior and therefore could be killed??!! Did you think you were GOD, Brandon!!?? Is that what you thought when you choked the life out of him??!! Is that what you thought when you served food from his grave!!?? Well I don't know what you thought or what you are but I know what you've done!!! You've murdered!!! You've strangled the life out of a fellow human being who could live and love as YOU never could and never will again!!!

The movie was set up like a play staging, the whole movie was set in one room, the sitting room, where you can also view the dining room, and front door. It was simple staging, but id didn't need to be for the plot line. It was very subtly suspensful knowing that the body was in the room, and no one knew about it. It was worth watching the movie.