Movie Diary 1/19/2022

Rope (Alfred Hitchcock, 1948). Even with its limited success, this movie strikes me as more than a mere technical experiment. The anxiety of being “found out” is clearly under Hitchcock’s skin, and drives everything that happens – the movie feels that very keenly. And the section where the camera re-traces the final movements of the murder victim’s life conjures up an actual sense of absence, an example of technique meeting emotion. Also: It’s strange that people still casually refer to this movie as having no obvious cuts, when there are a handful of deliberate, unmasked cuts at key moments.