Review of 78/52

78/52 (2017)
7/10
An interesting and meticulous documentary that pays tribute to Hitchcock's best film
7 November 2023
Can you kill the protagonist of the movie 40 minutes into the movie? ? Do you need 78 camera positions and 52 editing cuts to film a scene? ? Does it make sense that a knife is more important than who holds it? All these questions will have their answer in this good documentary dealing with an unprecedented look at the iconic shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Psicosis (1960), being well directed made by Alexandre, O. Philippe.

"Psycho" was not only Hitchcock's most successful film, but it was a phenomenon in itself and the highlight of the film is , of course , the shower scene with 78 shots and 52 cuts that changed cinema forever. The film is a masterpiece of the horror genre and its immediate impact and future influence were enormous and cannot be overemphasized, showing in detail the shower scene, the "man behind the curtain", and the screen murder that profoundly changed the course of world cinema. It is the quintessential shock that created a true subgenre about psychopaths and that continues to this day. The shower image is one of the most studied, copied and analyzed sequences in the history of cinema and has obtained a notoriety that surpasses the film itself. Alfred Hitchcock took his time filming the most famous shower scene in cinema. It was made with 70 cameras to shot the 45 seconds of footage and the creepy sound effects were realized by stabbing a knife into a melon. The film lasts just over three minutes but forever changed the history of cinema, inaugurating the modern horror genre in which the bad guy is a human with deep and twisted secrets. The shower was never a safe place in horror movies. And of course, the well-known poster designer and credit titles author by Saul Bass, he's usual on Hitchcock films . Saul Bass was the author of the storyboard, and Hitch took advantage of it in the early sixties with a strange and violent film starring and with the emblematic music of Bernard Herrmann. Without forgetting the magnificent performance by Anthony Perkins in an immortal role as Norman Bates and sensational Janet Leigh with Oscar nomination included that was the only one in her long career. Inventive and superbly constructed plot , filled with delicious black humor by writer Joseph Stefano based on Robert Bloch's novel.

Directors Guillermo del Toro, Karyn Kusama, Richard Stanley, Scott Spiegel, Mick Garris, Eli Roth, Neil Marshall, and Peter Bognadovich; Editors such as Walter Murch, Bob Murawski ; actors such as Elijah Wood, Ileana Douglas, Janet Lee Curtis, Janet Leigh's daughter; writer Brian Easton Ellis and composer Danny Elffman dissect the iconic shower scene, showing its meaning and significance in a tribute to the film of the master's best-known thriller.

¨Psycho¨was directed with exquisite taste and intelligence by master Hitchcock who made an impeccable control of every scene and maneuvering your emotions , infusing with a deliciously macabre wit , it does ¨Psycho¨ far superior to the several movies what tried duplicate , or imitate it. Furthermore 78/52 (2017) also pays tribute to other Hitch films with scenes from Easy Virtue, Rebecca, suspicion, Notorious, Shadow of a Doubt, Foreign Correspondent, Lifeboat, The Rope, Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, Vertigo, The Man Who Knew Too Much, To Catch a Thief ,The Birds, Topaz , Frenzy and even the only non-thriller directed by Hitch: Mr. & Mrs. Smith, a film that is much loved by Guillermo del Toro .
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