Rope

“We killed for the sake of killing, and we’re alive, wonderfully alive.” Despite serving in some ways as the philosophical underpinning of film noir, nihilism was never incorporated as overtly and literally as in Hitchcock’s first color film, Rope, a perversely cynical story of a young, wealthy, gay couple who murder their “inferior” friend as a form of art, sport, or even sexual arousal. Influenced by the Nietzschean existentialist lectures of their philosophy professor Rupert Cadell (James Stewart), arrogant Brandon Shaw (John Dall) and the more passive Phillip Morgan (Farley Granger) strangle their friend one afternoon just for the thrill of it (they’re “above the traditional moral concepts,” you see), then host a dinner party with the victim’s parents and fiancée where food is served on a chest containing the young man’s corpse. In their transgressive zeal, however, the killers make the mistake of inviting Professor Cadell, who, after news of the victim’s disappearance breaks, becomes suspicious and investigative. Famously shot as what appears to be a single, continuous take (Hitch himself dismissed this as merely a gimmick borrowed from an earlier BBC production of Hamilton’s play), the patience of the cinematography increases the suspense by incorporating extensive deep focus that accentuates every motion, every look, every item on screen, such as the slow pan to Phillip’s bloody hand when he breaks the glass or the camera’s fixation on Mrs. Wilson (Edith Evanson) as she walks to and from the kitchen, on each trip clearing away a few more items from the corpse-stuffed chest. Inspired by the true story of two University of Chicago students named Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, Rope is confined to a single soundstage yet doesn’t feel claustrophobic, the Manhattan skyline through the enormous picture window fading from daytime to dusk to darkness before all is said and done. Casting note: both Dall and Granger, who portray the unambiguously gay lovers, were gay in real life too.