Psycho (1960)

Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

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A Phoenix secretary embezzles $40,000 from her employer's client, goes on the run, and checks into a remote motel run by a young man under the domination of his mother.

Psycho is probably the film that represents Alfred Hitchcock the most in popular culture. With the proto-slasher killer and the now legendary shower scene where Janet Leigh gets butchered naked. Psycho is now encrusted in the common minds as Hitchcock’s masterpiece and his trademark of Horror.  Well that is part right and part wrong. First, Hitchcock was not a dedicated horror filmmaker has much as a storyteller that mastered thrills and suspense. Is Psycho his masterpiece? We can count at least five films as his masterpieces; Rear Window, North By Northwest, Vertigo, Psycho, and The Birds. However, is Psycho his ultimate masterpiece? Some might say yes to that answer but recently, 2012, Vertigo was recognized as the greatest film of all time by the Sight and Sound poll held each decade since 1952. However, is you ask me, and I believe that if you are reading those lines you are asking me, Psycho might be the most personal masterpiece Hitchcock ever directed. With the floating sexuality from the beginning of the traveling in the hotel bedroom where Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) and Sam are having an affair to the shower scene, sex is present. Then you have the thrill, the build-up to the first murder, the fear of the policeman that suspects Marion of getting away in a hurry and follows her to the point where seh trades car, Hitchcock was affraid of cops since a childhood memory that his father asked the police to jail him for a moment so he would behave. There are themes of Hitchcock’s obsessions that are recurring but also completely succesful in their execution.

Let’s now discuss the thing that is almost synonymous with Psycho, the shower scene. In his discussions with François Truffaut, Hitchcock admitted that it was the only reason he wanted to do the film. I doubt that a bit since the film is so perfect in every one of its elements that, yes the scene is outstanding and his use of montage, jump cuts, traveling into Leigh’s eye to show us she looked at the money before life gets out of her, and the shot of the knife entering the flesh that was shot in reverse so that the knife never penetrates the wet skin, but still the build up leading to that scene is a lesson in cinema. That scene took many days to shot and the use of many angles makes it geometric and puts us into the shower side by side with Marion. As if we were taking the shower with her and witnessing the scene getting soaked. When the killer gets in and attacks then kill Marion, the story shifts from the point of view of Marion to Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) that comes and washes meticulously the crime scene. This long afterwards of cleaning and getting rid of the body and the car is also as interesting as the assassination scene itself. When he gazes the car slowly sinking into the swamp, the montage from the car to his face has a comic mesure that makes us his acolytes.

Janet Leigh

Anthony Perkins

Birds

Horror

Cinematography

Saul Bass 

In a Lonely Place

Editor’s note : this review is a translation of one of the first reviews to ever appear on this blog back in 2009. Those were less than a 150 words long and were written immediately after the viewing of each film. This is as aforementioned a translation and a longer edit of this original film review.

In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950)

A potentially violent screenwriter is a murder suspect until his lovely neighbor clears him. But she begins to have doubts...

One of the many films of the 1950’s that is considered as part of the Film Noir genre with crisp black and white, legendary director Nicholas Ray, and Humphrey Bogart. Add to that Ray’s wife at the time, Gloria Grahame, and you have a great film on paper.

The opening scene is a piece of anthology by itself in Bogart’s filmography, his character Dixon Steele, a drunk screenwriter on a dry spell, is in a bar and gets to punch a man, insult another one, and gets into a fistfight. All of that at noon. He represents the wounded man that Bogie always succeeded to portray in films. The perception of this actor can be compared with this character as a man that is mysterious and a bit rude like a wild animal that struggles to be around his peers.

