Much like death and taxes, the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho simply is—an immutable, brilliantly cruel sequence that forever diminished Hollywood’s standard rubber monsters and brought horror into the most intimate of environments. Even if you’ve never seen it, you’ve seen it.
The documentary 78/52—the title refers to the fact that the scene in question required 78 camera setups and 52 cuts—is the best type of film nerdery: an informative, enjoyably obsessive dissection that somehow leaves the subject wholly intact. Beginning with an amusingly candid interview with Marli Renfro, the long-anonymous body double for Janet Leigh, director Alexandre O. Philippe assembles a murderers’ row of directors and editors, then lets them dig in.