June | 2026 | Tanya's Astro Blog

1961 – The Children’s Hour

It’s a psychological drama produced and directed by William Wyler (oh, hello again) with a screenplay by John Michael Hayes, based on the 1934 play of the same title by Lillian Hellman, which itself is inspired by a real case in 1810 that happened to two ladies running a school in Scotland. It stars Audrey Hepburn as Karen and Shirley MacLaine as Martha who run a girls school and find themselves in social and financial ruin after a student accuses them of engaging in a lesbian relationship. I saw it on YouTube here.

Sorry, I am a day late. I was on a little family trip and World Cup is on, so my interests are with that for the moment, hehe. I was even contemplating whether to just skip a week, but since I did watch this movie last night, I count it as being on time. Looking back, it would’ve coincided with June 28th better as it’s the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, but hey, all of June is Pride Month! Choosing this movie was fairly random, it seemed interesting, I liked both actresses, was not in the mood for a Samurai Kurosawa movie (Yojimbo) and weirdly I have seen a lot of 1961 movies.

So the premise of the movie is fairly simple to tell: a reckless student in an all-girls boarding school accuses the two women who run it of having a romantic relationship and the repercussions that scandalous accusation bring. You know how often we say that children should rule the world, then it would be a better place? Nah, children are the worst, because they often have no idea how bad the consequences of their actions are. Here this kid, who is like 12-13 thoroughly destroys the lives of two women just out of spite, because she didn’t want to be punished for her lies. She manipulates her fellow students with blackmail and fully gaslights her grandmother into her evil story.

I liked the premise very much. It offered so many possibilities. It fully passes the Bechdel test, lol. Unfortunately, the movie has two flaws that take somebody completely out of it.

(a) it’s so badly acted – everybody is running around screaming and whaling their intentions to each other in such a dramatic way. James Gardner, who plays Karen’s love interested even sings his lines in that typical “Hey, I’m acting” way. Horrible, it took me out of the movie. The only person that saves the movie is Audrey Hepburn, with the quiet hurt, but also dignity that she can convey in her eyes. It really saved the movie. The rest of the cast (yes, even Shirley MacLaine, as much as it pains me to write this) is horrible.

(b) Oh the melodrama! I really didn’t know if it was supposed to be camp, but they sure didn’t present it that way. Rather than quietly explore something of what could’ve been, it’s just a bunch of howling and shrieking that leads to a very disappointing ending, even for 1961 and especially for 2026 – it’s just too Hays coded. Man, how far we have come!

Glad I watched it, but unfortunately, it didn’t speak to me, precisely because it wasn’t brave enough to really tackle the subject.

1960 – Psycho

It’s an American horror film produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, with a screenplay by Joseph Stefano based on a novel by Robert Bloch. It stars Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates and Janet Leigh as Marion Crane, a woman on the run who stops by the Bates Motel. It’s considered one of the most influential horror movies of all time. I rented it on Apple TV for 3.99 Eur.

The 60s! We’ve arrived at a new decade where in the beginning there will be huge movie productions: sandal epics like Ben-Hur or big production musicals, but then a slump will hit by the end of the decade, be it because of the decline of the studio system, because of the rise of TV at home or because of a general disillusionment of the Boomer generation. No matter, the 70s will give us gritty, realistic cinema, so I am quite ready for the ride from glamour to rawness.

Heh, we’ve arrived at yet another one of my big gaps in my filmography, one of the most famous horror movies ever and considered a true masterpiece by Alfred Hitchcock. I did try to see it once, when I was like 12 or so and found it boring, because it wasn’t about somebody being stabbed at all, it was about this boring secretary – did I get the right movie? Watchingw it live on some movie channel in 1991, I couldn’t just stop and check and quickly switched to something else. Now, in 2026, I have been thoroughly spoiled, on both the famous scene (the one I was looking for) and the resolution. I did still want to see it, though, and make up my own mind whether it was good.

Look, horror isn’t my favorite genre. I was fascinated by the forbidden fruit of it, staying up late to watch the Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th movies and other horror movies when I was way too young. Just recently, I was recalling a particularly gruesome scene from Puppetmaster with the Leech Woman – I was not supposed to watch this so young. Needless to say, more than 35 years later, it still is in my mind, yeech. But by the time most people enjoy horror movies, I was way grown out of it. I still enjoyed Scream in high school (mostly for the hot actors), but just laughed at people being scared by The Blair Witch Project. It seems horror is having a small renaissance currently with Obsession and Backrooms conquering the box office way over other fare like the Star Wars Mandalorian movie, so let’s go with the vibe of horror 2026 and complete my filmography in the process – Psycho it is.

What can one say about such a famous movie that hasn’t been said before? Well, it is a bit dated on the horror front. There is maybe one sequence where I would’ve been on the edge of my seat, had I not been spoiled. So, even though it created a lot of the horror tropes, those forbidden horror movies from the 80s have desensitized me so much that some suspense from a 1960 movie sequence elicits only a small raised eyebrow from me. Psycho supposedly is based on Ed Gein, the butcher of Plainfield, a local hermit who stole bodies from graveyards and kept bones and other body parts as keepsakes in addition to murdering two women. So I think just 3 years after the discovery of his disturbing home, it would’ve been more horrific in people’s minds, especially before other notorious serial killers from the 1970s.

What really stands out, however, are the technical details. Already in Vertigo, the fall from the tower was dizzying, but here I felt even more disoriented by a fall from the stairs. The music score is classic, yet hits perfectly. The shadow play on Norman Bates’ face is just perfect – makes one totally uncomfortable; I really like that he went back to black and white for this one as it emphasized the feeling of confinement very well. And Anthony Perkins really puts on a great performance, the whole transformation from “oh, that poor boy, he really seems quite nice” to “oh my god, psycho…” is masterfully executed. Happy to have really seen it and not just parts of it. It was an enjoyable time, albeit not going to be on my top movies of the year – I was just too spoiled for it.