Requiring assurance at every turn is his co-conspirator, Phillip, a yes-man in a state of panic from the get-go. Brandon is the brains of the operation, comfortable in his skin, excited by his crimes, and believing “even champagne isn’t equal to us”. Hitchcock presents Leonard and Loeb as Brandon ( John Dall) and Phillip ( Farley Granger), two posher-than-posh graduates who live together and are polar opposites insofar as personality is concerned. So close, that the legal department at 20th Century Fox had their work cut out when Leopold attempted to sue. Fleischer doesn’t lead with camera tricks, but he uses the power of Orson Welles and a script that is pretty darn close to fact. It’s not an entirely pointless exercise, bringing a sense of claustrophobia and positioning the audience as knowing dinner guests following the deceit in real time. The former is noteworthy for Hitchcock’s attempt at shooting the “fictionalized account” in a single take. In the case of Leopold and Loeb, there have been a number of attempts at bringing their depravity to the silver screen, with Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (1948) and Richard Fleischer’s Compulsion (1959) being two of the more well-known depictions.

It seems that ethical dilemmas, for one, are secondary to an audiences’ thirst for evil. Trigger Warning: The following article references violence and sexual assault.There are many obstacles when adapting the story of a true crime to the big screen.

Rope hero