Director and producer Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 masterpiece, “Rope,” begins deceptively, with fine lilting music and scenes of an idyllic New York City block. A woman walks her baby in a stroller, a car glides down a one-way street, and a policeman escorts two boys through the light traffic. Despite omnipresent brick, glass, and concrete, the view is almost bizarrely pastoral.
Then as the credits finish, a fierce scream is heard, but all too briefly. The scene changes and two young men in a plush Manhattan apartment are strangling a third.
