Rope (1948)
I adore Hitchcock. You should be prepared for there to be several more of his films in the future. This one is almost experimental in that it's a story told in real time (an hour of screen time equals an hour in the characters' lives) and is shot in a series of continuous shots to make the audience feel as though they were in the room with the characters. As such, we get a lot of mundane action, like characters eating appetizers, that isn't normally shown. When the film needed to be changed in the camera, the shot focuses on the blackness of the back of a character's jacket in order to incorporate the blackout into the long shot. There are a couple of straight cuts, but according to Wikipedia, this is where the reel would have had to be changed in a 1940s era movie theater. This story of the "perfect murder" is full of subtext, most often recognized for the implication that the two murderers, Brandon and Phillip, are also lovers.
My Netflix rating: 4 stars
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