Psycho (USA: Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

 

Psycho (USA: Alfred Hitchcock, 1960: 109 mins)

Andrews, Nigel. "Psycho analysis: Released fifty years ago, Alfred Hitchcock's throwaway horror film tore down the shower curtain and changed cinema history." Financial Times (March 19, 2010)

Byrne, Joseph. "The Male Gaze in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho." ENGL 245: Film, Form, and Culture (October 14, 2013)

Dirk, Tim. "Psycho (1960)." Film Site (ND)

Durgnaut, Raymond. A Long Hard Look at Psycho. British Film Institute, 2010. ["Upon its release in 1960, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho divided critical opinion, with several leading film critics condemning Hitchcock's apparent encouragement of the audience's identification with the gruesome murder that lies at the heart of the film. Such antipathy did little to harm Psycho's box-office returns, and it would go on to be acknowledged as one of the greatest film thrillers, with scenes and characters that are among the most iconic in all cinema. In his illuminating study of Psycho, Raymond Durgnat provides a minute analysis of its unfolding narrative, enabling us to consider what happens to the viewer as he or she watches the film, and to think afresh about questions of spectatorship, Hollywood narrative codes, psycho-analysis, editing and shot composition. In his introduction to the new edition, Henry K. Miller presents A Long Hard Look at 'Psycho' as the culmination of Durgnat's decades-long campaign to correct what he called film studies' 'Grand Error'. In the course of expounding Durgnat's root-and-branch challenge to our inherited shibboleths about Hollywood cinema in general and Hitchcock in particular, Miller also describes the eclectic intellectual tradition to which Durgnat claimed allegiance. This band of amis inconnus, among them William Empson, Edgar Morin and Manny Farber, had at its head Durgnat's mentor Thorold Dickinson. The book's story begins in the early 1960s, when Dickinson made the long hard look the basis of his pioneering film course at the Slade School of Fine Art, and Psycho became one of its first objects."]

Insdorf, Annette. Cinematic Overtures: How to Read Opening Scenes. Columbia University Press, 2017. ["Your professor has a copy of this book."]

Isaacs, Bruce. "The Art of Pure Cinema: Hitchcock and His Imitators." New Books in Film (September 28, 2020) ["The Art of Pure Cinema: Hitchcock and His Imitators (Oxford University Press) is the first book-length study to examine the historical foundations and stylistic mechanics of pure cinema. Author Bruce Isaacs, Associate Professor of Film Studies and Director of the Film Studies Program at the University of Sydney, explores the potential of a philosophical and artistic approach most explicitly demonstrated by Hitchcock in his later films, beginning with Hitchcock’s contact with the European avant-garde film movement in the mid-1920s. Tracing the evolution of a philosophy of pure cinema across Hitchcock’s most experimental works – Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, The Birds, Marnie, and Frenzy – Isaacs rereads these works in a new and vital context. In addition to this historical account, the book presents the first examination of pure cinema as an integrated stylistics of mise en scène, montage, and sound design. The films of so-called Hitchcockian imitators like Mario Bava, Dario Argento, and Brian De Palma are also examined in light of a provocative claim: that the art of pure cinema is only fully realized after Hitchcock."]

Kuersten, Erich. "CinemArchetype #5: The Human Sacrifice." Acidemic (February 28, 2012)

LoBrutto, Vincent. "Dark Side of American Cinema: Psycho." Becoming Film Literate: The Art and Craft of Motion Pictures. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005: 229-235. [BCTC Library: PN1994 L595 2005]

Mogg, Ken. "Great Directors: Alfred Hitchcock." Senses of Cinema #36 (July 2005)

Palmer, Julian. "Psycho: How Alfred Hitchcock Manipulates an Audience." (Posted on Youtube: March 16, 2016)

Pereira, Jose. "Psycho: Haunted House." (Posted on Youtube: August 8, 2014)

"Psycho: Study Guide." Film Education (1995)

Sevilla, Susanna. "Things Are Not What They Seem." (Posted on Vimeo: February 2015) ["A video essay on title sequences from Hitchcock and Fincher films. An exploration of motion graphic design from analog to digital."]