Psycho (1960)

 

 Psycho (1960) 

 

"I enjoy playing the audience like a piano."

— Alfred Hitchcock

 

Though Alfred Hitchcock is a Director of special importance to Horror movie fans, out of a total of fifty directorial credits only made four films that could be rightfully called Horror: “The Lodger” (1927), “Psycho” (this film), “The Birds” (1963), and “Frenzy” (1972). It’s notable that three of these four concern Serial Killers.

 

He focused his career on Crime Thrillers but did make a number of fine films with little or no relation to the Genre before 1945. After that, he showed little interest in diversifying his genres, but instead endeavored to find diversity within his chosen Genre of Crime.

 

I would not be stretching the point to proclaim he was the most important film Director that ever lived. All Students of cinema are really his Students, and the greatest achievements of those Students are often demonstrated less by those who indulge in slavish Homages to him and more by those who studied his Techniques and absorbed his Philosophy (so Director Steven Spielberg is a truer heir to Hitchcock than Brian DePalma).

 

Hitchcock’s career was remarkable, starting early enough and lasting long enough that he went all the most important historical transitions of the medium: silent to sound, B&W to color, and then on to widescreen. On one occasion (“Dial M for Murder” (1954)), he even made a film in 3D. He showed he was adaptable enough to conquer all (though he decided he wasn’t much fond of 3D) making multiple Masterpieces employing Chromo-Key techniques in the days when it was unreliable, but barely touching it again after it was perfected (Variation of Chroma-Key were employed in the Silent Era but the process wasn't perfected until 1964, the year after Hitchcock released "The Birds" whose application of the troublesome process has never been outdone) It's hard to imagine that any Director in the future will ever get the opportunity to expand the language of cinema more than he, it’s not only because he was that good (which he was) but that he was in the right place at the right time to do so many foundational things quite early, if not always first.

 

The whole idea of  "Auteur Theory," that the Director, not the Producer, and especially not the Screenwriter, is the “author” of the film, is built around his successes; though there had been Auteurs before him, they were generally regulated to the Art-House circuit, but when Hitchcock broke with Producer David Selznick after 1946 in pursuit of greater Creative Freedom, and went on to even greater success, he transformed cinema forever (or maybe for only the next three-and-a-half-decades, it depends on who you ask). He also embraced the TV medium earlier than most major Filmmakers (his TV series first aired in 1955), and through that lesser medium cultivated his Public Persona even more than in the past, so he could make every one of his new theatrical releases an event.

 

Few directors understood marketing better than he, and he towered over other “Barnstorming” Directors, like William Castle who was always trying to emulate him. Hitchcock had a rare skill of making marketing not just a way to sell a film, but a contribution to the film’s narrative. Hitchcock’s fertile imagination made many of his best films’ true multi-media experiences.

 

“Psycho” would prove his most profitable movie, and the hardest to make because the studio’s, in this case Paramount, skittishness to go into such Dark Territory -- the same year “Psycho” was released, there was another film, “Peeping Tom,” which shared the same Theme of a Sexually Motivated Serial Killer, and was also pretty Masterful, but faced such utter Critical and Public Revulsion that the Director, the up-till-then much-admired Michael Powell, had to leave England to find further work. The success of “Psycho,” though, changed cinema forever because it altered Public Tastes.

 

A little time should be spent on how the story evolved even before Hitchcock was aware of it.

 

Once upon a time in the Real-World, there was a man named Ed Gein, a quiet, mild-mannered, Wisconsin Farmer of few means. He was a bit overly-attached to his mother and unsuccessful in the romance department. He became suddenly famous in 1957 when police found the body of a Hardware Store Owner, Bernice Worden, in his barn; Gein had killed her and butchered her body in the manner we cut-up live-stock. He was quickly linked to a second unsolved homicide, that of Tavern Owner Mary Hognan, who had disappeared in 1954. It is suspected Gein killed others as well. He was also a prolific grave-robber and turned the parts of many stolen bodies into grotesque pieces of clothing, furniture, and other keepsakes. This had gone on for years, and none of his neighbors had suspected a thing. 

 

Enter Robert Bloch, and up-and-coming Writer of Horror and Crime fiction, had been a protégée of the legendary H.P. Lovecraft. By 1943, Bloch was starting to develop more of his own, distinct, Style. He was a native of Wisconsin, he was aware of the Gein case, which received little national media attention despite the extreme luridness of the facts. Bloch was inspired to write a novel based on the somewhat sketchy newspaper reports, “Psycho” (1959) required him to imagine Gein's mental state without having any access to the court’s in-dept and expert analysis, but Bloch’s imagination did not fail him, and his sense of story-structure proved flawless. Though his Psychological profile of Gein, fictionalized as Norman Bates, was imperfect, it was for the most part is admired, even by some Psychological Professionals.

