Review: Psycho (1960) + Blogathon Update

IMDb Synopsis: A young woman steals $40,000 from her employer's client, and subsequently encounters a young motel proprietor too long under the domination of his mother.


Every time I see bloggers or film critics post lists of what they consider to be "must see" films, it seems as if Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho is always included. Since it's primarily a horror film, I figured Halloween night would be the best time to finally watch it. Now I wonder why I waited so darn long to see it.


It's no surprise that Psycho is regarded as one of the greatest films ever made.Hitchcock's directing, the actors, the score and the cinematography are all what make it such a masterpiece. As far as horror films go, I did think it was quite scary. And as for the shower-stabbing scene (which shouldn't be a spoiler since almost everyone knows Janet Leigh dies), I actually found "Mrs. Bates" opening the shower curtain to be scarier than the stabbing itself. I also thought what Vera Miles discovered in the cellar (I'll save you from a spoiler) was equally terrifying.


The star of the show here is definitely Anthony Perkins. His stunning performance as Norman Bates makes characters like Norma Desmond and Harry Powell seem almost normal, and the stare he gives at the end of the film is guaranteed to give you chills.


Overall, if you've never seen Psycho, you should change that immediately. 

5/5 stars

I also wanted to give an update on the Humphrey Bogart blogathon I announced last month, which you can read about here. So far, 20 people have already signed up, so a big thanks to all of you planning to take part. I also got a comment asking what you had to do to secure a place in the blogathon, and all that's necessary is just to let me know in the linked post. I'll be posting another update soon with all the blogs signed up to participate. Thanks for reading!

The Films of Cary Grant and Alfred Hitchcock

Cary Grant made four films- Suspicion, Notorious, To Catch a Thief and North by Northwest- with my favorite director, Alfred Hitchcock. Grant also referred to Hitch as his favorite director, and Hitch called Grant "the only actor I ever loved in my whole life". I've seen all four of their films together, and enjoy them all, so I decided to say a bit about each of them.

 Grant's first film with Hitch was Suspicion (1941), co-starring Joan Fontaine, who won an Oscar for her role. The film is about an English woman (Fontaine) who marries charming playboy (Grant), then suspects he is planning to murder her.

I would say Suspicion is probably the weakest of the four Grant/Hitch collaborations. Not that it's a bad film- it isn't- but I find the other three films they made together to be much better, one reason being because of the changes made to Grant's character in the film versus the original novel Before the Fact written by Anthony Berkeley. **SPOILER ALERT**. In the book, Grant's character kills Fontaine. However, the studios objected to this as Grant was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood at the time and they feared playing a murderer would ruin his image. Thus, the ending was altered, much to Hitch's objection. I would have liked to see the ending as it was in the novel, since Grant rarely played the villain in any of his films.

The second of their films together is my favorite Hitchcock film, Notorious. Released in 1946, Notorious tells the story of a Nazi spy's daughter (Ingrid Bergman) who is trained by a government agent (Grant) to spy on her father's former colleagues who transfer to Brazil after WWII.

Notorious is one of Hitchcock's most acclaimed films, as it contains two of the most remembered scenes in film history. The first begins at the top of a staircase as Hitch slowly zooms in on Bergman showing a key hidden in her hand. The second is a two-and-a-half minute on-again/off-again kiss between Grant and Bergman that went against the Production Code, which stated that a kiss could be no longer than three seconds.

This is my favorite Hitchcock film for many reasons, one being the wonderful chemistry that the two stars had together.

To Catch a Thief (1955) pairs Cary Grant with Grace Kelly, whom he referred to as his favorite of the many actresses he worked with during his career. It was the third film that both Grant and Kelly made with Hitch (Kelly had starred in Dial M for Murder and Rear Window prior to this). This film is about retired jewel thief John Robie (Grant) who the police believe has returned to his robberies. Kelly plays an heiress who is convinced he is guilty, while her mother (Jessie Royce Landis) believes he's innocent.

Each of the four Grant/Hitchcock films features a car chase scene, the one in To Catch a Thief taking place in Monaco- reportedly on the same road where Kelly's fatal car accident occurred on September 14, 1982, after she supposedly had a stroke while driving.

  Last but not least is the film that would probably be Hitchcock's most famous if not for Psycho: North by Northwest. NxNW stars Grant as Roger Thornhill, a man mistaken by foreign officials for being a government advocate, and is tracked across the United States while trying to prove his real identity. This film co-stars Eva Marie Saint and James Mason.

