According to Francois Truffaut, "Hitchcock is universally acknowledged to be the world's foremost technician, even his detractors willingly concede him this title," and other critics state, "Hitchcock is one of the greatest inventors of form in the entire cinema," while still others assert that "his films remain central to questions of cinematic practice and critical theory" (Kirshner). Psycho was one Hitchcock's favorite films, because he derived his main satisfaction from the fact that "the film had an effect on audiences" (Kirshner). He once told Truffaut, "I take pride in the fact that Psycho, more than any of my other pictures, is a film that belongs to film-makers, to you and me" (Kirshner). In a good film, every shot counts, and the basic element of a film is not the scene, but the shot, one continuous exposure of film (Kirshner). A typical movie has hundreds of shots, and the shower scene...
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