Have you ever watched Hitchcock's "Rope"?

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040746/

I'd never even heard of it before a couple days ago when I was researching movies to watch. It's a lesser known masterpiece starring James Stewart. It's essentially a one scene movie- the entire thing takes place in a New York City penthouse apartment during a small party. The psychology of a "superior intellect" and his right to commit murder at his whim is examined in depth.

I highly recommend you track it down and watch it if you can. You won't regret it.

[bicentennial_baby]

1. Probably in my top 5 films...

:thumbsup:

[Orrex]

2. A great, great film!

I seem to recall that it was shot in one take, or not many more than that. I haven't seen it in about nine years, but I remember noticing at some point that there was no edit/camera-switch.

Can anyone confirm?

[BeachBaby]

3. Yup - you're right!

The whole movie was done with one camera, and there were no fade-ins/outs, camera switch-overs, etc. Just straight screen the entire time. One of my all-time favorite Hitchcock films.

[fishwax]

5. Close--but there are actually a few cuts

The longest shot possible at the time was only ten minutes, because that's all film cannisters could hold. But many of the editing cuts have been concealed (zooming in on an object, a character walking in front of the camera) so that it looks like it was shot in only a few scenes.

[Orrex]

6. Very interesting, and very cool.

I should have realized the limitations of canister size. It's not as though Alfred could just jam another memory card into the camcorder...

[cemaphonic]

8. Yeah, if you watch for them, they are pretty easy to spot.

Still, the overall effect of continuous real-time filming is pretty convincing, and clever.

Good movie, although 2nd-tier for Hitchcock. It's loosely based on a real-life (and fairly infamous at one time) case that Clarence Darrow (of the Scopes trial)was involved in.

[edbermac]

7. I have it on tape, though I haven't seen it for a while.

The film magazine would hold 10 minutes of film, so Hitch would film until the end of the reel, when he would have a closeup of a book on a table or a picture on the wall. The film would stop, another reel reloaded, then he would start filming again as the scene played out. The film looks like it was shot in one long take, though there ARE actual cuts in the film. Right in the opening street shot the camera moves up to a curtained window, then cut to the victim being strangled. I think there are be 2 or 3 other cuts as well in the film.

[ghostsofgiants]

4. No, but I really need to.

[harmonicon]

9. not in a number of years

I was on a real Hitchcock kick some years ago, and watched an awful lot of his movies, but I don't remember the ones that I only saw once or twice as well as the ones I've seen over and over again.

[BlueIris]

10. I flooooooove this one. It's also got a lot of hot gayness in it. nt

[terrya]

11. They couldn't overtly refer to it.

But for Christ's sake, unless you're incredibly dense, the gay subtext is rather obvious. Farley Granger talks about that in "The Celluloid Closet".

[MonkeyFunk]

12. oh yeah, love it!

But I love all Hitchcock films. Even his worst stuff is better than 99% of the stuff out there.

Just watched "Sabotage" the other day - famous for the surprise explosion. You're watching a kid on a bus with a bomb, going by clocks everywhere. You know the bomb's about to go off, but you're wondering how the kid's going to escape. But surprise! He doesn't! The bomb goes off. Hitchcock later said it was a mistake to do that.

Another lesser Hitchcock that I love is "Life Boat". It was just on TMC the other night, and I Tivo'ed it. Hitchcock and Talullah Bankhead! What's not to love?

[Rabrrrrrr]

13. And shot in one take, sort of.

Of course, a camera couldn't hold an entire movie's worth of film, so it's split into, I think, 8 sections - but every one of those 8 sections is done in one continuous take. It's not a bunch of separate shots edited together like almost every other movie.

Pure genius on Hitchcock's part, AND on the part of the performers. Really, really difficult to do long shots in films.