"Psycho" Named Second Best Movie of All Time...What's the First?
In my net surfing to find interesting Psycho-related topics, I found it in an article entitled:
"Chinatown named Best Movie of All Time."
Exciting news for Chinatown. Exciting news for Psycho.
But I clicked to see who was doing the choosing (and it was in 2010!!) and it seems to be a small group of critics working for ...two net papers? (The Observer and The Guardian.)
I mean, how many voters IS that? Six?
The group chose these as the seven greatest movies of all time:
1) Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)
=2) Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
=2) Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966)
4) Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1976)
5) 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
6) Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1945)
7) Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
That's a pretty whack list. Just a paltry two foreign films on there. Oh, and Psycho had to share its Number Two slot with Andrei Rublev(outta nowhere choice, yes?)
2001 seems a natural for such lists; OK. I've never felt that Apocalypse Now ever added up to a fully coherent film(its been released in several versions), and Brando was anti-climax personified, but...it seems to have its lovers.
And with Polanski, Woody, and Hitchcock in top slots...well, that's kind of a Bad Sexual Man hall of fame right there(except, Hitchcock didn't actually physically DO anything, he's in for verbal fouls.)
OK, so the poll is minor, narrow in vote, etc.
But its a list to make one feel good in some ways.
There's Psycho. No Vertigo. I like Vertigo, but I love Psycho and I've always felt it is Hitchcock's most "something" film. I'll take: most important.
Chinatown and Psycho are next to each other on one other list, as I recall: the first AFI 100 Greatest Films of All Time List -- the one from the 90's. I'm guess-remembering:
17. Psycho
18. Chinatown
...but I'd have to go check the list.
Psycho and Chinatown are rather properly "paired" in certain ways. They are both thrillers, but very INTELLIGENT thrillers, though I would say that Psycho played better to less discriminating shocker crowds than Chinatown did.
Still, Chinatown is not without its own shocks. The incest in Chinatown is landmark like the shower murder in Psycho is. And perhaps even more linked to the knifeplay in Psycho is the scene where guest cameo Polanski sticks a knife blade into Nicholson's nostril and pulls up. Everybody FELT that, and it probably should end up on the list with Great Shock Violence Moments in the Movies (Shower Scene, Alien chest burster.......coke bottle in The Long Goodbye?)
Consider this: After that knife cuts through Nicholson's nostril(for being too "nosy" as a private eye), he finishes 2/3 of the remaining movie with either a big bandage on his nose(blocking his then-leading man handsome looks) or stiches hanging out when the bandage is removed. THAT's landmark, too.
And thus I'm reminded of something "Psycho" screenwriter Joe Stefano said about the knife victims in Psycho: "While they were being slashed, they may have been more worried about surviving with disfigurement than dying." Especially Arbogast. Imagine for a moment that he had survived his ordeal, after getting his face slashed, punched out Norma/Norman in some sort of fight at the top of the stairs. He'd still have that slash on his face; he'd go through life as "Scarface Arbogast."
But I digress.
Psycho and Chinatown rather "seesaw" in my estimation. With Psycho being made under "simpler writing rules" in Hays Code 1960, it can look more childish and "basic" than the complex, history-based Chinatown. But Chinatown rather hedges its bets and plays a bit too sedate and talky for its own good(contrary to popular belief, Chinatown got more than a few "meh" reviews in 1974, the Time critics and, I think, Roger Ebert, felt it was a weak riff on Bogart era noir.)
Still, I'm toying with these films; both are major favorites of mine. Which reminds me: a movie can be the greatest movie ever made and still have flaws: the TV-ish expository scenes in Psycho; the rather too-pat (to me) downbeat ending of Chinatown.
But the greatness of BOTH films far outweighs their weaknesses, which aren't really weaknesses at all. they are part of how these films WORK.
And this: Chinatown shares things with Psycho, but it also shares something big with Vertigo: both films are about a cop turned private detective who got somebody killed in his past, tries to help someone new...and gets THAT person killed. Both films end with the "hero" near-catatonic and emotionally destroyed.