The shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho is considered one of greatest, definitive and most ground-breaking in both horror and in cinema, this documentary look at its enduring legacy, and how it was achieved. Basically the scene in the film, where Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) is murdered by Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), took a week to film, requiring 78 set-ups and 52 cuts (hence the title of this film). This film really examines and deconstructs all aspects about the film, leading up to the murder, including things the audience would never have noticed or thought about before. This includes feeling empathy towards Bates rather than perhaps Crane, a painting specifically chosen to feature in the study scene, the iconic violin music score by Edward Herrmann, the audience using their imagination (the knife is never seen puncturing the body, only the noise (a knife piercing an apple), blood (chocolate sauce) and the stabbing), and the voyeurism (the shower being like a witness, and the plughole becoming Marion's eye). It references to Hitchcock's other works that led up to and followed Psycho, how this pivotal scene has inspired other works in horror and cinema (including homages and spoofs), and how early and continuing cinema has terrified audiences. With contributions from Peter Bogdanovich, Jamie Lee Curtis (who paid homage to her mother, Janet Leigh, recreating the shower scene in the TV show Scream Queens), Guillermo del Toro, Danny Elfman (who recreated Herrmann's score for the crap Gus van Sant remake), Sir Alfred Hitchcock (archive footage), Janet Leigh (archive footage), Eli Roth, Leigh Whannell and Elijah Wood. If you have always wanted to know how the famous scene of Psycho was achieved, what filmmakers and experts think of it, how it has maintained its legendary status, and how it has become so important in terms of how it arguably changed the course of cinema, then this is definitely a worthwhile documentary. Very good!
Review of 78/52
