Capital Celluloid 2015 - Day 63: Wed Mar 4

Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960): Dominion Theatre, 7.30pm


A screening of Psycho with a live score, featuring one of the greatest soundtracks in cinema history. This promises to be one of the film highlights in London this year.

Here is the Dominion Theatre introduction:
Apollo are delighted to present a live, high-definition screening of the iconic Hitchcock film, Psycho on March 4th here at the Dominion Theatre. The screening will be accompanied on stage by a live 40-piece orchestra. An incredible live experience not to be missed. Celebrated as one of Hitchcock’s finest cinematic works, Psycho is consistently hailed as a groundbreaking film which set the template for a whole new genre of hugely successful psychological thrillers.
The score has become infamous in its own right, and Hitchcock himself remarked that “33% of the effect of Psycho was due to the music”. Bernard Herrmann’s soundtrack will be performed live by the Cinematic Sinfonia and conducted by Anthony Gabriele.

Chicago Reader review:
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 (and above) is music expert Howard Goodall's introduction to the brilliance of Herrmann's work on this seminal movie.

For anyone interested in looking in more depth at the film (and this volume is truly in-depth) the BFI book by celebrated British film critic Raymond Durgnat called A Long Hard Look At Psycho is a must by the way.

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