Mondays with Saul update: New article reassesses Hitch/Bass

Saul Bass

From   Pat Kirkham's Reassessing the Saul Bass and Alfred Hitchcock Collaboration

The entire Bass/Hitchcock collaboration deserves to be better known, partly because of the sheer quality of the work, partly because it offers an interesting case study of the complex interchange between film and design, and partly because of the controversy surrounding Bass’s contribution to what is arguably the most famous scene in U.S. cinema — the shower scene in Psycho. Serious discussion of Bass’s contribution to the shower scene — a fascinating collaboration, from novel and script to musical score — remains problematic, not least because issues of authorship are far from dead in many academic disciplines, design history and film studies included.

storyboard by Bass for the Psycho shower scene

From Pat Kirkham's article posted last week at The Design Observer Group.  Recommended reading for those who want to learn more about the working relationship between Bass and Hitchcock, and that relationship's importance to Hitchcock's films and film history.

From the essay:

I write as an admirer of the work of Hitchcock (Blackmail, 1929, often makes it onto my top-ten or “desert island” film lists) as well as that of Bass. In no way do I want to diminish Hitchcock’s standing as a filmmaker; if anything he should be lauded for spotting and using Bass’s not inconsiderable cinematic talents. Using a wide range of sources, including oral testimonies and papers related to Bass and Hitchcock in the Margaret Herrick Library, Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, I seek here to review and reposition the issues in the hope of facilitating debate.