This is a masterpiece. End of discussion. As I sat down to watch the movie, my wife made considerable efforts to remain busy at the computer so she would not have to look at the screen. Without blood, without blasts, without gory details, without a continuous race to nowhere, Hitchcock holds us captive during more than 100 minutes and keeps us constantly on the edge, expecting the worst at the turn of every corner. The masterful way he directed this movie is quite sobering to someone accustomed to today's cheap antics mass-produced in Hollywood. The movie industry has somehow come to understand the genre of terror as a synonym of violence and claustrophobic escape of a hidden, unknown, dark enemy that nobody quite knows how to describe, and in doing so it has seriously impoverished our experience at the theatres. Hitchock and Psycho belong to a different era. Theirs was an era when it was still possible to convey terror, intrigue and exhilaration by subtle means, without a need to use the big hammer. Perhaps we have become more and more insensitive over the last few decades, or perhaps the problem is that we have grown accustomed to expect the wrong thing from the movies: explosions, blasts, blood, noise, stress, violence, spectacle... entertainment. Yes, I understand films have always been about entertainment, about spending a couple of hours at the theatre with one's girlfriend, but we have reached new lows in the last 20 or 30 years. That is all we get from the movies these days. They only offer entertainment. No challenge to our preconceived ideas. No new experiences. No new insights into other cultures, other people, other characters, into people whose lifes we rarely even touch. Nothing like that. Just entertainment. Mindless, cheap, edulcorated, easy entertainment.

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Entertaiment factor:10/10
Artistic factor:10/10

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