Would you put this among Hitchcocks best?

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I appreciate the support...and sometimes I think Rope is actually secretly my favorite.

Even the most primitive society has an innate respect for the insane.

SPOILERS

I know what you are saying about Stewart. For a while, I thought he was miscast. While I was researching, I found out that Hitchcock was happy with James Stewart's performance. This surprised me. if Hitchcock didn't like someone's performance in his film, he usually mentioned it in interviews. And he was happy with Stewart's performance. Arthur Laurents said James Stewart was miscast, because he was under the impression that rupert in the film and rupert in the play are the same.

In the play, Rupert is only 29 years old. And he is a wounded world war 1 veteran. He wears glasses and walks with a stick.

Hitchcock and Hume Cronyn created a totally different adaptation for Rope. Many of the characters and ideas in the play were removed. And they created new characters like Janet Walker, Mrs. Wilson, Mrs. Atwater, and Kenneth Lawrence. And they created a new Rupert. Rupert looks like he is around the age mid 40s. And he is the former teacher of Brandon and Philip. In the play, he is the contemporary teacher of both murderers.

Anyway, Here is an interesting information.

A Hitchcock fan named Ximmerlaik gave me all of these information.

In the interview with Tom Snyder, Hitchcock said that he regretted shooting an assassination scene in his 1940 film Foreign Correspondent.

Here is the link to the interview.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7GKr_pCYZA&feature=related

At about the 7 minute mark, Hitchcock talks about the assassination scene in Foreign Correspondent. He says, "I only regret one thing that I ever did in a film that was copied." He then describes the scene, concluding (at almost precisely the 8 minute mark) by saying something like, "And I heard it the assassination was done in Terra Han, two years later."

But I never heard about the place named Terra Han. It may have been Tehran.

Ximmerlaik told me this too "I also suspect Hitchcock hearing about this had a huge impact on Rope. Especially in terms of Jimmy Stewart's character, Rupert. The two murderers (mostly Brandon) adopt Rupert's macabre sense of humor about murder but then take it a step further and actually kill someone, in real life. It's as if Rupert is a stand-in for Hitchcock himself and the murderers are those who have taken his amusing ideas and turned them to dreadful purposes (like these assassins of "Terra Han"). This would especially make sense in terms of Rupert's final speech, which is uncharacteristically sincere -- Hitchcock was dealing with his own regret through Rupert's words. That's my idea anyway."

I agree. I love Stewart, but I think Grant or James Mason would've been more convincing.

As someone said earlier Grant could bring a sinister edge to his parts, and had the intelligence need for the sleuthing. With Stewart while you can see he'd be able to identify the crime, you're never really in doubt he'd do the right thing in the end. With Grant you might worry if just for a few moments that he'd side with Brandon. Yet although Grant is my personal favorite of the three, I think Mason would've been perfect in this role. Mason would've been able to carry off the Nietzchean intellectual brilliantly, whereas Grant had a little too much of the common man about him, than the academic. I also think one might be crying out for a love interest with Grant. Mason could be sexless.

Back to the original question though, and not just because I think Stewart was slightly miscast, but I just don't think this is in the highest echelon of Hitchcock films. Certainly not up there with Rear Window, Notorious, Rebecca, Thirty-nine steps, North by Northwest, and Vertigo. I know Rope is supposed to real-time etc, but I think it could easily have been carried out for another 10 minutes and the suspense would have been greater. For example I think Hitchcock could have spent longer on the build up to David's killing.

Very good film, but not great.