Synopsis

It Killed off its star after forty minutes. There was no happy ending. And it offered the most violent scene to date in American film. Nothing like Psycho had existed before, and the movie industry-even America itself-would never be the same. In The Moment of Psycho, preeminent film critic David Thomson vividly positions Psycho in both American cultural history and Alfred Hitchcock's career, re-creating the mood and time when the seminal film erupted onto film screens worldwide. Thomson shows that Psycho was not just a sensational new film: it altered the very nature of our desires. Suddenly sex, violence, and horror took on new life. Psycho represented exactly what America wanted from a film-and, as Thomson brilliantly demonstrates, it still does.

The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani

Though readers may not agree with all of Mr. Thomson's arguments here, he makes a powerful—and sometimes surprising—case for the movie's importance in film and cultural history. Building on the work of Francois Truffaut (who first helped establish Hitchcock's reputation as an auteur) and the writings of the critic Robin Wood, Mr. Thomson does a deft job in this volume of reappraising Hitchcock's work, even as he deconstructs Psycho and its complex cinematic legacy.

Biography

David Thomson, author of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, is a regular contributor to The Guardian, The New York Times, Film Comment, Movieline, The New Republic, and Salon. He lives in San Francisco.