The Tree of Life

The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011)

Malick's latest offering was the movie I was expecting the most for 2011. To me he has this Stanley Kubrick-like aura of a cult director with his final cut and a full freedom in his creations. Nevertheless, the difference between both directors is the fact that Kubrick was exploring amongst known genres. With his subtle and unique narratives Kubrick blended his style within the genres he choose to practically reinvent! On the other side Malick's an artist, he developed his own narratives and the way he writes and shoots his films couldn't be copied or remade. Well, you might see where I'm going here with this comparison but as many stated before: The Tree of Life has this weird unsettling resemblance with 2001: A Space Odyssey. But why is this parallel is made? Well, on three levels both films excel: the meaning of life or philosophy, cinematic outcome, and spirituality.

MEDIAFILM's Materpiece List

Since 50 years, MEDIAFILM.ca is a public agency that proposes the ratings of everything cinema/television related for the entire Prvince of Quebec. Its ratings are from (1)Masterpiece to (7)Duds. Those ratings are used in the newspapers, tv guides and many websites.

Being a cinephile in the province of Quebec, these ratings were the first references I had when I began to discover auteur films/ foreign and classic films.

Every five years they upgrade a list of masterpieces, This list has been the first cinephile achievement I ever wanted to complete. But on the way I encountered many many other films. An obstacle was also the availability of certain films, Victor Sjöstrom's The Wind or Abel Gance's Napoleon for example. And the many Criterion expensive releases retarded this quest. Now, with more moeny in my pockets and the discovery of certain films available online I am in position to conclude my first ever cinephile objective. Being near the end I feel like a marathonian that feels nostalgic of the first miles and I take a certain step-back at the work/fun achieved.

Enough with the words here. Here you have the list that I will try to put in the best order possible (by year). With the time you will see some links appear on the titles, it will be my review and/or thought on the film and the context I've discovered the so-called movie!

