- Jubilee offer: spend £10 or more on any product sold by Amazon.co.uk on or before June 6 and you can buy "The Diamond Jubilee - A Classical Celebration Album" for just £2.50. Here's how (terms and conditions apply)
The Moment of Psycho
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Moment of Psycho for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Special Offers and Product Promotions
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
"Thomson, like Hitchcock, is a master of his material."
--The Evening Standard
"Thomson, like Hitchcock, is a master of his material."
--The Scotsman
--The Evening Standard
"Thomson, like Hitchcock, is a master of his material."
--The Scotsman
Product Description
It was made like a television film, shot with a tight budget and completed in less than three months. It killed its star off after forty minutes. There was no happy ending. And it offered the most violent scene to date in American film. Nothing like Psycho had existed before; the movie industry - even America itself-would never be the same. In "The Moment of Psycho", David Thomson - one of America's most respected film critics - situates "Psycho" in Alfred Hitchcock's career and masterfully recreates the mood and time when the seminal film erupted onto screens. Thomson shows how in 1959, Hitchcock, then 60 years old, made "Psycho" as an attempt to break personally with the dullness of his own settled domesticity - a struggle which then mirrored the sexual, creative, and political ferment which would soon overtake the nation. Suddenly sex, violence and horror took on new life. Censorship fell away, and Janet Leigh screaming naked in the shower was its patron saint. "Psycho", all of a sudden, represented all America wanted from a film - and, as "The Moment of Psycho" demonstrates, it still does.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Hardcover
Remembering the original review from the Daily Express, I find it interesting to see this paper completely contradicting itself 50 years later, as quoted in the book's product description.
That the paper was (and probably still is) unfit to block up a motel lavatory bowl can be gauged by its incessant moralising and hypocrisy about anything it deemed to be unsuitable for the breakfast tables of England.
Reviewing Psycho in 1960, the paper's film critic, Rene MacColl wrote: "one of the most vile and disgusting films ever made. Now look here, Maestro Hitchcock, just what is the game?.....a sad prostitution of talent."
There were of course other execrable reviews but The Express had considerable influence over the nation's morals back then, and I remember this one so vividly because my aunt got hold of the paper and told my uncle, a former Indian army colonel, that he shouldn't bother reading about anything so "sordid."
Another review, telling people to avert their eyes, asserted that the film was "scraping the bottom of the psychiatric barrel" .....so no change over fifty years then for the Daily Mail.
That the paper was (and probably still is) unfit to block up a motel lavatory bowl can be gauged by its incessant moralising and hypocrisy about anything it deemed to be unsuitable for the breakfast tables of England.
Reviewing Psycho in 1960, the paper's film critic, Rene MacColl wrote: "one of the most vile and disgusting films ever made. Now look here, Maestro Hitchcock, just what is the game?.....a sad prostitution of talent."
There were of course other execrable reviews but The Express had considerable influence over the nation's morals back then, and I remember this one so vividly because my aunt got hold of the paper and told my uncle, a former Indian army colonel, that he shouldn't bother reading about anything so "sordid."
Another review, telling people to avert their eyes, asserted that the film was "scraping the bottom of the psychiatric barrel" .....so no change over fifty years then for the Daily Mail.
Format:Hardcover
A small but detailed book looking at the impact of Psycho on cinema and a look at what was involved in filming it....
Format:Hardcover
Forget the brutal murder in the shower - Psycho was controversial enough simply by being the first film to feature a flushing lavatory!
In this entertaining meditation on the film which changed everything - including a convincing case argued that it has influenced just about every major movie made since - we are invited to consider the impact of a thriller (horror film? The choice is yours) which was the high water mark of Alfred Hitchcock's career and which scared everyone else senseless, much to Hitch's amusement.
Full of juicy detail but urgent and unpretentious, this short discourse is almost as readable as the film is watchable. I wasn't born in 1960 and so its impact at the time of its release I can only leave for others - like David Thomson - to assess, but I remember the first time I watched it... on TV with the lights out. No other film has seemed remotely scary since.
The author (and, of course, the late director) would understand.
In this entertaining meditation on the film which changed everything - including a convincing case argued that it has influenced just about every major movie made since - we are invited to consider the impact of a thriller (horror film? The choice is yours) which was the high water mark of Alfred Hitchcock's career and which scared everyone else senseless, much to Hitch's amusement.
Full of juicy detail but urgent and unpretentious, this short discourse is almost as readable as the film is watchable. I wasn't born in 1960 and so its impact at the time of its release I can only leave for others - like David Thomson - to assess, but I remember the first time I watched it... on TV with the lights out. No other film has seemed remotely scary since.
The author (and, of course, the late director) would understand.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > History > Cultural History
- Books > Music, Stage & Screen > Film > Criticism & Theory
- Books > Music, Stage & Screen > Film > History of Film > United States
- Books > Music, Stage & Screen > Film > Production & Technology > Direction & Production
- Books > Reference > Directories > Art
- Books > Reference > Directories > Film & Performing Arts
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
