Rope
By Kit Macdonald
The master of suspense conducted a daring experiment in cinematic form with 1948's Rope, basing it in a single location (a small apartment) and shooting it to appear as if it took place in one continuous take, with a few hidden cuts masked by pans across furniture or characters' backs.
Loosely inspired by Leopold and Loeb's "crime of the century" in Chicago in 1924, it tells the story of two young men, Brandon (John Dall) and Philip (Farley Granger), who kill a fellow student as an intellectual exercise, believing themselves capable of pulling off the “perfect crime”. They hide the body in a chest and host a dinner party around it, inviting the victim’s family and friends along, including their former schoolmaster, Rupert, played by James Stewart. The way Hitchcock made this film elevates it enormously – the single setting makes it a claustrophobic experience and the audience feels thoroughly complicit in the murderers' terrible deceit.