Uploaded November 2020 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
(Alfred Hitchcock, US 1948, 80 min.)
Originally intended to screen as part of the "Choreograph" exhibition at George Eastman Museum, this video instead acts as an introduction for a watch-at-home viewing.
Throwing technological caution to the wind, Alfred Hitchcock shot his first Technicolor film in single takes lasting ten minutes apiece, the length of a reel of negative stock. By obscuring the transitions between reels, the film seems to be a single real-time take across its running time. In order to make this happen, Hitchcock commissioned a special dolly that would allow the camera to access all areas of the set, utilized “wild walls” that would move quickly on rails to accommodate the camera, and designed a New York skyline background that used six thousand bulbs and two hundred neon signs that faded to denote the passage of time. The story, based on the play by Patrick Hamilton that loosely mirrors the Leopold and Loeb case, finds young roommates Brandon and Philip (John Dall and Farley Granger) holding a dinner party around the body of their murdered friend while trying to outsmart their former headmaster (James Stewart).
This video has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: NEH CARES.
Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this video, do not necessarily represent those of the NEH.
(Alfred Hitchcock, US 1948, 80 min.)
Originally intended to screen as part of the "Choreograph" exhibition at George Eastman Museum, this video instead acts as an introduction for a watch-at-home viewing.
Throwing technological caution to the wind, Alfred Hitchcock shot his first Technicolor film in single takes lasting ten minutes apiece, the length of a reel of negative stock. By obscuring the transitions between reels, the film seems to be a single real-time take across its running time. In order to make this happen, Hitchcock commissioned a special dolly that would allow the camera to access all areas of the set, utilized “wild walls” that would move quickly on rails to accommodate the camera, and designed a New York skyline background that used six thousand bulbs and two hundred neon signs that faded to denote the passage of time. The story, based on the play by Patrick Hamilton that loosely mirrors the Leopold and Loeb case, finds young roommates Brandon and Philip (John Dall and Farley Granger) holding a dinner party around the body of their murdered friend while trying to outsmart their former headmaster (James Stewart).
This video has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: NEH CARES.
Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this video, do not necessarily represent those of the NEH.
