Rope tells the story of Phillip and Brandon, two intellectual young men who have decided that there are 2 types of people in the world; superior beings (intellectuals like themselves) and inferiors (everyone else.) The film opens as they murder a friend of theirs and hide the body in a chest in the sitting room in their home. It seems they've committed this crime just for the thrill of doing so and to prove their superiority by inviting friends (including the victims parents, girlfriend, best friend and also a teacher they all shared whose lectures seem to have sown the seeds of their nietzschean ideas played by the always brilliant James Stewart.)
The story is fairly straightforward (though never boring) but the real interesting thing about this film is the way it is shot. It's made to look as if the whole film is done in one take (wikipedia informs me that this is not the case, but all the shots are nonetheless very long, up to 10 minutes in fact) and the whole thing takes place in real time. The camera floats around the set while the action occurs around a single room. I'd love to watch the film again and again just to marvel at how well choreographed the whole thing is.
I think the reason I enjoyed this movie so much is that even without the incredible film-geek glee you feel watching how it's constructed, the performances and story are good enough that I probably would have been entertained regardless.
I had an excellent time with this film and can't wait to watch it again. I would recommend to anyone who is even the slightest bit geeky about movies. I can only hope the rest of the films in this marathon live up to the first.
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