I am to provide the public with beneficial shocks. Civilization has become so protective that we’re no longer able to get our goose bumps instinctively. The only way to remove the numbness and revive our moral equilibrium is to use artificial means to bring about the shock. The best way to achieve that, it seems to me, is through a movie. -Hitchcock

So many elements in Psycho call for it to be watched again and again — the intricate psychological themes that grow more disturbing with each viewing, Bernard Herman’s score that is frightening in ways you didn’t know music could be, the narrative structure which is in itself shocking, the revolutionary visual rhythm of the shower scene…

And so Friday, Film Forum begins a week long celebration of Psycho’s 50th anniversary of disturbing audiences in ways they didn’t know they could be disturbed. The film stands up. You might not jump at the appearance of the murderer in the shower scene, but the film’s psychological themes — endless voyeurism, personal duality, questionable morality – are as relevant and disturbing as ever.

It finds the big screen at Film Forum, 209 W Houston Street in the West Village, on Friday, and runs for one week. It plays at 1:00, 3:15, 5:30, 7:45, & 10:00.

Doesn’t matter if you’ve seen it – see it again. With its twists and turns and its cavalier disregard for convention, Hitchcock’s masterpiece redefined not just horror but the very nature of narrative moviemaking. (NY Mag)

Should be seen at least three times by any discerning filmgoer: the first time for the sheer terror of the experience; the second time for the macabre comedy inherent in the conception of the film; and the third for all the hidden meanings and symbols lurking beneath the first American movie since Touch of Evil to stand in the same creative rank as the great European films. (Andrew Sarris, Village Voice)

Tags: classic, Horror, now playing, Thriller, West Village

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