Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho reputation, including "Rope", "Rear Window", "To Catch a Thief", "The Man Who Knew Too Much", and "North by Northwest". The project, which Hitchcock tackled in part to compete with financially successful, low-budget, youth-oriented horror movies, went on to astound many by becoming a cultural watershed, an international box-office success, a film classic, and a forerunner of the violent, disorienting films and real-events of the turbulent 1960s and '70s. "Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho" was initially distributed in hardcover print by W.W. Norton for Dembner Books on April 15, 1990 in the United States. A trade paperback edition was
Alfred Hitchcock that of the heterosexual male protagonist. "The female characters in his films reflected the same qualities over and over again," Roger Ebert wrote in 1996. "They were blonde. They were icy and remote. They were imprisoned in costumes that subtly combined fashion with fetishism. They mesmerised the men, who often had physical or psychological handicaps. Sooner or later, every Hitchcock woman was humiliated." The victims in "The Lodger" are all blondes. In "The 39 Steps" (1935), Madeleine Carroll is put in handcuffs. Ingrid Bergman, whom Hitchcock directed three times ("Spellbound" (1945), "Notorious" (1946), and "Under Capricorn" (1949)), is dark blonde.