Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 thriller, shot cheaply in black and white with his television crew to keep the plot twist secret, follows Marion Crane to the isolated Bates Motel and its proprietor Norman Bates. Its shower scene, cut to Bernard Herrmann's shrieking strings, is one of the most analyzed sequences in film history, and the film set a new level of acceptability for depicted violence and psychological disturbance in American cinema.
Facts
Classification
Original Language AwardGolden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture 2 Release Year FAQs
Who paid for Psycho, and why did Paramount not want to?
Hitchcock financed the film himself through his own company after Paramount refused his usual budget, and Paramount agreed to distribute it.
Alfred Hitchcock paid for it himself. Paramount executives balked at his proposal and refused to provide his usual budget. He then offered to film Psycho quickly and cheaply in black and white using the crew from his television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and Paramount rejected that approach too. Hitchcock countered that he would personally finance the project and shoot it with his Shamley Productions crew if Paramount would distribute the film. In place of his usual 250,000 dollar director's fee he proposed a 60 percent stake in the film negative, and Paramount accepted that combined offer.
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Additional Source Alfred Hitchcock (Wikipedia)Infobox, directed by
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Wikimedia FoundationReception section
It set a new level of acceptability for violence, deviant behavior, and sexuality in American films.
Infobox
Psycho is a 1960 American horror film produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
Psycho, Description, original language
Its shower scene, cut to Bernard Herrmann's shrieking strings, is one of the most analyzed sequences in film history, and the film set a new level of acceptability for depicted violence and psychological disturbance in American cinema.
Created By: Paramount Pictures, Pre-production section
Paramount distributed the film, but four years later Hitchcock sold his stock in Shamley to Universal's parent company MCA, and his remaining six films were made at and distributed by Universal Pictures.
View the Source 2. Psycho (Wikidata)
Wikidata P166: Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress, Motion PictureQuote, Wikidata P166: Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress, Motion Picture
Wikidata P166 (award received): Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress, Motion Picture.
Alfred Hitchcock (Wikipedia)
Dissenting Readings (1 dissenting reading)
Description
Michael Powell's Peeping Tom, about a killer who films his victims' deaths, opened in Britain in April 1960, five months before Psycho reached American screens. Powell's film was so savaged by contemporary critics it effectively ended his career, while Psycho was an immediate popular and critical success. Only decades later did film scholarship rehabilitate Peeping Tom and credit it, alongside or even ahead of Psycho, with the voyeuristic camera and murderous psychology the slasher genre would later systematize, so crediting Psycho alone with founding the modern slasher template overstates a contested case.
A dissenting reading, from an independent laneWikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation
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