U = Unseen

The Birth of A Nation (D.W. Griffith, 1915) USA
Intolerance (D.W. Griffith, 1916) USA
The Cabinet of Dr.Caligari (Robert, Wiene, 1919) Germany
Broken Blossoms (D.W. Griffith, 1919) USA
Nanook of the North (Robert J. Flaherty, 1922) USA
The Kid (Charles Chaplin, 1921) USA
Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, 1922) Germany
Greed (Erich von Stroheim, 1924) USA
Sherlock Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924) USA
The Last Laugh (F.W. Murnau, 1924) Germany
The Navigator (Donald Crisp & Buster Keaton, 1924) USA
Battleship Potemkin (Sergei M. Eisenstein, 1925) USSR
The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin, 1925) USA
The General (Clyde Bruckman & Buster Keaton, 1926) USA
Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927) Germany
Berlin: Symphony of A Great City (Walther Ruttmann, 1927) Germany
Napoleon (Abel Gance, 1927) France
Sunrise (F.W. Murnau, 1927) USA
Pandora's Box (G.W. Pabst, 1928) Germany
Steamboat Bill Jr. (Buster Keaton & Charles F. Reisner, 1928) USA
October (Sergei M. Eisenstein, 1928) USSR
The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Th. Dreyer, 1928) France
U The Wind (Victor Sjöström, 1928) USA
Man With The Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929) USSR
Earth (Alexander Dovjenko, 1930) USSR
L'Âge d'or (Luis Bunuel, 1930) France
U The Blue Angel (Josef von Sternberg, 1930) Germany
City Lights (Charles Chaplin, 1931) USA
M (Fritz Lang, 1931) Germany
L'Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934) France
The Scarlet Empress (Josef von Sternberg, 1934) USA
Modern Times (Charles Chaplin, 1935) USA
La Grande Illusion (Jean Renoir, 1937) France
Alexander Nevsky (Sergei M. Eisenstein, 1938) USSR
La règle du jeu (Jean Renoir, 1939) France
Stagecoach (John Ford, 1939) USA
The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford , 1940) USA
The Great Dictator (Charles Chaplin, 1940) USA
Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941) USA
The Magnificent Ambersons (Orson Welles, 1941) USA
Day of Wrath (Carl Th. Dreyer, 1942) Danemark
Ivan The Terrible: Part I (Sergei M. Eisenstein, 1944) USSR
Ivan The Terrible: Part II (Sergei M. Eisenstein, 1945) USSR
Children of Paradise (Marcel Carné, 1945) France
La belle et la bête (Jean Cocteau, 1946) France
Roma Open City (Roberto Rossellini, 1946) Italy
My Darling Clementine (John Ford, 1946) USA
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (John Huston, 1948) USA
Bicycle Thief (Vittorio De Sica, 1948) Italy
Louisiana Story (Robert J. Flaherty, 1949) USA
The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949) UK
Journal d'un curé de campagne (Robert Bresson, 1950) France
Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950) USA
The African Queen (John Huston, 1951) USA
Othello (Orson Welles, 1951) USA
Umberto D. (Vittorio De Sica, 1951) Italy
Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1952) Japan
Singin' in the Rain (Gene Kelly & Stanley Donen, 1952) USA
High Noon (Fred Zinnemann, 1952) USA
Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953) Japan
Les vacances de M. Hulot (Jacques Tati, 1953) France
Madame de... (Max Ophüls, 1953) France
Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953) Japan
Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954) USA
Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954) Japan
La Strada (Federico Fellini, 1954) Italy
On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954) USA
The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955) USA
Pather Panchali (Satyajit Ray, 1955) India
The Searchers (John Ford, 1956) USA
Ordet (Carl Th. Dreyer, 1955) Danemark
Lola Montès (Max Ophüls, 1955)
East of Eden (Elia Kazan, 1955) USA
U Un condamné à mort s'est échappé (Robert Bresson, 1955) France
Aparajito (Satyajit Ray, 1956) India
Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman, 1957) Sweden
Mon Oncle (Jacques Tati, 1957) France
Nights of Cabiria (Federico Fellini, 1957) Italy
The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman, 1957) Sweden
Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958) USA
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) USA
Les 400 coups (François Truffaut, 1958) France
Hiroshima mon amour (Alain Resnais, 1958) France
Pickpocket (Robert Bresson, 1959) France
North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959) USA
Apur Sansar (Satyajit Ray, 1959) India
The Virgin Spring (Ingmar Bergman, 1960) Sweden
L'Avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960) Italy
À bout de souffle (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960) France
La Dolce Vita (Federico Fellini, 1960) Italy
Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) USA
L'année dernière à Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1960) France
La Notte (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1961) Italy
Jules et Jim (François Truffaut, 1961) France
West Side Story (Jerome Robbins & Robert Wise, 1961) USA
U L'Eclisse (Michaelangelo Antonioni, 1962) Italy
Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean, 1962) UK
The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock, 1963) USA
8 1/2 (Federico Fellini, 1963) Italy
Les parapluies de Cherbourg (Jacques Demy, 1963) France
Dr.Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1963) USA
U Pour la suite du monde (Pierre Perreault & Michel Brault, 1963) Canada
U Red Desert (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1964) Italy
Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966) Sweden
Blow Up (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966) UK
Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966) USSR
Playtime (Jacques Tati, 1967) France
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1967) Italy
2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) USA
Teorema (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1968) Italy
Once Upon A Time In The West (Sergio Leone, 1968) Italy 
The Conformist (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1969) Italy
Death in Venice (Luchino Visconti, 1971) Italy
A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971) UK
Cries and Whispers (Ingmar Bergman, 1972) Sweden
Le charme discrèt de la bourgeoisie (Luis Bunuel, 1972) France
The Godfathter (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972) USA
Amarcord (Federico Fellini, 1973) Italy
The Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1974) USSR
The Godfather: Part II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974) USA
Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974) USA
Nashville (Robert Altman, 1975) USA
Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976) USA
Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977) USA
Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick, 1978) USA
Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979) USA
Manhattan (Woody Allen, 1979) USA
Mon oncle d'Amérique (Alain Resnais, 1980) France
Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980) USA
Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) USA
Once Upon A Time in America (Sergio Leone, 1984) USA
Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985) UK
Wings of Desire (Wim Wenders, 1987) Germany
Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990) USA