Psycho

PSYCHO            A                

USA  (109 mi)  1960  d:  Alfred Hitchcock

Here we have a quiet little motel, tucked away off the main highway, and as you see perfectly harmless looking, whereas it has now become known as the scene of the crime…This motel also has an adjunct, an old house which is, if I may say so, a little more sinister looking. And in this house the most dire, horrible events took place. I think we can go inside because the place is up for sale— though I don’t know who would buy it now. In that window in the second floor, in the front, that’s where the woman was first seen. Let’s go inside. You see, even in daylight this place looks a bit sinister. It was at the top of these stairs that the second murder took place. She came out of that door there and met the victim at the top. Of course, in a flash there was the knife, and in no time the victim tumbled and fell with a horrible crash…I think the back broke immediately it hit the floor. It’s difficult to describe the way…the twisting of the…I won’t dwell on it.  Come upstairs. Of course the victim, or should I say victims, hadn’t any idea of the kind of people they’d be confronted with in this house. Especially the woman. She was the weirdest and the most…well, let’s go into her bedroom. Here’s the woman’s room, still beautifully preserved. And the imprint of her body on the bed where she used to lie. I think some of her clothes are still in the wardrobe. (He looks, and shakes his head.) Bathroom. This was the son’s room but we won’t go in there because his favourite spot was the little parlour behind the office in the motel. Let’s go down there. This young man…you have to feel sorry for him. After all, being dominated by an almost maniacal woman was enough to…well, let’s go in. I suppose you’d call this his hideaway. His hobby was taxidermy. A crow here, an owl there. An important scene took place in this room. There was a private supper here. By the way, this picture has great significance because…let’s go along into cabin number one. I want to show you something there. All tidied up. The bathroom. Oh, they’ve cleaned all this up by now. Big difference. You should have seen the blood. The whole place was…well, it’s too horrible to describe. Dreadful. And I tell you, a very important clue was found here. (Shows toilet.) Down there. Well, the murderer, you see, crept in here very slowly—of course, the shower was on, there was no sound, and…Music wells up fiercely, shower curtain swishes across. Blackout. Voice:  The picture you must see from the beginning—or not at all.  

—Alfred Hitchcock in the film’s trailer, 1960, in which he audaciously wanders around the sets and practically gives away the entire plot

The Granddaddy of all horror flicks, the film by which so many others are measured, shot in black and white with the look of a cheap, exploitative B-movie.  Hitchcock veered off into a different direction after a series of sophisticated thrillers from the 50’s, arguably Hitchcock’s best decade, making films like REAR WINDOW (1954), VERTIGO (1958), and NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959), where the director wanted instead to make a chillingly suspenseful film that would rival Henri-Georges Clouzot’s dark thriller DIABOLIQUE (1955).  Because of the luridly gruesome source material, the studio expected the film to fail miserably at the box office, so Hitchcock chose to finance the film himself, which he did for a modest $800,000, deferring his salary against the film’s profits.  Even Joan Harrison, Hitchcock’s longtime secretary since 1933, refused a cut of the profits, opting instead for a straight salary.  But Hitchcock shot everything on a shoestring budget, using the same crew from his television show Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955 – 62), where even the sets were cheap.  The Victorian mansion looming in the back of the Bates Motel cost a mere $15,000 to build.  In contrast, the Universal Studio Tour in Florida recently spent more than 20 times the film’s budget on a $20 million dollar “Psycho Experience.”  From the start, Hitchcock thought of this as a haunted house movie and envisioned terrorizing audiences with a starkly disturbing portrait of a psychopath whose meek demeanor resembles the boy next door.  Hitchcock’s gamble paid off, as the film was a certifiable smash hit.  It should be pointed out that one month prior to the U.S. premiere of PSYCHO, British director Michael Powell released his equally lurid serial killer movie PEEPING TOM (1960).  But unlike Hitchcock, whose career soared because of PSYCHO, Powell was vehemently castigated in the British press, calling it “appallingly masochistic and depraved…it is wholly evil,” even going so far as to call it a “snuff” film, where the movie was quickly pulled from the theaters and lost literally for decades, effectively destroying Powell’s career.     

Turning to Robert Bloch’s novel Psycho, based on the grisly, real-life crimes of Ed Gein, portrayed as a fat, middle-aged loner in the book, Hitchcock instead chooses to work with the twitchy, anxiety-ridden Anthony Perkins, known throughout Hollywood as a closeted homosexual, adding layers of nervous ambiguity to his eerie performance.  Hitchcock casts, from HALLOWEEN (1978), Jamie Lee Curtis’s mother, Janet Leigh as Marion Crane, a serious, attractive, no nonsense woman who almost never smiles, a woman in trouble, telegraphed from the opening scene where she’s only half dressed (Hitchcock regretted she was not nude), concealing an affair she’s having in a cheap hotel room.  While she’d love to run away with this guy, Sam Loomis, played by John Gavin, he’s too in hock by alimony payments to his former wife to be able to offer Marion the comforts that she’s grown accustomed to, so instead, she returns to the bank where she works after a lunch hour quickie.  Marion Crane becomes a person of interest, a woman who is not what she appears, a trusted employee who has been with the bank for ten years who is now mysteriously on edge, failing to make the bank deposit as promised, instead packing her bags, heading out of town and inexplicably taking $40,000 in cash from the bank’s money with her.  Everything up until now has been misdirection and counter moves, as ulterior motives are driving this woman, yet she can’t escape the grip of her own fear, best expressed by the troubled look on her face as she’s driving, where a police car follows her and keeps his eye on her, even though he has no knowledge of what she’s done.  She just has the look of a woman on the run who’s in too big of a hurry to get away.  This heightened anxiety is accentuated every step of the way by Bernard Hermann’s pulsating music, which drives a good part of the action when she’s alone driving in her car.  Occasionally a voice, like her conscience, interrupts, as voices in her head keep replaying earlier events of the day. 

