Rope

I don't think there was a better way to end the year than with the film, Rope. Not only did this movie become my favorite Alfred Hitchcock movie, but it also became one of my favorites from this year of class. Hitchcock once again hits the thumb on the nail with the film and his directing technique within it. He does his name well with a really neat movie.

I think a lot of my liking of this movie came from the fact that it had the simplest storyline of any movie we have seen this year, but it was presented in the most unique way. Hitchcock took a simple murder story and added so many factors to keep the viewer, especially me, very interested. This is contributed to a lot of things he did so perfectly in this movie.

On the contrary, I thought the actors and actresses and the acting fit really well with the movie. I can see where someone would be coming from thinking the acting, especially the two main characters, is a little absurd, but I think that it is done on purpose to overemphasize the absurd thinking they did in their shananigans. So, I thought that they did a good job in playing their suspicious yet high class attitudes. As for the other characters, I thought they fit in just perfect as well. James Stewart did a way better job in Rope than he did in Rear Window. He was very interesting in Rope and really did a good job in keeping the suspense rolling throughout the film. A few other good actors and actresses were Janet and Kenneth, both of whom the storyline relied on in reference to being closely associated in some form with the person killed in the film, David. These two really keep a lot interesting enhancing the story to a higher level. Overall, though, this could be one of Hitchcock's best casts.

This movie was a big leap for Hitchcock in the film world. While it was his first color movie, coming out in 1948, it was also a new technique use for Hitchcock. While he still did use the basic film technique everyone knows about very well, he used this new technique of very few cuts. He filmed and filmed and filmed and stopped rarely. Although this was probably a pain with mistakes and things like that, the film itself looks great all together.

As I stated earlier, this is definitely one of my favorite storylines. Hitchcock uses this simple murder story about two guys strangling a friend so that they can commit the perfect murder and satisfy their intellectual self and lets it branch out into all of these crazy and sick, yet awesome things. The way he did this well was his perfect way of connecting the set with the characters, the characters with each other, and the whole cast with the basic murder storyline. Because of his execution of this, the simple plot was turned into an exciting one.

Although it is deemed as one of Hitchcock's weirder movies, I think it represents him a lot and was obviously a big step for him in many categories of film. Rope was a very well-done and intriguing movie from start to finish that lets one wonder at the next party what the chest in the room contains.

-Kevin