Psycho (1960)

Academy Awards, USA 1961

Nominated Oscar	Best Actress in a Supporting Role Janet Leigh
	Best Director Alfred Hitchcock
	Best Cinematography, Black-and-White John L. Russell
	Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White Joseph Hurley Robert Clatworthy George Milo

Paramount Pictures
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
My rating: 4 stars out of 4
IMDb Wikipedia
(Blu-ray, Universal)

Secretary Janet Leigh absconds with $40 thousand in cash and drives to meet her lover. She ends up at the Bates Motel on a rainy night. Clerk Anthony Perkins offers her food, conversation and a room. His elderly mother lives in a Victorian mansion behind the hotel, and we hear them arguing about Leigh before she is brutally murdered by a shadowy figure while taking a shower. Leigh's sister and boyfriend show up a few days later looking for her, as does a private detective looking for the cash. Perkins, supposedly covering up for his mother, murders the detective when he gets too close to the truth, which turns out to be more shocking than anyone imagined. After the frenetic North by Northwest, Hitchcock returned to darker themes in this, his most notorious, and disturbing, film. It was shot in black and white and with a low budget using the crew from his TV show, giving this a more personal, grittier feel. Bernard Herrmann's tense score ratchets up the intensity even more.