The reason why Hitchcock filmed Psycho backwards

Sheridan Monkhouse is director of classics such as Hellmare, Platinum Desire, and The Canine Dimension. He writes exclusively for Screen Idle

I was lucky enough to meet the outstanding Alfred Hitchcock once. It was an encounter that would set me on course for a lifetime of working in film.

It was when I was a student and was working as a runner on set at Pinewood. Hitch was visiting friends and must have noticed something in me as he singled me out and called me over to him with a wave of his hand.

‘You there,” he said, in that distinctive voice of his, “fetch me a sandwich.”

I knew then that all I wanted to do was direct

It was later in life that I found out from a mutual acquaintance the highly unusual technique he used to make Psycho.

Naturally, it is an outstanding picture, one of the key texts of modern film making but, what many people don’t know is that in order to give the film It’s uniquely unsettling and creepy nature, Hitch filmed the entire picture in reverse. He started at the end, had all the actors recite their lines backwards and walk backwards and then reversed the film for the final edit. So, what we, the audience, see is people walking and talking backwards, but played out in reverse so they appear to be walking and talking normally, but because it’s actually filmed in reverse, everything seems a little off.

Of course, this novel approach had its problems. The car sinking into the swamp, for example. How do you film a car sinking in reverse? Well, it’s simple. You film the car sinking into the swamp normally, and then reverse the film so that it looks like the film is rising from the swamp.

He really was a genius.