Long Hard look at 'Psycho'

In an American Film Institute poll in 2001, "Psycho" was voted the greatest thriller of all time. It has scenes and characters that are among the most iconic in all cinema. Alfred Hitchcock was prompted to make "Psycho" after seeing Clouzot's "Les Diaboliques" (1954), which took the thriller genre to a new level of shock-value. Not to be outdone, Hitchcock adapted a pulp novel by Robert Bloch with a view to pulling off an unprecedented feat of audience manipulation. The result was a triumph, the talk of the movie going world in 1960, but most of the talk, then and since, has been about the twist. In spite of the widespread acknowledgment of Hitchcock's and his collaborators' achievements on "Psycho", its complexity and sophistication as cinema aren't fully appreciated. In this book, Raymond Durgnat shows the extent of the achievement. In a minute analysis of the film he explores all the elements that make up this remarkable film. In addition he develops various lines of argument about spectatorship, Hollywood narrative codes, psychoanalysis and editing and shot-composition among other themes, that amount to a reinvention of cinema studies.