The Moment of Psycho: How Alfred Hitchcock Taught America to Love Murder

193 Pages·2009·1.02 MB·English

by  David Thomson

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$22.95 US / $29.00 CAN
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t killed its star off after forty minutes. There was no
happy ending. And it offered the most violent scene
to date in American film. Punctuated by shrieking
“David Thomson is, without doubt, the greatest living film historian, archivist, and
DAVID THOMSON strings that seared the national consciousness, nothing like
is the author professional fan.”
—LOS ANGELES TIMES
Psycho had existed before. It was the biggest hit of Alfred
of many books on film, including “H ve You Seen . . . ?”A T
H Hitchcock’s career, and propelled him to new levels of
Pers ntroduction to 1,000 Films, which the New York “Thomson is an incisive observer and a tremendously clever writer.”
E international fame—never before had audiences been so
Timescalled “passionate, illuminating, rich, and eccentric”; —WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD
M aware of the role of the director in filmmaking. The movie
and the massively influential Biogr p y of Film, T H E
O industry—even America itself—would never be the same.
first published in 1975 and recently reissued in its fourth “What Thomson does not know or feel about films is not worth knowing or feeling. His
M In The Moment of Psycho, renowned film critic David M
edition, called “the best book on the movies ever written in love of the medium is coupled with a passionate intelligence; entirely jargon-free, his prose D
English” (The New Republic). Thomson regularly contributes penetrates to the heart of a movie even when you find yourself disagreeing with him.” E M O M E N T Thomson vividly situates Psycho in Hitchcock’s career, DAL
N re-creating the mood and time when the seminal film erupted IM
film commentary and criticism to the New York Times, Film —GUARDIAN (UK) T #
onto film screens worldwide. Drawing on his encyclopedic 10
Comment, The New Republic, S lon,and theG d (UK). O O F P SYC H O knowledge of Hollywood, Thomson shows how in 1959, 4762
He lives in San Francisco with his family. “Thomson is one of the best writers on Hollywood there is.” F 0 0
Hitchcock, then sixtyyears old, made Psycho as an attempt 9/1
—SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE 8
P to break personally with the dullness of his own settled /09
S How ALFRED HITCHCOCK Taught C
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domesticity—a struggle which then mirrored the sexual,
Y A
“A first-rate critic.” —NEWSWEEK N
C AMERICA to LOVE MURDER creative, and political ferment thatsoon overtook the nation. M
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$22.95 US / $29.00CAN Psychowas not just a sensation in film: it altered the very Y
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Jacket design by Nicole Caputo ISBN 978-0-465-00339-6 nature of our desires. Sex, violence, and horror took on new L
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Jacket photograph © Universal Pictures / Collection Sunset life. Psycho, all of a sudden, represented all America wanted BL
Boulevard / Corbis DAV I D T H O M S O N K
A Member of the Perseus Books Group from a film—and, as The Moment of Psycho brilliantly SI
www.basicbooks.com L
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THE MOMENT
OF PSYCHO
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Strangers in the rain.
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THE MOMENT
OF PSYCHO
How ALFRED HITCHCOCK Taught
AMERICA to LOVE MURDER
DAVID THOMSON
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
New York
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Copyright © 2009 by David Thomson
Published by Basic Books,
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part
of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without
written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in
critical articles and reviews. For information, address Basic Books,
387 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016-8810.
Books published by Basic Books are available at special discounts for
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other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special
Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut
Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call [phone],
ext. 5000, or e-mail [email protected].
Designed by Pauline Brown
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Thomson, David, 1941–
The moment of Psycho : how Alfred Hitchcock taught America to
love murder / David Thomson.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-465-00339-6 (alk. paper)
1. Psycho (Motion picture : 1960) 2. Hitchcock, Alfred,
1899–1980—Criticism and interpretation. 3. Thrillers (Motion
pictures)—United States—History and criticism. I. Title.
PN1997.P79T46 2009
791.43'72—dc22
2009030821
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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for Greil Marcus
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CONTENTS
1. 1960 1
2. Continuity 21
3. Room Service 51
4. Housekeeping 69
5. Hitch-Cock 91
6. Other Bodies in the Swamp 115
7. A Noir Society 137
8. Lonely People 151
9. On the Way to Fairvale 159
Acknowledgments 169
Credits 171
Index 175
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1
1960
T
HE MOVIES had always encouraged the idea that we
were safe, secure, and warm in their dark. It is a com-
fortable and comforting place to be, for a nickel . . . or
$12.50. Come in out of the heat, or the cold. Come in and
forget your sorrows and the world’s hard times. Our the-
ater has its own air-raid shelter. Take a break at the end of
a long day’s drive. The cinema is a welcoming motel with
fresh linen and a hot shower.
But how far did people trust that promise? The invita-
tion was barbed: yes, we could see women undressing and
men shooting guns as if the ammunition was forever. But
only because we were not quite there, not in the screen’s
“there.” We were voyeurs, never harmed by the bullets,
but never able to handle the women. Yet there is a frisson
1