Janet Leigh in PSYCHO and 78/52: HITCHCOCK’S SHOWER SCENE
Slim pickings in theaters this week. I’ll be writing about Mark Felt – The Man Who Brought Down the White House, which I really can’t recommend. I haven’t yet seen The Florida Project.
My pre-Halloween DVD/Stream of the Week is Unfriended. It’s on both my lists of I Hadn’t Seen This Before and Low Budget, High Quality Horror of 2015. Unfriended is available to rent on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon Video, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Flixster.
October 30 on Turner Classic Movies, we meet Robert Young as one of cinema’s least sympathetic protagonists in They Won’t Believe Me(1947). A decade before Father Knows Best and two decades before Marcus Welby, M.D., Young plays a weak-willed and impulsive gold-digging womanizer. He’s married for money, but he also wants his girlfriend (the rapturous Jane Greer) AND his second girlfriend (a gloriously slutty Susan Hayward) AND his wife’s money. He’s making every conceivable bad choice until, WHAM BANG, circumstance creates a situation where he can get everything he wants …until it all falls apart. They Won’t Believe Me has one of the most ironic endings in the movies.
Robert Young and Susan Hayward in THEY WON’T BELIEVE ME
It’s the favorite month for scary movies, so The Movie Gourmet is featuring Hitchcock’s classic Psycho, with two superb 2017 accompaniments.
I recommend that you start with the six-part series of podcasts Inside Psycho. Podcaster Mark Ramsey begins with the real-life crime that sparked Psycho’s origin story and takes us through the purchase of the book rights, which turned out to be a very one-sided business deal. Ramsey puts Psycho in the context of Hitchcock’s career moment and reveals the film’s stepchild status at Paramount (it was filmed at Universal with a TV crew). He gives us a deep dive into the filming of the shower scene, including the censors’ search for the nudity (was it really in there?). We even learned about Hitchcock’s demands as to how Psycho would be exhibited – rules that changed the movie-going habits in our culture. Ramsey even tells us what happened to Marion’s car.
You’ll enjoy the movie more after you’ve listened to this podcast. Go to your podcast app and search for “Inside Psycho” or access the Inside Psycho website.
For your next course, I recommend this year’s documentary 78/52: Hitchcock’s Shower Scene, named for the 78 setups and 52 cuts in Psycho’s shower scene. Documentarian Alexandre O. Philippe takes us through aspects of the movie, but drills most deeply into the notorious shower scene. Philippe brings us noted composer Danny Elfman to comment on Bernard Herrmann’s famously screeching strings. We hear from Walter Murch, the brilliant film editor who invented the field of movie sound design, about the visual imagery and sound effects. And Amy Duddleston, the film editor on the 1998 Gus Van Sant Psycho remake, ruefully recounts how it’s all even harder than it looks.
Here’s a representative nugget from both Inside Psycho and 78/52. Before her shower, Janet Leigh as Marion enters the bathroom, tears up paper notes and flushes them down the toilet. Amazingly, this is the first flushing toilet in hitherto prudish American cinema. Seconds later, of course, come more shocks.
And here’s a treat, we meet the perky and amiable Marli Renfro, the Playboy Bunny and pin-up girl who was Janet Leigh’s nude body double in the shower scene. That scene took seven grueling days to film. Jamie Lee Curtis relates her mom’s weariness with the strategic moleskin that kept slipping off. Renfro was just happy to pick up the extra paychecks.
Finally, there’s a fun montage of Psycho references in later movies and popular culture. In what must be a spectacular half-joke, the documentary is dedicated “to Mother”. 78/52: Hitchcock’s Shower Scene is available to stream from Amazon, iTunes, YouTube and Google Play.
Janet Leigh in PSYCHO and 78/52: HITCHCOCK’S SHOWER SCENE
And then, of course there’s the original Psycho itself. It’s still effectively shocking – both in killing off the star one-third of the way through (almost unthinkable even today) and in the climactic reveal. Anthony Perkins is wonderful as Norman Bates, especially in how he gets us to understand immediately that Norman’s awkward oddness may be an indicator of more severe insanity.
Psycho is one hour and 49 minutes long. The key is to stop watching as soon as poor Simon Oakland shows up on-screen as the shrink Dr. Fred Richman. The usually reliable character actor Oakland was thanklessly tasked with delivering an interminable five-minute lecture on Norman Bates’ diagnosis. It’s painful overexplaining and brings downs the Psycho experience. You’ll thank me.
You can rent the original Psycho on DVD from Netflix, stream it from iTunes, Vudu and YouTube, or catch it on Turner Classic Movies or elsewhere on TV.
Before you see any other movie, go see The Big Sick, the best American movie of the year so far. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll fall in love. Here are more choices (but see The Big Sick first!):
Baby Driver is just an action movie, but the walking, running and driving are brilliantly time to the beat of music.
The Journey is a fictional imagining of a real historical event with wonderful performances from Colm Meaney and Timothy Spall as the two longtime blood enemies who collaborated to bring peace to Northern Ireland.
Okja, another wholly original creation from the imagination of master filmmaker Bong Joon Ho, is streaming on Netflix and opening in theaters.
The amusingly naughty but forgettable comedy The Little Hours is based on the dirty fun in your Western Civ class, Boccaccio’s The Decameron.
The character-driven suspenser Moka is a showcase for French actresses Emmanuelle Devos and Nathalie Baye.
My DVD/Stream of the Week is Drinking Buddies that RARE romantic comedy where the characters act and react – not in the way we’ve come to expect rom com characters to act – but as unpredictably as would real people. Drinking Buddies is available on DVD from Netlix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and GooglePlay.
