Mean Strings

Rating: 10/10 (14 December 2018)

How do you write about, let alone review something that's been picked apart and assembled again, stretched into 24 hour performances by lesser artists, copied, imitated, quoted, spoofed, franchised, and even remade shot for shot? About something that has been appreciated, raved about and even worshipped for nearly 60 long years by audiences, devotees and eventually even critics?
There are reasons for all that. John Gavin may have been wooden but Vera Miles was good enough, Janet Leigh and Robert Balsam were exceptionally good and Perkins was sensational. It was Robert Bloch's best achievement in lurid pulp, Stefano's best screenwriting moment and Hitch was quite literally at the height of his powers. So were his wife Alma and assistant Peggy, who also sensed how times were changing and how the audiences were ready for something never before attempted or seen - a film with moments so pounding and visceral that it would end up changing the entire ballgame.
And then there's the score, equally deeply ingrained on our culture. "Hitchcock does about two thirds of his films - I finish them for him" - Herrmann would say, and it's been true from Harry through to Marnie. This one contains the most famous musical cue of all times and a neurotic, hurtling main title to boot, but it is the slow bits, during which Hitch handles the passage of time, trouble, unease, mystery, suspense and degradation that are just superb, allowing for some of the most exciting moments ever commited to film. Elegant and decidedly modern, all the more lethal for its reduction to a chamber string orchestra, the score is well produced too; loads of sticky reverb and compression were slapped on those ferocious shrieks, making them always sound a bit limp on later recordings - and certainly lacking that thoroughly ripping effect. Luckily, Hitch gave in and went along with his composer.
To wrap it up - the less said about Psycho, the better - and it is best enjoyed in silence and darkness. It has a flaw or two but its unique, darkly unsettling magic speaks for itself even today and it still feels like an exceptionally modern, cool, groundbreaking film. Whatever Walt Disney may have thought of it.