Alfred Hitchcock’s earlier movies display a strongly moral, even Christian, point of view, and certainly can be enjoyed by Christian viewers. His later works, such as Psycho, The Birds, and his television series, are not as clearly moral in tone. In these later efforts, Hitchcock brought humorous or absurd twists into his plots. Hitchcock was able thereby to trick his audience, precisely because the audience was still committed to a moral worldview, but the overall effect of his later works is to confuse the moral perspective.

This is not the case, however, with his earlier films. Two you will enjoy are I Confess and Rope. The first of these takes place in French Canada. In the opening scenes, a man commits a murder and confesses it to a young priest. Because of the separation of church and state, and the privacy of the counseling office (the confessional booth), the priest is not able to tell the police who the murderer is. As it happens, the young priest himself falls under suspicion, and is eventually charged with the murder!

In this theologically sophisticated story, the young priest is called upon to imitate his Master, and give his life as a sacrifice to ransom the sinner. I Confess is a dramatic story that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very end.

The other film I recommend is Rope. Based on a true story, the film opens as two young men murder a mutual friend. They commit this murder for no reason except to prove to themselves that they are “supermen,” men who are beyond the mundane categories of good and evil.

After committing the murder, they place the body in a chest and invite friends over for dinner. Dinner is served on the chest in which the corpse lies, a parody of the catholic idea of the altar as, in part, the tomb of Christ. This is no feast to commemorate the self-sacrifice of Jesus, but a feast to celebrate guilt-free murder.

One of the people they invite over is their philosophy professor, played by Jimmy Stewart, from whom they had learned their “superman” philosophy. As the evening progresses, the professor begins to figure out what his two students have done. They have actually put his armchair paganism into practice! This film exposes the humanist philosophy taught in our public schools and universities. The movie is too intense for small children, but it is a rewarding and thought provoking experience for Christian adults.

Rope is also interesting from an artistic standpoint, since the entire action takes place in one apartment, and in real time.

James Jordan is scholar-in-residence at Theopolis. This article originally appeared at Biblical Horizons.