Psycho

In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock was already famous as the screen's master of suspense (and perhaps the best-known film director in the world) when he released Psycho and forever changed the shape and tone of the screen thriller. From its first scene, in which an unmarried couple balances pleasure and ...more

If America’s greatest art form is film, then Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is the Mona Lisa of horror. Arguably Hitchcock’s most watched work by contemporary audiences, Psycho connects with viewers on a visceral level seldom achieved by any film. The plot is deceptively simple. A woman (Janet Leigh) steals money from her work, goes on the lam and stops for the night at the Bates Motel for some sleep and a relaxing shower. But things don’t work out the way she imagines. The very name of the film ...more

In a decade in which what was acceptable onscreen would change more radically than at any other time in history, Psycho was in some ways the first shot in the battle for freer filmmaking in the 1960s. Few movies of its time were more direct and unapologetic in their violence or served it up with such disorienting abruptness or tongue-in-cheek wit. With its casual depiction of sex outside marriage, fleeting nudity, bursts of shocking violence, killing off a major character less than halfway ...more