Psycho, 1960

Marion Cotillard. Photograph by Mark Seliger.

A lot is made of the influence on Hitchcock’s films of his father, “a rather nervous man” who once locked his six-year-old son in a local jail for misbehavior. Less is known about Hitchcock’s mother. We do know that they had a close relationship; so close, in fact, that she accompanied him on holidays with his wife. Older women in Hitchcock’s films are rarely treated with kindness, however, and tend to be scolding, obnoxious, doddering. But it was not until Psycho that a mother was treated as a homicidal maniac, even if by proxy.

The original still: Janet Leigh. Paramount Pictures/Photofest.