Capital Celluloid 2012 - Day 23: Monday Jan 23

Peeping Tom (Powell, 1960) & Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960):
Prince Charles Cinema, 6.40 & 8.45pm

Now this is a proper double-bill. Both landmark films, one that ruined a director's career and one that became one of the most influential in the history of cinema.

Chicago Reader review of Peeping Tom:


Michael Powell's suppressed masterpiece, made in 1960 but sparsely shown in the U.S. with its ferocity and compassion intact. The German actor Carl Boehm plays a shy, sensitive British boy (Powell doesn't try to cover his accent, which is typical of the film's deliberate sacrifice of realism for effect) who loves movies with all his heart and soul because he knows what they're really about—sex and death. This seductive, brightly colored thriller isn't about the “problem” of voyeurism as much as the sub-rosa fascinations of the cinema. It's an understanding and at times even celebratory film—attitudes that scandalized critics years ago and are still pretty potent today. 
Look at this brilliant trailer. Look Out!!

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Chicago Reader review of Psycho:

'A dark night at the Bates Motel, in the horror movie that transformed the genre by locating the monster inside ourselves. Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 masterpiece blends a brutal manipulation of audience identification and an incredibly dense, allusive visual style to create the most morally unsettling film ever made. The case for Hitchcock as a modern Conrad rests on this ruthless investigation of the heart of darkness, but the film is uniquely Hitchcockian in its positioning of the godlike mother figure. It's a deeply serious and deeply disturbing work, but Hitchcock, with his characteristic perversity, insisted on telling interviewers that it was a "fun" picture.' Dave Kehr

Here is Hitchcock having fun with his trailer for Psycho

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