Rope (DVD, 2001)

Rope is an excellent look at psychopathic personality types who seem to have it all together in their bantering around the lot. Yet for all the seeming civility there lurks an inhumaneness, a coldness to human cruelty and barbarity that defies logic and imagination. While there is very little of actual violence shown in the movie, the treatment of murder by a character absent of conscience and apparently fixated with pseudo intellectual aspects of venting his insane hatred of the human race is a telling one which needs some exploration in that many such personalities do abound with similar tendencies to over-intellectualize the lack of a human disposition to such matters as casual killing for the sake of a sick thrill. Jimmy Stewart cries out for some sanity in this respect and quite admirably so.