with ref to the "success" of PSYCHO and the awful "failure" of PEEPING TOM, leo
enticknap's comments placing this development in historical context is
extraordinarily enlightening . . . but i wonder if we need to go to that info
in order to explain the reception of the two films . . . for it still seems to
me pretty obvious that the narration of PSYCHO brings its "perverse" subject
matter much closer to main stream classical genre cinema while the narration of
PT encourages the kinds of difficult audeince repsonses that are almost
guaranteed to lead to resistance
 
in other words, can't a formal or rhetorical analysis of the films serve as well
as a historicist account to explain the differences in reception?
 
mike frank
 
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