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ROPE has a few intentionally visible cuts. I believe they occur at each reel change.

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Actually the reel changes are designed to look invisible. The outgoing camera pans or tracks into a dark area (e.g. the back of someone's suit jacket, or a dark wall), there is a cut and then the new camera pans or tracks away from the same position.

I think you're right and that there are one or two visible cuts: I seem to remember one towards the end during the sequence in which the camera's POV is responding to James Stewart's description of how the murder was perpetrated. According to Hitchcock's own account (in Hitchcock by Truffaut) the biggest logistical nightmare was the sound recording. It was done directly into an optical sound camera, so all the mixing had to be live and in real time. Apparently there were more rejected takes because of sound issues than there were due to botched camera movements.

However, I decided to watch the DVD tonight, and I kept track of when and how the cuts appear. Here's what I found:

2:08- visible
11:43- invisible
19:33- visible
26:50- invisible
34:00- visible
43:57- invisible
51:32- visible
59:19- invisible
1:09:26- visible
1:14:03- invisible

Could the unconcealed cuts in your DVD be due to later cutting, e.g. censorship? I notice that your last cut, which I presume is to the end credits, comes at 74'03". My 16mm print runs 81 minutes, which on PAL video would mean 78ish allowing for the 24/25fps difference. If your DVD (which is presumably NTSC and thus has the same running time as the film source it was telecined from) runs 75-ish, might it be that the 'visible' cuts are the work of a third party?

I'll have to look at my 16mm again soon, though I don't know when I'll get the time.

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RUSSIAN ARK

Hitchcock dreamed of making a film in a single take, but Alexander Sokurov, thanks to HD video technology, accomplished it. RUSSIAN ARK is a 96-minute dream journey through St. Petersburg’s Hermitage, three centuries of Russian culture, 33 rooms and 2,000 extras. A French Marquis guides us, commenting in Russian art, interacting with historical figures (Catherine the Great, Nicholas and Alexandra), all the while responding to the dreamer’s often-incredulous reactions. This is an startling departure from the austere earlier films of Sokurov, who was a Telluride tributee in 1998. The Film’s final sequence-a Royal Ball of 1913 with hundreds of resplendently costumed dancers-eclipses even Visconti’s THE LEOPARD as perhaps the cinema’s richest evocation of the aristocratic culture of Europe in its fading hours. Brilliant. You’ve never seen anything like this. Filmed by Steadicam operator Tilman Büettner (Run Lola Run). (Russian, 2002, 96 Minutes)

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