 

Bloch wrote the tale as a Mystery, which attracted Hitchcock. Norman Bates’ characterization couldn’t be viewed as a case study because the fact that he as the Killer wasn’t revealed until the end (ooops, I just committed the sin of Spoiler). This raised a problem, “Psycho” was intended to be a shocking film whose effect depended on not one, but two, major Plot-Twists, but the novel had already been published, so how could Hitchcock control the public’s engagement with a product so trick-dependent?

 

Well, the challenges of defending the story’s Secrets, and the challenges of even getting the film made, were closely intertwined.

 

Hitchcock demanded extreme Secrecy regarding Plot-Points during production and the movie was called “Psyche” during filming to misdirect Journalists who would be tempted to read the novel. Bloch, himself, didn’t know Hitchcock was the one who bought the Rights until long after the deal was done. Hitchcock even had copies of the book bought-up to keep it off the shelves until after release.

 

Ironically, this was made somewhat easier because of studio opposition. Paramount didn’t want this movie, so Hitchcock had to put up a lot of the money himself, and therefore could spend it anyway he wanted to. Hitchcock voluntarily deferred his Directing fee in exchange for ownership of sixty percent of the picture. Hitchcock later stated, "We didn't get a cent from Paramount until we delivered the negative, and for that they got twenty percent of the picture." The choice to film in B&W was a balancing act between Artistic Vision (Hitchcock believed the audience would be able to accept the violence better if the blood was not red, and the B&W would give the film a hint of the cinema verité) and Budget (it was cheaper). Also to save money he relied more on the crews from his TV show rather than those who worked on his film projects. 

 

After release, Paramount received thirty percent of the gross as a Distribution Fee and a pre-agreed upon Profit Percentage, but after that, the complete rights were transferred to Hitchcock. It would also prove Hitchcock’s last project with Paramount.

 

Few really ground-breaking films get instant, near-universal, Critical praise. One would think that Critics, forced to see variations of the same story told over-and-over, would sit up straight when something actually new comes along, but instead they often prove themselves a pretty conservative lot, and many (most?) of our true classics faced at best mixed, often hostile, reviews at their premier. When “Psycho” premiered on June 16, 1960, it was treated much better than “Peeping Tom,” but the hostility it faced was none-the-less palpable:

 

Jympson Harmon, "More miserable than the most miserable peep show I have never seen."

 

Dwight MacDonald, “A reflection of a most unpleasant mind, a mean, sly, sadistic little mind.”

 

Bosley Crowther, "…a blot on an honorable career."

 

Newsweek, "…plainly a gimmick movie."

 

Picturegoer, “‘Psycho’ is sicko."

 

C. A. Lejeune was so offended that she not only walked out before the end but resigned her post as film critic for The Observer.

 

More problems were threatened when, later in 1960, Real-World Serial Killer, Henry Adolph Busch, said the film prompted him into a murder. His butchered three women so this shouldn't be funny, but ... well... You see, based on the release-date of the film, Busch could only blame the movie for his third killing. Hitchcock responded, "Well, I wanted to ask him what movie he had seen before he killed the second woman."

 

Still, the film mostly had strong support:

 

The Hollywood Reporter, “The great filmic talents of Alfred Hitchcock, his superb artistry, technical mastery, skill and planning are very much in evidence in ‘Psycho’ … This is a first-rate mystery thriller, full of visual shocks and surprises which are heightened by the melodramatic realism of the production. It is certain to be one of the big grossers of the summer.”

 

New York Daily News, "Anthony Perkins' performance is the best of his career ... Janet Leigh has never been better."

 

Village Voice, "…first American movie since ‘Touch of Evil’ to stand in the same creative rank as the great European films."

 

Maybe what separated the response to “Psycho” versus that of “Peeping Tom” was the audience response to “Psycho” was so overwhelmingly positive that made the Critics sit up in their seats. In “Psycho’s” day, even the biggest movie opened in hundreds, not thousands, of theaters, and expanded from there, so the first night in one city was later than the first night in another. As news reports of people lined up around the block in bad weather accumulated, the reviews started getting more positive.

 

Hitchcock's ability to win the Audience over to so many things unpleasant and Taboo in a single film is credited to his mastery of Storytelling on the screen, but it should not be underplayed how he turned the marketing into part of the Storytelling, ramping up expectations to a fever-pitch even before delivering something that was legitimately bold and new. Some Writers insist this wasn’t the first time that Hitchcock supervised the marketing of his films, but it was definitely the first time he did when having a generous Advertising Budget to play with.

 

Hitchcock demanded a policy of "Blind Selling" the movie to theaters, meaning the owners didn’t get to review the film before accepting the product. It was a tactic associated with “Block Booking” a system of selling multiple films to a theater as a unit, a policy that was supposed to be stamped out decades before during a huge, Federal, Anti-Trust case (United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. 1948), but was still occasionally indulged in the more enlightened, post-New Deal America. Some theater owners actually made a Federal Complaint, but the Department of Justice sided with Hitchcock (there was a Republican in the White House at the time).

