Word: plot
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Kaplan's direction creates a slick synchronicity between characters, keeping the emotion at a dramatic rather than melodramatic level. In places, this results in woodenness, but it is kept to a minimum even in the potentially static second and third acts. Even in the most turgid moments of the plot the emphasis on appropriateness and refinement does not give way to the hackneyed and postured acting that has labeled opera in the minds of many as a dramatic dead...
...Alfredo's moral-minded father are characterized by the dignity with which Violetta conveys her grief at being forced to leave Alfredo and the sympathy she receives from his father. Certain stage directions are perplexing, such as Violetta's unexpected entrance onstage during the overture, but overall the plot unwinds with style and economy...
...party scenes are particular highlights of the production. The entire cast makes an elegant picture in which some of the tensest dramatic moments of the plot are framed...
...room with the remote control safely in hand. It manages to maintain suspense from the opening scene until the end (with one notable exception)--something that no one, Hitchcock included, has been able to do before or since. This feat is accomplished by multiple layers of suspense via different plot structures, For the first half hour of the film we do not even meet Norman Bates or his mother: the plot concerns a woman, Marion Crane, who steals forty thousand dollars from her boss and hits the road. She is understandably possessed by rears of being found...
Unfortunately I can't delve too much further into the plot, for the sake of the few of you who haven't seen "Psycho." The twists of this story--in particular, one final twist--are so shocking and bewildering that Hitchcock felt the need to include a scene with a shrink to explain it all at the end. This is the one scene where the suspense, held so masterfully up until this point (and afterwards in Norman's final soliloquy), breaks. Some silly guy swings his finger around and ties it all up nicely for us. But keep in mind...