Claim: Rope starred James Stewart.

Rope is a 1948 American film noir psychological crime thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock , based on the 1929 play of the same name by Patrick Hamilton , and adapted by Hume Cronyn and Arthur Laurents .   The film was produced by Hitchcock and Sidney Bernstein as the first of their Transatlantic Pictures productions . Starring James Stewart , John Dall and Farley Granger , this is the first of Hitchcock 's Technicolor films , and is notable for taking place in real time and being edited so as to appear as a single continuous shot through the use of long takes .  It is the second of Hitchcock 's `` limited setting '' films , the first being Lifeboat .  The original play was said to be inspired by the real-life murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks in 1924 by University of Chicago students Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb .