After the highly acclaimed Doc of the Dead and The People vs George Lucas, director Alexandre O. Philippe explores again the roots and foundation of a certain cinephilia. This time he sifts through the famous shower scene of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and is interested in the scope of this sequence of shots leading to the bloody death of Janet Leigh.
A tribute to Hitchcock
78/52 is above all a tribute to the cinema of Afred Hitchcock, a cinema that fascinates and arouses admiration both in the professional world and among the public. His famous film Psycho (1960) was remade in 1998 by American director Gus Van Sant. Apart from minor changes and the addition of color, Van Sant's version is a technical challenge since he repeats Hitchcock's film shot by shot. The mistakes made by the "Master of Suspense" as well as the cameo appearance are also respected by Van Sant.
With the documentary genre, Alexandre O. Philippe returns to the shower stage of Psycho, mythical scene of the 7th art, to reveal his impact in the cinematographic world and the turning point it marks in the representation of death on the big screen. On a formal level, the documentary shot in black and white, in a nod to the film, is sober and effective. Some passages of Psycho are reconstructed in order to immerse the viewer in the world of the filmmaker and to contextualize the fateful scene. The shower scene is never visible in its entirety because its interest lies in its fragmentation. This also leaves the possibility for those who have not seen it to discover it within the entirety of the film.
An eclectic selection of guests
From Peter Bogdanovich to Guillermo del Toro, Jamie Lee Curtis, Danny Elfman, Neil Marshall, Osgood Perkins, Karyn Kusama, Richard Stanley, Walter Murch or Elijah Wood and Bret Easton Ellis, the most prestigious filmmakers and analysts speak in front of the documentary filmmaker's camera to explain how the shower scene changed their view of the 7th art. and influenced their work. Artisans of cinema or simple Hitchcock aficionados, from different generations, the eclectic panel of speakers allows the documentary to continuously maintain the viewer's attention and offer some simply hilarious remarks.
Cinephilia on screen
With 78/52, Alexandre O. Philippe participates in the renewal of the treatment of cinephilia, in the same way as Karim Debbache and his web show Chroma. Cinephilia is no longer found only in books that can sometimes seem boring and reserved for an intellectual elite, like Hitchcock/Truffaut, or The Cinema According to Alfred Hitchcock published in 1966 and consisting of interviews between Alfred Hitchcock and François Truffaut. It is now brought to the screens and treated with humor.
With 90 minutes of documentary on a 2-minute scene of one of the greatest masterpieces of cinema, Alexandre O. Philippe thus signs a beautiful tribute to the cinema of the "Master of suspense", Alfred Hitchcock. After 78/52, the director now tackles another cult scene in the history of cinema from Alien, the eighth passenger, by Ridley Scott. We let you guess which one…