On July 26, Turner Classic Movies brings us a feast of Alfred Hitchcock: Psycho, Vertigo, The Birds and North by Northwest. These are four of Hitchcock’s best, but today I’m choosing to feature The Birds, which I’ve screened recently. The Birds showcases Hitchcock’s brilliant sense of foreshadowing. Repeatedly, precursor events are unnoticed or dismissed by the characters, but seem vaguely offbeat or unsettling to the audience. And the suspense when the kids are walked out from their schoolhouse is unmatched. Plus no one could be more vulnerable to an aerial attack than when trapped in a glass phone booth.
I had forgotten about the flirtation between Melanie (Tippi Hedren) and Mitch (Rod Taylor), which certainly wouldn’t happen the same way today; Melanie is actually acting sexually aggressively for 1963. Today, we find Melanie and Mitch to be dressed with strange formality, but I can tell you that the wardrobe fits 1963 San Francisco.
Today’s audience, in our post 9/11 world, will identify with the locals in the town cafe as they assess whether the birds present a real or imagined threat. The Birds has been named to the National Film Registry.
Manchester by the Sea: MUST SEE. Don’t miss Casey Affleck’s career-topping performance in the emotionally authentic drama .
Elle: MUST SEE (but increasingly hard to find in theaters). A perverse wowzer with the year’s top performance by Isabelle Huppert. Manchester by the Sea is #2 and Elle is #4 on my Best Movies of 2016.
Loving: The love story that spawned a historic Supreme Court decision.
Mascots: the latest mockumentary from Christopher Guest (Best in Show) and it’s very funny. Mascots is streaming on Netflix Instant.
The Eagle Huntress: This documentary is a Feel Good movie for the whole family, blending the genres of girl power, sports competition and cultural tourism.
Also in theaters or on video:
Despite a delicious performance by one of my faves, Michael Shannon, I’m not recommending Nocturnal Animals.
Arrival with Amy Adams, is real thinking person’s sci-fi. Every viewer will be transfixed by the first 80% of Arrival. How you feel about the finale depends on whether you buy into the disconnected-from-linear-time aspect or you just get confused, like I did.
The remarkably sensitive and realistic indie drama Moonlightis at once a coming of age tale, an exploration of addicted parenting and a story of gay awakening. It’s almost universally praised, but I thought that the last act petered out.
Skip the dreary and somnolent Jackie – Natalie Portman’s exceptional impersonation isn’t enough.
If you’re interested in the Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune or cinema in general (and can still find the movie in a theater), I recommend the documentary Mifune: The Last Samurai.
My DVD/Stream of the Week picks are, for the rest of 2016, this year’s best films that are already available on video: Hell or High Water, Eye in the Sky, Chevalier, Weiner, Take Me to the River and Green Room.
For New Year’s Week, Turner Classic Movies is bringing us some great choices:
December 31st – Lawrence of Arabia: it’s time to revisit a spectacle. For decades, many of us watched this epic squeezed into tinny-sounding TVs. In 1989, I was fortunate enough to see the director’s cut in an old movie palace. Now technology has caught up, and modern large screen HD televisions can do justice to this wide screen classic. Similarly, modern home sound systems can work with the great Maurice Jarre soundtrack. Nobody has ever created better epics than director David Lean (Bridge Over the River Kwai, Dr. Zhivago). Peter O’Toole stars at the moment of his greatest physical beauty. The rest of the cast is unsurpassed: Omar Sharif, Jose Ferrer, Anthony Quinn, Anthony Quayle, Claude Rains, Arthur Kennedy, thousands of extras and entire herds of camels. The vast and severe Arabian desert is a character unto itself. Settle in and watch the whole thing – and remember what “epic” really means.
December 31st – Some Like It Hot: This Billy Wilder masterpiece is my pick for the best comedy of all time. Seriously – the best comedy ever. And it still works today. Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon play most of the movie in drag (and Tony is kind of cute). Curtis must continue the ruse although he’s next to Marilyn Monroe at her most delectable. Curtis then dons a yachting cap and does a dead-on Cary Grant impression as the heir to an industrial fortune. Joe E. Brown gets the last word with one of cinema’s best closing lines.
January 3rd – Cool Hand Luke, with Paul Newman as an iconic 1960s anti-hero, a charismatic supporting performance by George Kennedy, the unforgettable boiled egg-eating contest and the great movie line “What we have here is a failure to communicate”.
And on New Years Day, all you non-football fans can tune into TCM to binge-watch Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, Strangers on a Train, The Birds, Psycho, Vertigo, Rear Window, Shadow of a Doubt, Torn Curtain, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Family Plot, Marnie and The Trouble with Harry.
How to Run a Chain Gang and Influence People in COOL HAND LUKE
In Hitchcock, Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren star as Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Hitchcock as they collaborate on making Psycho. It’s a glimpse into their relationship and their professional teamwork, both challenged by Hitchcock’s quirkiness. In a very successful device, the serial killer Ed Gein (who inspired Psycho) appears as a character visible only to Hitchcock.
Of course, Mirren and Hopkins (beneath heavy makeup) are excellent as always. Scarlett Johansson is very good as Janet Leigh, as are Danny Huston, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jessica Biel and Toni Colette in supporting roles. (The actor who plays Ed Gein, Michael Wincott, resembles Warren Oates, one of my favorite actors from 60s and 70s.)
Hitchcock is entertaining and even rises to exhilarating when Hitchcock paces the theater lobby at Psycho’s premiere, waiting for the audience to scream at the shower scene.
