i never strangled a chicken in my life!

One interesting detail in Rope that might escape notice on a first viewing: Brandon is wearing a ring on the ring finger of his right hand that bears strong resemblance to a wedding band.

My first thought is that this was one of those clever little details Hitchcock slipped in to contribute to the subtext of the movie while still getting it past the censors. I don’t know when exactly the tradition of same-sex couples wearing rings on their right hands, as opposed to their left, began, but I suppose it could easily have been around in the late 1940s. (Moreover, it appears from the film that John Dall was left-handed, which could explain why the ring was on his right hand, but not why it’s there to begin with.) But Philip isn’t wearing a ring on either of his hands, as you can see here:

In fact, the only other characters to wear rings are Mrs. Atwater, Mrs. Wilson, and Mr. Kentley, all of whom are (or have been) married.

drunk and “tight” Philip beginning to melt down is always quality entertainment

“You frighten me. You always have, from that very first day in prep school. Part of your...charm, I suppose.”

At the very end of Rope, when Brandon and Philip’s “perfect murder” has unravelled and ramifications are imminent, we get this final shot in which this toppled pile of books (which fell to the floor when Rupert Cadell opened the chest to discover David’s body) takes center frame.

This poignant image is symbolic of the toppling of the murderers’ sophistication and air of intellectual superiority, the dependence on scholarly theoreticals which Rupert had dismantled in his tirade against Brandon just moments before.

With the books having served for the duration of the film as an aid to the dramatic flourish of the murder plot—they are the ostensible reason Mr. Kentley was invited over, they are Brandon’s excuse for moving the food to the chest so that the party guests dine unwittingly off of David’s corpse concealed within, and they are the vessel by which Brandon gets his “neat little touch” in tying up the books for Mr. Kentley with the rope which was used to strangle his son to death—this shot represents the dismantling of that careful construction, the undermining of the sophistication of Brandon and Philip’s “immaculate murder.”