Rope (1948)

'Murder is- or should be- an art...'

‘Murder: Think of the problems it would solve: unemployment, poverty, standing in line for theatre tickets...’

I must confess something to you. I’m not good on the summer blockbuster. The sweeping, widescreen epic. The big-budget stuff. Thrills, spills, deafening surround sound and- in the latter years- the curse of CGI. Star Wars (1977), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Gladiator (2000)- all of them, alas, leave me cold. With a tendency, instead, for those rather literary, stagey films where nothing much happens. Well-dressed, well-spoken, witty people lounging around in desirable settings, drinking cocktails- albeit with an amusing, sinister bent. This is, of course, a vast generalisation, which I don’t want you to take too seriously, as Once Upon a Time in America (1984)- which we need to cover at some point- and Kagemusha (1980), Akira Kurosawa’s epic of 16th century Japan- are up there on my all-time favourite films list. Still, there’s a grain of truth in my observation: after all, this is ‘Cinema for Grown Ups’.

Blithe Spirit (1945), starring Rex Harrison and his suave coffee machine, has this in spades. As does Sleuth (1972), starring Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine. But then, of course they do. It’s Noel Coward and Anthony Shaffer. Scripts by. And it’s the same with Rope (1948), perhaps one of the lesser known of the Hitchcock films (certainly when compared to Psycho (1960) and The Birds [1963]), based on the 1929 play by raffish British author, Patrick Hamilton, and derived from the real-life Leopold and Loeb slaying of 1924. Twisted, sophisticated- and decidedly dark.

‘The Legend of The Mistletoe Bough: twisted, sophisticated- and decidedly dark…’