Alfred Hitchcock is renown as a master cinematographer (and editor), notwithstanding his overall brilliance in the craft of His choice of black and white film for 1960 was regarded within the film industry as unconventional since color was perhaps at least five years the new standard. But this worked tremendously well. After all, despite the typical filmgoers dislike for black and white film, Psycho is popularly heralded among film buffs as his finest cinematic achievement; so much so, that the man, a big name in himself, is associated with the film, almost abovehis formidable stature. Imagining it in color, Psycho would not appear as horrific, and maybe it would also not be, as a whole, as unified as it now stands, nor memorable. Black and white has a quality of painting things starkly, showing plainly truths about character, the emotional determination or mood, as in vulnerability, and other inexplicable, purely artistic elements. Regular among his works, Hitchcock opens the film with a hovering crane shot coasting over the setting of Phoenix, Arizona. Even without the mysterious, chilling soundtrack, the shot itself watched in silence evokes a timid passage into danger. In a long take it sweeps across the cityscape to build initial curiosity in the viewer, and then surpasses a curtain-drawn window into the presence of a hotel rooms trysting occupants. Immediately the viewer is called into confronting his/her discretion regarding those things we are not customarily meant to see, in such ideas as privacy and good taste. How far shou...
