Director: Alexandre O. Philippe
Cast: Marli Renfro, Alfred Hitchcok, Tere Carrubba, Alan Barnette
Have I Seen It Before: Probably not, and yet I feel like I’ve seen more than enough fawning retrospectives of Psycho (1960)—to say nothing of docudramas like Hitchcock (2012) or The Girl (2012)—that I can’t say so with complete certainty.
Did I Like It: That previous statement wound tend to think I have a bit of a withering view of the film, but I can say there will probably be no further deep dives on the shower scene of Psycho. This has done the job. A fawning fan documentary—that still manages to poke holes in both Anthony Perkins’ ADR reading and wig choices—we do spend more than a little bit of time watching people of varying levels of fame watching the scene.
The film is far stronger when it is interviewing Renfro—when you think you’re seeing parts of Janet Leigh that you’re not supposed to be seeing, you’re actually seeing Renfro—and marveling at her indelible impact on cinema and subsequent lack of fame.
It also manages to delight when it confronts the complete unraveling of the magic contained in Hitchcock’s classic, namely in trying to recreate the death of Marion Crane in Gus van Sant’s Psycho (1998). That later film has the dubious reputation of being a shot-for-shot remake of the original, but there’s a decent runner in here where we learn that a 1:1 transcription of the shower scene didn’t work in color, or with far more of Anne Heche than we could have ever hoped to see of Leigh or Renfro. The thread at the fine sweater already pulled, the scene had to be re-made to far diminishing returns. I didn’t know that. I usually judge a documentary by its ability to teach me something, and it is difficult not to view a documentary kindly when it teaches me something I didn’t know about something I thought I knew quite well.