By nightfall, a driving rainstorm sends her searching for a roadside motel, making the fateful decision to pull into the Bates Motel, a small, ghostlike establishment where she has to honk her horn for service, the first of a series of foreshadowing signs she chooses to overlook.  When the manager belatedly makes his appearance, Norman Bates (in a legendary performance by Anthony Perkins), a noticeably shy, hands-in-his-pockets, awkwardly sympathetic kind of guy who almost always smiles out of nervous habit, who makes pleasant conversation, easing her anxiety, offering her milk and sandwiches.  But when he goes to get the sandwiches, Marion overhears a disturbing conversation in the house behind the motel where Norman is berated by his mother, scolding him as if he were a child, creating yet another diversion, this one something of an embarrassment.  But Norman brings her the food, graciously invites her to the parlor behind the front desk, and attempts to set her mind at ease with polite earnestness while the viewer can’t take their eyes off the room’s décor, which is filled with giant stuffed birds hanging from the ceiling as if about to swoop down on them—an ominous sign.   Even in small talk, Norman has a brief moment when he gets wildly hysterical, yet instantly pulls himself back to his self-contained, non-threatening demeanor, and always attempts to be kind and considerate, like a perfect mama’s boy, slyly pointing out at one point, “Mother’s not quite herself today.” 

When Marion retires to her room for the night, vowing to get up early and return the money back to the bank in an attempt to undo whatever damage she may have done, everything appears to be set right again and there’s a calmness bordering on relief as she undresses to take a shower.  A shot of Marion removing her black bra before her shower was removed by U.S. censors while the scene remained intact in Great Britain.  No words are spoken for the next 10 to 15 minutes, yet they are among the most analyzed and celebrated scenes in film history.  While other scenes were shot with more than one camera, the 78 shots in the shower scene are simply 45 seconds of cinema history, using only one cameraman, perhaps best reflecting Hitchcock’s economically brilliant visual style.  Scored to Bernard Hermann’s screeching violins, the hysterical shriek on the soundtrack says it all, as the sharp blade of a knife jumps out from behind the pulled back shower curtain, and with several thrusting motions from what appears to be an old woman, Marion Crane’s fate is revealed by the blood at her feet flowing down to the drain, which itself transforms into a close up of her dead eyeball.  Calmly and methodically, Norman arrives on the scene to clean up what appears to be his mother’s evil deeds.  In a surprisingly long wordless sequence, as we watch Norman clean up the blood and eventually dump the body and car in a nearby swamp, like a pernicious bug or parasite that needs a new body to infest, the focus of our attention has transferred from Marion Crane to Norman Bates.

When Marion doesn’t return to work, her sister Lila (Vera Miles) is called, and she suspects Marion ran away to her boyfriend Sam, but when he hasn’t heard from her either, the two team up, enlisting the aid of a private investigator, Arbogast (Martin Balsam), who after visiting several motels from the vicinity pays Norman a visit, noticing something strange about him right away, particularly Norman’s nervous behavior and the way his story keeps changing, eventually shifting to his mother, but then he wouldn’t allow anyone to see her, as she’s too ill.  This sets a series in motion, as Arbogast calls Lila and reports the news, explaining he’ll try again to speak to the mother and be back within the hour.  When things don’t go as planned, as unbeknownst to them, Arbogast goes searching for the mother in the mansion behind the motel and is caught unawares at the top of the stairs by Norman’s knife-wielding mother.  They turn to the sheriff for help, who explains that Norman’s mother was killed ten years ago in a traumatic incident that has left Norman something of a recluse, as he was the one who discovered her dead body.  But when Arbogast never returns and the Sheriff accepts Norman’s feeble explanations, Lila and Sam head to the Bates Motel to sign in as guests in order to explore the scene themselves.  What they discover drives poor Norman to his wits end, as he fears he has to defend his unprotected mother, but the tables are turned.  Norman is caught attempting to attack them, wearing an old granny dress and wig, blade in hand. 

The wrap up takes place at the police station, an attempt for humans to scientifically explain to themselves how these events could occur, as a police psychiatrist (Simon Oakland) rationally explains Norman has a split personality, that he is a homicidal, cross-dressing schizophrenic, suggesting it was a struggle these past ten years as to which would be the dominant force, between Norman as his mother, the knife wielding murderer dressed up as his dead mother who arrives on the scene anytime Norman is threatened or his sexual passions are aroused, or Norman the benevolent and protective son who cleans up after his mother.  These current events attest to who won that battle, as Norman has all but disappeared, replaced by the surly malicious intolerance of his mother.  The look on Jack Nicholson’s face in Kubrick’s THE SHINING (1980), or on Vincent D'Onofrio’s face in FULL METAL JACKET (1987), is the same look that Anthony Perkins originated at the end of PSYCHO, where there is little doubt that whatever truly motivated these murders lies beyond the ability of rational minds to comprehend.  The public reaction to the film was staggering, with people lining up around the block for tickets, where Hitchcock amusingly added to the buzz by implementing a special theater policy where no one would be allowed to enter the theater after the opening credits had run.

Note – Hitchcock appears about 4 minutes into the film wearing a cowboy hat outside Marion Crane’s office.