Janet Leigh in the long interval of her unawareness. He watched her begin to drop her robe. He understood for the first time that black-and-white was the only true medium for film as an idea, film in the mind. He almost knew why but not quite. The men standing nearby would know why. For this film, in this cold dark space, it was completely necessary, black-and-white, one more neutralizing element, a way in which the action becomes something near to elemental life, a thing receding into its drugged parts. Janet Leigh in the detailed process of not knowing what is about to happen to her.

Then they left, just like that, they were moving toward the door. He didn’t know how to take this. He took it personally. The tall door slid open for the man with the cane and then the assistant. They walked out. What, bored? They went past the guard and were gone. They had to think in words. This was their problem. The action moved too slowly to accommodate their vocabulary of film. He didn’t know if this made the slightest sense. They could not feel the heartbeat of images projected at this speed. Their vocabulary of film, he thought, could not be adapted to curtain rods and curtain rings and eyelets. What, plane to catch? They thought they were serious but weren’t. And if you’re not serious, you don’t belong here.

Then he thought, Serious about what?

Someone walked to a certain point in the room and cast a shadow on the screen.

There was an element of forgetting involved in this experience. He wanted to forget the original movie or at least limit the memory to a distant reference, unintrusive. There was also the memory of this version, seen and reseen all week. Anthony Perkins as Norman bates, a wading bird’s neck, a bird’s face in profile.

The film made him feel like someone watching a film. The meaning of this escaped him. He kept feeling things whose meaning escaped him. but this wasn’t truly film, was it, in the strict sense. it was videotape. but it was also film. in the broader meaning he was watching a film, a movie, a more or less moving picture.