It’s Hitchcock Week with the San Francisco Symphony and Wednesday night kicked things off with Psycho (1960), Hitchcock’s masterpiece thriller. Why is the SF Symphony playing Psycho? And for what reason are they having a week devoted to Hitchcock, at all? For starters, Hitchcock films feature some of the most memorable scores in film history. Just like John Williams’s scores have enhanced the sense of adventure in countless films directed by Steven Spielberg, the scores in Alfred Hitchcock films have greatly enhanced the chilling suspense, the horrifying thrill, and the bloody payoffs of his stories. These are a few particularly momentous nights at the symphony because the scores have been removed from the film’s print and, instead, filled in by a live orchestra (in Psycho’s case, just the string section…it seemed).
