Rope

(Alfred Hitchcock, US 1948, 80 min., 35mm)

Throwing technological caution to the wind, Alfred Hitchcock shot his first Technicolor film in single takes lasting ten minutes apiece, the length of a reel of negative stock. By obscuring the transitions between reels, the film  seems to be a single real-time take across its running time. In order to make this happen, Hitchcock commissioned a special dolly that would allow the camera to access all areas of the set, utilized “wild walls” that would move quickly on rails to accommodate the camera, and designed a New York skyline background that used six thousand bulbs and two hundred neon signs that faded to denote the passage of time. The story, based on the play by Patrick Hamilton that loosely mirrors the Leopold and Loeb case, finds young roommates Brandon and Philip (John Dall and Farley Granger) holding a dinner party around the body of their murdered friend while trying to outsmart their former headmaster (James Stewart).