In Psycho, Janet Leigh plays Marion Crane, a woman who steals money from work and spends a night at the Bates Motel as run by the troubled mother’s boy Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins). The shower scene from Psycho is so well known that it’s possible some people know it only from the parodies (done by The Simpsons, Jackass, etc.). On one hand it was the master at his subversive and transgressive best, on the other hand so much has changed in fifty years of cinema that it’s virtually impossible for an audience to find the film without knowing the big reveal or having a familiarity with its set pieces - if only from the pop culture unconsciousness. Such is partially the dilemma of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. For modern audiences, a shot of a silent train in black and white would have no such weight.
At least, that’s what the history books tell us. When the Lumiere brothers made “Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat” in 1896, audiences famously left the theater, afraid that a silent train might kill them.
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