Made in black and white on a relatively low budget by a crew drawn partly from the TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Psycho was not only one of his biggest hits; its extraordinary success also paved the way for countless imitators, and this season, which accompanies a very welcome re-release of the film, gathers together just a few of the titles which in one way or another display its influence. But we should also remember of course that the film, notwithstanding its own originality and the many psycho-killer movies that followed in its footsteps, was not created in a vacuum; and while it would be rash to imply that Hitchcock intentionally or even consciously borrowed elements from specific titles while making Psycho, it's certainly possible to situate the film within various cinematic traditions.   Above all, the movie is not just 'about' a psychotic murderer. It is also "about" sex, mother-love, motels, grief, solitude, theft, envy, fear, cross-dressing, voyeurism, driving, disappearances, detection... not to mention (catastrophically) bad luck, birds, bathroom plumbing, the American landscape, Freudian theory, symbolism, casting, editing, art direction, lighting, camera movement, narrative structure, audience-manipulation, etc, etc. Nor should genre or tone be ignored. Hitchcock specialized in romantic suspense films about crime and espionage, but Psycho, which atypically for him deploys shock tactics, often veers closer to the Gothic atmosphere of a horror film. Moreover, he seems to have regarded Psycho as a fun picture, and while the humor is different from the kind to be found in witty, light-hearted thrillers like The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes, or North by Northwest, there's no denying that part of what makes the film so distinctive is its delicious black comedy. Long before Tarantino, Hitchcock found ways of making audiences laugh (nervously, perhaps) even as they gasped in terror.   Besides offering up a selection of films that are extremely rewarding in their own right, this season attempts to demonstrate just how rich and resonant a work Psycho is. Fifty years on, it remains as fresh, mysterious, and utterly engrossing as ever.

Featured Works:

Secrets of a Soul (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1926); Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Rouben Mamoulian, 1931); M (Fritz Lang, 1931); My Name is Julia Ross (Joseph H. Lewis, 1945); On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray, 1952); Les Diaboliques (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1955); Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958); L'Avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960); Les Bonnes femmes (Claude Chabrol, 1960); Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1960); Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960); Repulsion (Roman Polanski, 1965); Pretty Poison (Noel Black, 1968); Deranged (Jeff Gillen and Alan Ormsby, 1974); Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978); Dressed to Kill (Brian De Palma, 1980); Psycho II (Richard Franklin, 1983); Barton Fink (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 1991); Psycho (Gus Van Sant, 1998, pictured); Spider (David Cronenberg, 2002); The Hours of the Day (Jaime Rosales, 2003)  

Program information:

Psycho: A Classic in Context

Related Articles:
Psycho Analyzed by David Sterritt posted Mar. 02, 2010