Maclean's (2010) - The Psycho effect
Details
- article: The Psycho effect
- author(s): Brian D. Johnson
- journal: Maclean's (15/Feb/2010)
- issue: volume 123, issue 5, page 63
- journal ISSN: 0024-9262
- keywords: "The Girl in Alfred Hitchcock's Shower" - by Robert Graysmith, "The Moment of Psycho: How Alfred Hitchcock Taught America to Love Murder" - by David Thomson, Academy Awards, Alfred Hitchcock Presents (TV), Alfred Hitchcock, Books, Censorship, David Thomson, Janet Leigh, Marli Renfro, Motion picture directors & producers, Murders & murder attempts, Myra Davis, North by Northwest (1959), Notorious (1946), Nudity, Paramount Pictures, Production Code Administration, Psycho (1960), Rear Window (1954), Robert Bloch, Robert Graysmith, San Francisco, California, Skin, Theaters & cinemas, Universal Studios, Violence
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Abstract
The movie opens in downtown Phoenix with a scene of Janet Leigh's character in a bra and panties enjoying an afternoon tryst in a cheap hotel room. [...] under Hollywood's Production Code, no American movie had shown an actress in her underwear. The director cited practical reasons for shooting in black and white: it was cheaper, and if he shot in colour, the blood would never get past the censors. Janet Leigh shot the scene wearing moleskin patches covering strategic areas.
Article
Fifty years ago, a movie by Alfred Hitchcock changed the way audiences viewed films. Its influence is still being felt, by BRIAN D. JOHNSON
The censors didn't know what to make of the shower scene. No one had seen anything like it. The shock of die curtain being ripped open. Janet Leigh's scream as the knife comes down. The flashes of nudity, a cubist montage, cut to the shriek of that stabbing violin. Leigh's hand clutching the shower curtain. Her body sliding down the white tile, slumping to the floor, as the curtain is torn from its hooks. The lazy swirl of blood being washed away. Then the drain dissolving into a full-screen close-up of the victim's cold, dead eye.
The censors objected. They'd seen a flash of a navel, a breast in profile. Some swore they saw a nipple. But with so many cuts, how could they know? The 45-second shower scene contained 78 pieces of film. By today's standards of strobe-like editing, that's almost leisurely, but it was unheard of at the time. Director Alfred Hitchcock reassured the censors that there was.no untoward nudity, and no shots of the knife hitting flesh. He said it was all in their imagination, a conjuring trick. So the scene survived. Psycho ushered in a new age of erotic horror. And cinema has not been the same since.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Psycho, which was released in June 1960. The movie caused a sensation at the time, and its influence is still being felt. Just as Star Wars (1977) is cited as die game-changing film that launched diree decades of sci-fi and special effects, Psycho is die picture mat shattered Hollywood's taboos around se...
