The 2160P image (with High Dynamic Range - HDR10) is spectacular, deepening colors and black levels while losing the greenish hue of the Blu-ray, perhaps leaning a shade earthy brown. The simulation captures may be exaggerative but the image on my system was brilliant - rich and tight with a fine layer of grain and impressive detail. I thought this was a substantial upgrade.

Our friend Peter emailed me:

"That new ROPE 4K is graded totally weirdly. IB Technicolor prints of the film did not lean brown like that. They look way more like the old Blu-ray looked. My eyes tell me that the Blu-ray was taken from a positive which had some of the typical alignment problems/color fringing of IB printing, whereas the 4K is taken from a later dupe negative that didn't capture the "look" of the original IB prints' grade. I could be wrong about this, but I don't think so, after handling both IB and LPP (1980s low-fade) prints of ROPE.

The only excuse for grading it like this is if MAYBE the original "intention" was a browner scheme, and that (speculating here) only the initial original release prints had this "look" and it was discarded or forgotten thereafter, or some production notes from the time specify how it is supposed to look. If one or both of those is the case, ok. But I seriously doubt it. It just looks to me like a poor choice by a modern colorist. And if anything, the shitty 1980s Universal reissues of the "lost five Hitchcocks" were the versions that were way too brown, VERTIGO being the worst. I hope the colorist didn't look at one of those prints as a reference and say, "oh, this is what it is supposed to look like..." (Thanks Peter!)

It is likely that the monitor you are seeing this review is not an HDR-compatible display (High Dynamic Range) or Dolby Vision, where each pixel can be assigned with a wider and notably granular range of color and light. Our capture software is simulating the HDR (in a uniform manner) for standard monitors. This should make it easier for us to review more 4K UHD titles in the future and give you a decent idea of its attributes on your system. So our captures may not support the exact same colors (coolness of skin tones, brighter or darker hues etc.) as the 4K system at your home. But the framing, detail, grain texture support etc. are, generally, not effected by this simulation representation.

NOTE: 42 more more full resolution (3840 X 2160) 4K UHD captures, in lossless PNG format, for Patrons are available HERE

We have reviewed the following 4K UHD packages recently: Frenzy (software uniformly simulated HDR), American Graffiti (software uniformly simulated HDR), East End Hustle, Three Days of the Condor (software uniformly simulated HDR), Witness (software uniformly simulated HDR), Fascination (software uniformly simulated HDR), Lips of Blood (software uniformly simulated HDR), The Others (no HDR), It Came From Outer Space (software uniformly simulated HDR), Don't Look Now, Rosemary's Baby (software uniformly simulated HDR), The Last Wave (no HDR), The Train (software uniformly simulated HDR), The Trial (software uniformly simulated HDR), The Walkabout (software uniformly simulated HDR), Black Magic Rites, The Night of the Hunted (software uniformly simulated HDR), The Rape of the Vampire (software uniformly simulated HDR), Gorgo (software uniformly simulated HDR), Akira Kurosawa's Dreams (software uniformly simulated HDR),  The Man From Hong Kong (software uniformly simulated HDR), One False Move, The Tall T (software uniformly simulated HDR), Cold Eyes of Fear (software uniformly simulated HDR), Rules of the Game (no HDR), The Manchurian Candidate (software uniformly simulated HDR), After Hours, Rain Man (software uniformly simulated HDR), The Changeling (software uniformly simulated HDR), The Night of the Hunter (software uniformly simulated HDR), 12 Angry Men (software uniformly simulated HDR), Branded to Kill (no HDR), Picnic at Hanging Rock (software uniformly simulated HDR), Two Orphan Vampires, The Shiver of the Vampires, Drowning By Number (software uniformly simulated HDR), Serpico (software uniformly simulated HDR), Cool Hand Luke (software uniformly simulated HDR), The Seventh Seal (software uniformly simulated HDR), The Maltese Falcon (software uniformly simulated HDR).

Like the old Blu-ray on their 4K UHD, Universal use a DTS-HD Master dual-mono rack (24-bit) in the original English language. "Rope" is almost completely dialogue-driven, book-ended with brief displays of violence. The score is by David Buttolph (Secret of the Incas, Street of Chance, The Horse Soldiers, Wake Island, This Gun For Hire, Western Union, Pete Kelly's Blues, Rope, Three Secrets, Kiss of Death, Blood and Sand and many more) which supports the film in subtle ways as are Rupert Cadell's (Jimmy Stewart) raised eyebrows and sideways glances. There are a host of European and a Japanese language DUBs as well as plenty of foreign subtitle options plus English and English (SDH.) Both the 4K UHD disc and included Blu-ray are region FREE.

Alfred Hitchcock's Rope was the first of the director's Technicolor films and considered his most experimental. The entire film takes place in a Manhattan penthouse apartment. Hume Cronyn adapted Patrick Hamilton's 1929 play that was inspired by a real-life murder committed by two wealthy University students known as Leopold and Loeb (Nathan Freudenthal Leopold Jr. and Richard Albert Loeb) in 1924. Both young men were sentenced to life imprisonment plus 99 years. In the film, Brandon (John Dall of Gun Crazy) and Phillip (Farley Granger - They Live By Night and Strangers on a Train) strangle fellow student David Kentley (Dick Hogan) as an expression of their supposed intellectual superiority based on principles inspired years earlier by conversations with their prep-school housemaster Rupert Cadell (James Stewart) - which they used to rationalize the murder. This augments the film's psychological thriller aspects with Rupert probing the oddity of the dinner party and uncomfortable reactions of the two hosts. There have been suggestions of a homosexual subtext between Brandon and Phillip but they may be unfounded and unintentional. Universal's 4K UHD release of Hitchcock's Rope is a highly appreciated improvement over the 1080P transfer from almost 11-years earlier. It's an odd-duck in the director's work that tends to be more effective with repeat viewings. Rope remains a curious, and now utterly gorgeous, film experience. 

Gary Tooze