This was an interesting read.How times where when the Psycho movie came out and how they changed Americans view on horror movies. I do agree with a lot in this book. Love old Alfred Hitchcock movies. I especially like to look for his profile shadow in all his movies. Psycho and The Birds are my two favorite ones.

So disappointed. I did NOT imagine that this would be the ramblings of a fanboy so enamoured of Janet Leigh that he would Mary Sue himself into a reimagined Psycho where he is Norman Bates, only Norman Bates is a cop who pulls over Marion Crane's car and ends up engaged in a backseat tryst... I wish I was joking. Still scratching my head.

i mean... i guess there’s a lot of interesting stuff i learned here, just going by the facts, and thomson definitely has a wonderfully sophisticated style of writing. i’m not really sure i Like it, though.probably hate myself for saying this in 10 years or even tomorrow, but can we actually overthink a movie so much that it makes us stupider?

Interesting Interesting take on the movie and Hitchcock. Wish it contained more about the film and less about his other works.

I read this after having both seen the movie and read the book. I was required to read this for a college course and found it to be midly interesting as far as analytical texts go. I found some of the parts to be interesting while others seemed to just drag on. One of the interesting details that the author mentioned was the fact the chocolate sauce was used as blood. Other than interesting facts like this the book was dripping with the overanalysis that only someone who studies film can do. I f...

It was difficult at times to believe that this was written by a grown man and not a teenager. Thomson talked about Janet Leigh's bra way too much for my tastes among other things that seemed bad taste such as guessing the size of her breasts and using the word "laid" in reference to her character. Another complaint that I have is that he calls "Psycho" a "period piece" as a explanation for why Marion Crane didn't use a cell phone to call her boyfriend/lover. I wanted to shout "Duh" (sorry-lapsin...

A very disappointing read for a Hitchcock fan like myself. Some of the film theory and references to subsequent horror films influenced by Psycho were mildly interesting, but the author’s misogynistic writing style rankled me from the start. Don’t waste your time on this one.

Psycho is an excellent movie, and David Thomson has watched it too many times. He reads into the film with all the frantic desperation of an nontenured English professor trying to say something new about Hamlet. This bloated, smug book pretends to be an examination of a great film, but is really an excuse for Thomson to exude pseudo-intellectual snark. I don't think I'm a dumb reader, but several of Thomson's one-liners left me questioning my own understanding. For example, on Hitchcock's (un)po...

I was excited to read this because I had just finished reading Psycho and watching the film in my Law and Literature course. Unfortunately, this book was highly disappointing. First of all, it’s glaringly sexist. Within the first 50 pages the author has already referred to Janet Leigh as a hooker and tried to guess her bra size in a crude, pointless sentence that added nothing to his argument and made me feel sick. He also repeatedly mentions the audience’s desire to “have her stripped” and “see...

Weirdly written, rambling, insular little old man of a book. It reads like Thompson just handed over a stack of cocktail napkins with all his notes to his editor and was like, "Do whatever." It does make some interesting points, but leaves them hanging. Overall I basically felt like Thompson doesn't really invite the reader into his thought process or adequately explain the context of some of his arguments.

The master of the thinky film book. I also recommend "Nicole Kidman" and "The Whole Equation." For more of my thoughts on "The Moment of Psycho," visit my web site and search for One-Man Book Club.

Oof. This book is... something. David Thomson seems to be a well respected film critic by all accounts of a simple Google search. Professional film criticism has never held much water in my opinion, and I never heard of David Thomson before I read this book. I picked it up because I wanted to read a book about one of the most influential and notorious films ever made, not because of the supposed merit of the writer.First, let me start off with the good aspects of this book. It is a quick read at...

The final chapter, in which Thomson reflects on how Psycho both reflected and created modern American society, is worth the read. (Everything else is pretty good too.)

it's like being on the phone with someone who's watching a movie and having them tell you the whole movie as it happens in real time. only that person is one of the greatest film historians in the world... and at the end he gives you this weird rambling speech about roads.still, though, a good, quick, fun read... as long as you really love psycho. (which thomson doesn't, really, i should add... he thinks it takes a nose-dive after the shower scene.)it also features some really nice imaginative f...

A reasonably pleasurable (and sometimes semi-personalized) quasi-tribute to the (somewhat dubious) legacy of Hitchcock's arguable magnum opus PSYCHO. Like with his classic film resource tome THE NEW BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF FILM, David Thomson does not fuck around when it comes to giving his uniquely unsentimental view of cinema and a film/filmmaker's place in history.

"It's not like my mother is a maniac or a raving thing. She just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven't you?" ~Norman Bates, Psycho (1960) ***Note: the following review contains spoilers for the films Psycho, Carrie, and Friday the 13th.I've had this slim volume by film critic David Thomson on my currently reading shelf for months and it was high time to finish it, or abandon it. I finished it...barely. Psycho is one of my favorite movies for a thousand reasons, i...

I really enjoyed how Thomson situated Psycho in the context of Hitchcock's career, and (for the most part) in the context of American culture and cinema history. However, his criticism of the film itself, while having some interesting and valid points, veered out of control and was full of straw men and internal inconsistencies while at the same time begging the question at several points. (Quite a feat--begging the question while also being internally inconsistent!) He wanted Hitchcock to make

I was enjoying this book until about the last third. Mr. Thomson's analysis of the film Psycho is, in my opinion, spot on. When you read this book you will want to see the film again immediately. The problem for me began in a discussion of the film The Birds in which Mr. Thomson writes Melanie Daniels met Mitch Brenner and his sister at the pet shop in San Francisco. As anyone who has seen the film knows Melanie did not meet Cathy Brenner until after she arrived at Bodega Bay with the love birds...

An easy introduction into the film,some i didnt know that moments.there are more comprehensive guides to the film to be read but this one does not make things more than they are.a good film made on a shoestring budget,i sometimes wonder if Hitchcock did as a bit of a dare to himself to see how far he could push the envelope regarding censorship,i we probably read more into it than was actually meant.

“Get ready for the future: it is murder” – Leonard Cohen Thomson has a breezy conversational style (“Films were shown continually, and many people came in during the picture and then left when the story became familiar again. I know that sounds awful, yet the condition prevailed…”). He packs multiple references tightly together, almost always implying more than he actually says. I really enjoyed reading this book, but in the end was not sure exactly what the point of it was. His first chapter lo...