6. Rope (1948)
Two brilliant young students - Phillip and Brandon - decide to murder a fellow student - David as an 'intellectual exercise', to confirm their superiority by committing the perfect murder. They hide the body in a large wooden chest and host a party - inviting the victim' father and aunt, fiancee and good friend. Also among the attendees is their old prep school master Rupert Cadell (James Stewart) whose talk on Nietzche's ubermensch and the art of perfect murder was the inspiration behind Phillip and Brandon committing this deed. The guests are all worried about David and his absence. Phillip is beginning to crack. The guests leave in a disturbed state. Rupert, when he is given David's hat by mistake when leaving, twigs on that something isn't right and questions the two killers. Brandon seems eager to have the crime discovered. Rupert opens the chest and finds the dead body. He is very perturbed to realise his own rhetoric inspired the killing. The police are on their way. This is Hitchcock at his most experimental, and it is one of the most experimental films to feature major actors. Hitchcock filmed the film like it was one long shot, panning away to dark objects when he needed a new reel of film. It is filmed in real time and the backdrop of New York in the apartment was the largest ever used on a sound stage - featuring models of the Empire State and Chrysler buildings and moving clouds and neon lights. A shocking and horrifying film, which does not require blood or guts to chill you, Rope is an amazing film when you consider the film making restraints Hitchcock had back in the 1940s. Hitchcock called it 'an experiment that failed' but I think the director was unnecessarily harsh on himself. It is a thrilling film which coaxes excellent performances out of all of the actors. Unfairly underrated and never in people's Top Ten Hitchcock films, I am putting Rope out there as one of Hitchcock's best.