I was planning to continue with my existing IMDB tens list with the next movie that was already present on it, until i watched Psycho. So a new addition to my list (after E.T. and The Great Dictator).
I guess that’s what you get when you are slowly working your way through the IMDB top 250. What a movie this is.
Just like Rope, this is also a movie Hitchcock directed. I only knew one scene about this movie, which is the famous shower scene including the haunting music that accompanied it. I had no idea where in the movie this scene would show up, but thought it was probably near the ending. It turned out i was wrong about it and it just shows what kind of ideas you can have about a movie which you have not seen yet.
During the first part of the movie i was distracted by the music. Just compare the original score (about 45 seconds in):
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDtJUSYoLDE&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0xe1600f&color2=0xfebd01]
With the next song by mister Busta Rhymes: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHHT7dTmw8U&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0xe1600f&color2=0xfebd01]
As this piece of music was repeated a couple of times i kept hearing Busta’s voice through the music, which was distracting. Of course that’s not Hitchcock’s fault.
The story is just perfect and i was pleasantly surprised by it. I don’t want to say too much about it, because when you have not seen a movie and you watch it for the first time with no prior knowledge, the impact it has on you can be a lot bigger.
I was wondering during the shower scene how they did the shot where the camera is directly pointed at the shower head, but with the water not hitting the camera. Turns out that Hitchcock ordered an extremely large shower head to be custom-made so he could position the camera exactly between the water.
This happens to be the last Hitchcock movie he shot in black and white. Reason he shot in black and white was because he thought the scenes might be a bit to graphic for the audience. In my opinion the black and white makes the scene even better.
This movie has a fantastic bad guy and the setup towards the ending was excellent. Especially the ending was the reason for me to award it a 10. It is now definitely one of my favourite movies. From all the Hitchcock movies I’ve seen, I think this is the best one, but I still got some of them to go.
