We All Go a Little Mad Sometimes

Rating: 10/10 (31 October 2005)

I can't decide whether "Psycho" or "Rear Window" is Hitchcock's best film. My answer on any given day is usually dependent on which one I've most recently watched.
There's no need to go into the performances, or the shocking story, or the Bernard Herrman score (one of the best ever in film history). All that's been covered. Having just watched this film again in honor of Halloween weekend, I was struck fresh by the movie's frankness, which had to have been beyond uncomfortable for film audiences at the time. Supposedly film executives on screening this film were shocked more than anything else by the shots of the toilet in the hotel bathroom. If that was enough to shock, then what about references to transvestites, sexual arousal and release, and the blood-splattered bathroom that Hitchcock shows Perkins cleaning up in rigorous detail? The movie is so honest about the human body, its more unpleasant urges and physical qualities, that when the camera follows a swirl of blood down the shower drain, you half expect to see a big clump of hair sticking out of it. And to think this film came out at the same time as Douglas Sirk was making his films, in which women are as carefully painted and polished as china dolls.
The true test of a great film is how well it stands up to the test of time, and whether or not you can revisit it and find something new in it each time you do so. By that measure, "Psycho" is truly one of the greats.
Grade: A+