Hitchcock, Psycho, 1960 The stillness of death

Hitchcock's Psycho is a good example of the use of the transition of Life to Death into the surrounding mise en scene. For a moment, the stillness of the recent animate body is juxtaposed with the stream of water still pouring from the shower, inanimate material in unrelenting movement.



Douglas Gordon, 24-Hour Psycho, 1993

Gordon expands Hitchcock's original Psycho (1960) by slowing it down from its original 90 minutes to 24 hours.

"By slowing the film down to a 13th of its normal speed, Gordon shows us not a "motion picture" but a succession of stills, each projected for about half a second. We become aware of the intermittency of the film image and the fragility of the illusion of real time in motion pictures."
-Amy Taubin