18.01.02 – Friday
With continuing secularity: watched Psycho (1960) for the first time (ever) yesterday; it was better than its reputation would have one believe. J. Leigh was satisfactory, but really, Anthony Perkins… need I say more? I would imagine it would be great fun to watch with Jules Dassin’s Phaedra (1962), in which he plays another troubled son (remembering, of course, the myth of Hippolytos) and which contains, moreover, the ironic image of Melina Mercouri in the Parthenon Gallery at the British Museum (one will naturally remember that before her death she was the Greek minister of something-or-other whose main activity was to crusade for the return of those well-scrubbed bits of marble).