North by Northwest is most remembered for the iconic crop-dusting sequence. While Grant waits at an isolated bus stop, a biplane is, in another character's words, "dusting crops where there ain't no crops". The plane flies toward Grant, barely missing him. You can watch the scene here if you're interested.


To sum it up, the four films Cary Grant made with Alfred Hitchcock are all worth watching. I'd recommend them to any classic film fan.

My Picks: The 50 Best Male Performances in Film

 Just like my previous post, I'll be listing my top fifty male performances. Again, I'm not limiting myself to one role per actor.

My top 50, in alphabetical order by film title:

Humphrey Bogart as Charlie Allnut in The African Queen (1951, John Huston)

Harold Russell as Homer Parish in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946, William Wyler)

Cary Grant as Dudley The Bishop's Wife (1947, Henry Koster)

Humphrey Bogart as Rick Blaine in Casablanca (1942, Michael Curtiz)

Paul Newman as Brick Pollitt in Cat On a Hot Tin Roof (1958, Richard Brooks)

Jack Lemmon as Joe Clay in Days of Wine and Roses (1962, Blake Edwards)

Sidney Poitier as Noah Cullen & 

Tony Curtis as John Jackson in The Defiant Ones (1958, Stanley Kramer)

Fred MacMurray as Walter Neff in Double Indemnity (1944, Billy Wilder)

James Dean as Cal Trask in East of Eden (1955, Elia Kazan)

Andy Griffith as Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes in A Face In the Crowd (1957, Elia Kazan)

Burt Lancaster as Milton Warden,

Frank Sinatra as Angelo Maggio &

Montgomery Clift as Robert Prewitt in From Here to Eternity (1953, Fred Zinnemann)

Bing Crosby as Father Chuck O'Malley in Going My Way (1944, Leo McCarey)

Clark Gable as Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind (1939, Victor Fleming)

Henry Fonda as Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath (1940, John Ford)

Spencer Tracy as Matt Drayton in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967, Stanley Kramer)

Henry Travers as Clarence &

James Stewart as George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life (1946, Frank Capra)

Clark Gable as Peter Warne in It Happened One Night (1934, Frank Capra)

Gregory Peck as Father Francis Chisholm in The Keys of the Kingdom (1944, John Stahl)

Dana Andrews as Mark McPherson in Laura (1944, Otto Preminger)

Sidney Poitier as Homer Smith in Lilies of the Field (1963, Ralph Nelson)

Ray Milland as Don Birnam in The Lost Weekend (1945, Billy Wilder)

Peter O'Toole as King Henry II in The Lion in Winter (1968, Anthony Harvey)

Kirk Douglas as Vincent van Gough in Lust for Life (1956, Vincent Minnelli)

Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1941, John Huston)

Frank Sinatra as Frankie Machine in The Man With the Golden Arm (1955, Otto Preminger)

Ernest Borgnine as Marty Piletti in Marty (1955, Delbert Man)

Dick Van Dyke as Bert in Mary Poppins (1964, Robert Stevenson)

Gary Cooper as Longfellow Deeds in Mr. Deeds Comes to Town (1936, Frank Capra)

Cary Grant as T.R. Devlin in Notorious (1946, Alfred Hitchcock)

Marlon Brando as Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront (1954, Elia Kazan)

Montgomery Clift as George Eastman in A Place in the Sun (1951, George Stevens)

Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig in The Pride of the Yankees (1942, Sam Wood)

Leslie Howard as Henry Higgins in Pygmalion (1938, Anthony Asquith)

James Dean as Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause (155, Nicholas Ray)

Gregory Peck as Joe Bradley in Roman Holiday (1953, William Wyler)

Joseph Cotten as Charles Oakley in Shadow of a Doubt (1943, Alfred Hitchcock)

Gene Kelly as Don Lockwood in Singin' In the Rain (1952, Stanley Donen)

Warren Beatty as Bud Stamper in Splendor In the Grass (1961, Eliz Kazan)

James Mason as Norman Maine in A Star Is Born (1954, George Cukor)

Robert Walker as Bruno Anthony in Strangers On a Train (1951, Alfred Hitchcock)

William Holden as Joe Gillis in Sunset Blvd (1950, Billy Wilder)

Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch & Phillip Alford as Jim Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962, Robert Mulligan)

James Stewart as John "Scottie" Ferguson in Vertigo (1958, Alfred Hitchcock)

Robert Taylor as Roy Cronin in Waterloo Bridge (1940, Mervyn LeRoy)

Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights (1939, William Wyler)