Rope

Saw Rope, a Hitchcock film. The premise is that two ivy-league men murder one of their friends and then hold a dinner-party with his family, the corpse of their son still in the large chest that they're using as a table. The pair are based off of the murderers Leopold and Loeb who, believing themselves to be Nietzschean supermen, murdered as an intellectual exercise to demonstrate their superiority to all the dumb flat-foots of the world. Of course we non-murderous folks can spot the self-justification in their pose a mile off. They have no interest in intellectual exercises, they simply want to kill and posing it as a puzzle makes it acceptable to them. The true pay-off for all this is in the smug sense of superiority which they feel is now justified. To this ego-stroking end they drop all these puns ("Oh where can David be?" "I'm sure he's around here somewhere." "He'll show up hours late as usual." "Why I could just strangle you! You've always sneered at his punctuality.") which arouse the suspicions of their old, equally brainy school-chum Rupert (played with increasing gusto by Jimmy Stuart.)

The film works excellently as a one-room drama. The cast rattles around in the small student digs like atoms in a nuclear reactor, bouncing off one another with ever-increasing energy until the final climactic meltdown which comes in the form of an awesome, show-stopping rave from Jimmy. The final tableaux is a typical Hitchcockian scene of chilly hysteria. In fact, there's a lot of little brilliant scenes that shine here and there like gems. At one point Jimmy interrogates one of the killers who is held captive playing the piano. Every time Jimmy receives a cool-brush-off instead of an answer, he advances the metronome a little, making it tick faster. By the end the killer is playing at double speed and is a nervous wreck. I love this cleverness about Hitchcock.

Also, I'd read that there's a gay vibe about the two killers. This is completely true. They're always standing very close when they talk to each other and clearly have a strange, intense relationship. At one point one holds the other, urging him to be strong and keep his head at the party. If it weren't for the whole murder thing, that scene would be quite romantic. I believe Jimmy's character was meant to be kind of gay as well (they all know each other from their shared childhood at a boys school,) but it's Jimmy flannel-suit Stuart. He's got as much camp as Mr Rogers and delivers his quips with urbane dignity instead of sarcastic playfulness. But of course he's the hero who cracks these shenanigans. Unfortunately the 'sophistication' of the killers is meant to separate them from us real men and women and relegate them to a shadowy world of intellectuals and artistic types. Oh well. A very fun movie despite its historical flaws.