"78/52" film screening

JOHNSON CITY – Everyone knows that filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock had his obsessions. Since Hitchcock’s heyday in the 1950s and ’60s, new generations of filmmakers and film fans have become equally obsessed with the work of the “Master of Suspense.”

One of those Hitchcock aficionados is Swiss filmmaker Alexandre O. Philippe. Although he has been studying The Master since he was 5, Philippe’s most recent obsession has been what the Village Voice calls “a gloriously nerdy deep dive” into the three-minute shower scene in the 1960 film “Psycho.” In this scene – barely halfway into the movie – thieving secretary Marion Crane, portrayed by film star Janet Leigh, is slashed to death at the creepy Bates Motel in mid-shower by a shadowy “Mother” figure.

Philippe’s 2017 documentary “78/52” is a frame-by-frame celebration of what Philippe calls “the single most iconic and significant scene in the history of motion picture arts and sciences.”

On Monday, April 16, at 7 p.m. in East Tennessee State University’s Ball Hall Auditorium, room 127, the Mary B. Martin School of the Arts at ETSU will present a screening of the 92-minute documentary film “78/52”as part of the South Arts Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers. The screening is free and open to the public and will be followed by a question-and-answer session and reception with the filmmaker.

Philippe started hosting move nights for family friends at his home in Switzerland by the time he was 10 or 12, generally screening Hitchcock films, providing an introduction to the film before and a question-and-answer session afterward. While he has produced films previously, like “Doc of the Dead” and “The People vs. George Lucas,” Philippe’s passion for Hitchcock has continued unabated.

“Part of the great appeal of watching (Hitchcock’s movies) is that we’re so far from having connected all the dots,” Philippe tells The Criterion Collection. “I keep having epiphanies. I keep making discoveries.”

In “78/52,” Philippe unearths more treasure in Bates Motel-tinged interviews with filmmakers and horror aficionados such as Guillermo del Toro and Peter Bogdanovich; other filmmakers, including Karyn Kusama and Danny Elfman; editors and sound designers, including Walter Murch; star Janet Leigh’s daughter Jamie Lee Curtis; costar Anthony Perkins’ son Osgood; and, Leigh’s body double, then-Playboy model Marli Renfro.

The documentary leaves few stones unturned, addressing not only the iconic scene, but also its timing at the cultural and historical transition from the 1950s to the ’60s and the personal and financial risks Hitchcock took to make “Psycho” and its taboo-smashing shower scene.

The “Psycho” scene opened a “Pandora’s box” in the film industry, Philippe says, and much of it through the illusion – or “magic trick” as he calls it – created in the brief shower scene and its carefully crafted 78 camera set-ups and 52 deft cuts in the editing room. “He created a perfect illusion,” Phillipe says in the Criterion interview. “Famously, the censors who watched ‘Psycho’ for the first time said, ‘You can’t release it; we saw nudity. We saw the knife puncturing her skin.’ And [Hitchcock] said, ‘No, you didn’t see any of that. That’s all in your head.’”

“78/52” is a perfect film to close the 2017-18 Southern Circuit film series, says Anita DeAngelis, director of the Martin School of the Arts. “If you are a fan of Hitchcock or a student of film, this is a documentary you won’t want to miss,” DeAngelis adds. “‘78/52’is a great combination of serious study, research and interviews and a sense of fun, much along the lines of Hitchcock’s own quirky humor.”

Philippe emphasizes that the documentary is not just for insiders and Hitchcock nerds. “I don’t consider myself a scholar,” the filmmaker says. “I want to be accessible.  It was very important for me to not make a film that was too heady. I wanted people who had never watched ‘Psycho’ to be able to watch my film, enjoy it and then want to watch ‘Psycho’ after that. To me, that’s the point of making the movie.

“Cinema is a cerebral exercise to a certain extent, but it has to primarily be an emotional one, in my opinion. I think that’s what I love about Hitchcock is that he is so accessible, so primal, so visceral.”

“78/52” walks a tightrope between microscopic observation, expert interviews and levity. “It’s a very nerdy film, there’s no question about it,” Philippe says, “but hopefully it’s fun and entertaining.”

The Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers is a program of South Arts. Southern Circuit screenings are funded in part by a grant from South Arts in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts. South Arts, founded in 1975, is a nonprofit regional arts organization building on the South's unique heritage and enhancing the public value of the arts.