Rope is a 1948 American psychological crime thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, based on the 1929 play of the same title by Patrick Hamilton.

[10] The original play was said to be inspired by the real-life murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks in 1924 by University of Chicago students Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb.

Two brilliant young aesthetes, Brandon Shaw and Phillip Morgan, strangle to death their former classmate from prep school, David Kentley, in their Manhattan penthouse apartment.

After hiding the body in a large antique wooden chest, Brandon and Phillip host a dinner party at the apartment, which has a panoramic view of Manhattan's skyline.

The guests, who are unaware of what has happened, include the victim's father, Mr. Kentley, and aunt, Mrs. Atwater; his mother is unable to attend because of a cold.

Brandon and Phillip's idea for the murder was inspired years earlier by conversations with their prep-school housemaster, publisher Rupert Cadell.

A drunk Phillip, unable to bear it anymore, throws a glass and accuses Rupert of playing cat-and-mouse games with him and Brandon.

[18] John Dall, who played Brandon, is believed to have been gay,[19][20] as was screenwriter Arthur Laurents, while co-star Farley Granger was bisexual.

"[22] In the 1995 documentary film adaptation of Russo's book, Laurents says: "I don't think the censors at that time realized this was about gay people.

Hitchcock told François Truffaut in the book-length Hitchcock/Truffaut (Simon & Schuster, 1967) that he ended up re-shooting the last four or five segments because he was dissatisfied with the color of the sunset.

As the guests are escorted to the door, actors Joan Chandler and Douglas Dick stop to have a few words and the sign flashes in the background several times.

In the making-of documentary, Rope Unleashed, Arthur Laurents says that Hitchcock can be seen walking down the Manhattan street immediately after the title sequence.

The continuous action and the extremely mobile camera are technical features of which industry craftsmen will make much, but to the layman audience effect is of a distracting interest.

[27]Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote: The novelty of the picture is not in the drama itself, it being a plainly deliberate and rather thin exercise in suspense, but merely in the method which Mr. Hitchcock has used to stretch the intended tension for the length of the little stunt.

[28] The Chicago Tribune's Mae Tinee was candid about her reactions: If Mr. Hitchcock's purpose in producing this macabre tale of murder was to shock and horrify, he has succeeded all too well.

[29] John McCarten of The New Yorker wrote: In addition to the fact that it has little or no movement, Rope is handicapped by some of the most relentlessly arch dialogue you ever heard.

"[31] Harrison's Reports gave the film a very positive review, calling it "an exceptionally fine psychological thriller" with "excellent" acting and "an ingenious technique, and under Hitchcock's superb handling it serves to heighten the atmosphere of mounting suspense and suspicion".

[32] Edwin Schallert of the Los Angeles Times wrote: It is unusual enough to shine more as a technical tour de force than as a moving sort of film ...

In Rope Unleashed, screenwriter Arthur Laurents attributed this failure to audience uneasiness with the homosexual undertones in the relationship between the two lead characters.

The site's critical consensus reads: "As formally audacious as it is narratively brilliant, Rope connects a powerful ensemble in service of a darkly satisfying crime thriller from a master of the genre".