8. Alfred Hitchcock - Rope
Rope (1948) is one of Hitchcock's most ambitious and intriguing films. A formal experiment, Rope is made up almost entirely of eight 10 minute long takes, making most of the film appear as if its done in one long take. Based on the play Rope's End by Patrick Hamilton, which itself was based on the infamous Leopold and Loeb murder case, the film focuses on two young men, Brandon and Philip (John Dall and Farley Granger) who murder a school friend due his perceived intellectual inferiority. The film all takes place in an apartment so the "one take" experiment works well with the simplicity of the setting. Hitchcock, while putting in a lot of work to make the conceit work, was later dismissive of it, saying
I undertook Rope as as stunt; thats the only way I can describe it. I really dont know how I came to indulge in it. The stage drama was played out in the actual time of the story; the action is continuous from the moment the curtain goes up until it comes down again. I asked myself whether it was technically possible to film it in the same way. As an experiment, Rope may be forgiven.
Hitchcock even went out of his way to keep it out of re-release for a number of decades after buying the rights to the film, along with four other of his films. Four years after his death in 1980, Rope, along with Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) and The Trouble with Harry (1955), was re-released in theatres.