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Review
"Durgnat's final work -- as much performance art or perilous high-wire act as textual explication -- goes a long way towards transforming Hitchcock's masterpiece into a fundamentally new film."--"Cinema Scope"
Product Description
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 moviegoing 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, editing and shot-composition among other themes, that amount to a reinvention of cinema studies. With more than 150 illustrations "A Long Hard Look at 'Psycho'" is likely to become the definitive book on its subject and an unmissable contribution to the study of Hitchcock. The author of one of the seminal works of Hitchcock criticism, "The Strange Case of Alfred Hitchcock" (1974), Raymond Durgnat is one of Britain's pre-eminent writers on cinema. He has also written books on Bu uel, Franju, Renoir, sexual alienation in the cinema, and a study of WR - "Mysteries of the Organism" for the BFI Modern Classics series (1999). He is Visiting Professor at the University of East London.
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3 of 6 people found the following review helpful
A Long Hard Look at Psycho is a detailed examinatiion of a Hitchcock classic
5 Jan 2006
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
British film scholar Raymond Durgnat has written a detailed
guidebook to the wonders of Hitchcock's classic thriller Psycho.
Durgnat examines each of the key scenes with insights he has gleaned from filming techniques; psychological insights and keen observation of what is going on up on the big screen.
Many readers will find the work to be enlighting. However, the
book does tend to delve into psychobabble forgetting Hitch's own
dictum "It's only a movie."
The book would be best used in film study classes or with the study of Hitchcock and his films in an academic setting.
guidebook to the wonders of Hitchcock's classic thriller Psycho.
Durgnat examines each of the key scenes with insights he has gleaned from filming techniques; psychological insights and keen observation of what is going on up on the big screen.
Many readers will find the work to be enlighting. However, the
book does tend to delve into psychobabble forgetting Hitch's own
dictum "It's only a movie."
The book would be best used in film study classes or with the study of Hitchcock and his films in an academic setting.
7 of 21 people found the following review helpful
A Long Hard Slog Through Psycho Babble
2 July 2006
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Worth no more than a glance.
Which I actually regret to say, considering the amount of time, attention and determination to explain every single damn frame of this fascinating movie the good Professor obviously devoted to his project. Nonetheless, any serious attempt to make sense of his every profundity is absolutely guaranteed to turn off all but the most tiresomely nerdish cineaste. It took me two years to build up the desire to make it all the way through - and I am a fanatic about Psycho.
Thus the scholars continue their age-old campaign to ruin enjoyment of art. Enough of this sort of psuedo-intellectual compulsive-obsessive navel gazing is certain to result in blinding students to an honest appreciation of film just as successfully as a few decades of it has soured most of us on reading literature for pleasure.
They say that those who cannot do,teach. But what exactly is it that they do try to teach? (And just wait until the PhDs get around to videogames!)
Anyway, what is saddening and maddening about Mr. Durgnat's effort is that there are indeed numerous excellent and fascinating insights about Psycho to be discovered amidst its many pages of self congratulation. Had these pages been briskly edited down into a concise and readable essay - say one quarter the book's length - I am certain that it would have earned and deserved a much wider and truly appreciative audience.
Unfortunately, as it stands, an honest admirer of this marvelous and historic film can only be obligated to shout out - in true horror-mode fashion - to the curious reader thinking of taking a peek deep down inside: Don't go in there!
Or, if you must, just borrow a copy for a quick "diegetic" browse. Or read Mr. Rebello's excellent "The Making of Psycho" instead.
Which I actually regret to say, considering the amount of time, attention and determination to explain every single damn frame of this fascinating movie the good Professor obviously devoted to his project. Nonetheless, any serious attempt to make sense of his every profundity is absolutely guaranteed to turn off all but the most tiresomely nerdish cineaste. It took me two years to build up the desire to make it all the way through - and I am a fanatic about Psycho.
Thus the scholars continue their age-old campaign to ruin enjoyment of art. Enough of this sort of psuedo-intellectual compulsive-obsessive navel gazing is certain to result in blinding students to an honest appreciation of film just as successfully as a few decades of it has soured most of us on reading literature for pleasure.
They say that those who cannot do,teach. But what exactly is it that they do try to teach? (And just wait until the PhDs get around to videogames!)
Anyway, what is saddening and maddening about Mr. Durgnat's effort is that there are indeed numerous excellent and fascinating insights about Psycho to be discovered amidst its many pages of self congratulation. Had these pages been briskly edited down into a concise and readable essay - say one quarter the book's length - I am certain that it would have earned and deserved a much wider and truly appreciative audience.
Unfortunately, as it stands, an honest admirer of this marvelous and historic film can only be obligated to shout out - in true horror-mode fashion - to the curious reader thinking of taking a peek deep down inside: Don't go in there!
Or, if you must, just borrow a copy for a quick "diegetic" browse. Or read Mr. Rebello's excellent "The Making of Psycho" instead.
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