 

That wasn’t the only demand placed on the Theatre Owners. They received recorded instructions to keep the Theater dark for half-a-minute after the end titles, "During these 30 seconds of stygian blackness, the suspense of Psycho is indelibly engraved in the mind of the audience, later to be discussed among gaping friends and relations. You will then bring up houselights of a greenish hue, and shine spotlights of this ominous hue across the faces of your departing patrons."

 

Hitchcock also demanded that no one be allowed to enter the theatre once a performance had begun. Outside the movie houses was a card-board-cut-out of Hitchcock sternly pointing at his watch, "Any spurious attempts to enter by side doors, fire escapes or ventilating shafts will be met by force…The entire objective of this extraordinary policy, of course, is to help you enjoy ‘Psycho’ more." At the biggest and most famous theatres, this policy was actually enforced by Pinkerton Detectives, which, of course, was reported by the newspapers.

 

Theatre owners were also strongly urged not to have a double-bill, instead filling out the program with shorts and newsreels.

 

A couple of Writers have credited “Psycho” with helping create the now casually accepted policy of films having strictly set and publicly displayed start-times, previews first and then the film starting some minutes later, then clearing the house during the closing credits. The old way of doing it was often showing double bills and just running the two films back-to-back all day and night, if you missed the beginning, you just hung out to watch it the next round. Once upon a time, movie theaters in places like Times Square were unofficial Homeless Shelters, a warm place to sleep through the night if you had nowhere else to go.

 

More cheerfully, Hitchcock begged the audience, "Please don't tell the ending, it's the only one we have." By-in-large, the audience was happy to participate in the Director’s Conspiracy though there are stories of Clowns leaving a screening shouting out to the line coming in, "NORMAN IS HIS OWN MOTHER!"

 

Then there was the marvelously funny trailer, in which Hitchcock himself starred, leading audiences around the "scene of the crime" before throwing back the shower curtain to reveal the screaming face of actress Vera Miles. The ad was a surprisingly long six-and-a-half minutes and Hitchcock himself recorded it in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German and French.

 

The Hollywood Reporter called this “the most extensive and comprehensive promotion campaign at the theatre level in Paramount's 45-year history."

 

Hitchcock was clearly inspired by the gimmicks first exploited by the fore-mentioned Castle and French Director Henri-Georges Clouzot. Castle viewed Hitchcock as a rival, though he was never in the same class (not for Castle’s lack of trying). Hitchcock viewed Clouzot in much the same way a Castle viewed Hitchcock and Hitchcock and Clouzot often competed for the rights to the same material. Hitchcock admitted the “Psycho” project was inspired by Clouzot’s success with “Les Diaboliques” (1955).

 

And it all paid off. The Script Writer, Joseph Stefano, saw the picture in Los Angeles on opening day and was astonished to see grownup moviegoers "grabbing each other, howling, screaming, reacting like six-year-olds at a Saturday matinee ... I never thought they'd be so vocal. And neither did Hitchcock."

 

Produced for only about $800,000, it earned more than ten times that on its initial release and reportedly made at least $50 million worldwide by 2004. It was the Highest Grossing film for Paramount in 1960, second highest for all studios combined (after “Ben-Hur”), and the most profitable B&W film ever made (beating a record set during the silent era with “Birth of a Nation” (1915)). Because of the deals he cut with the resistant studio, Hitchcock personally realized more than $15 million.

 

He eventually swapped his rights to “Psycho” and his TV series for 150,000 shares of production house MCA, which was just acquired by Universal, making him MCA’s third largest shareholder and his own boss at his new studio Universal -- at least in theory, in truth this didn’t stop Universal from interfering with his later films. (I read about this deal during my research, but I’m nowhere near close to understanding it.)

 

By year’s end, all Critical hostility was slinking under rocks. Bosley Crowther’s initial dubiousness of the film is noted above, but a mere two months later, August 1960, he’d revised his opinion and defended the film against Censorship, "two horrendous murders ... a pretty bold sex scene ... and a denouement based on an assumption of psychological abnormality that would make Krafft-Ebing's hair stand on end ... what would one expect from a Hitchcock picture titled ‘Psycho,’ which is not precisely an ambiguous word?"

 

As the film had been extensively publicized as a Shocker, what would the Censors be protecting the Audience from?

 

Also, at that very time, a much earlier film about a Sexually Motivated Serial Killer was being shown in New York City revival houses, Fritz Lang’s “M” (1931); that film was a much-honored classic, and Crowther drew the obvious connections between the two.

 

Crowther’s paper, the New York Times, surprised many by including “Psycho” on its annual “Ten Best” list. The Kine Weekly hailed it the best American feature of the year.

 

“Psycho” ultimately received Academy Award nominations for Best Director, Supporting Actress (Janet Leigh), Art Direction-Set Decoration (Joseph Hurley, Robert Clatworthy, and George Milo), and Cinematography (John L. Russell). It won none and these would be the last Academy Award nominations any Hitchcock film would ever receive.

 

Expanding beyond the Oscars, the film received 14 major nominations and eight wins. An incomplete list: Golden Globes Best Supporting Actress Award win (Leigh again). Directors Guild of America nomination. Writers Guild of America nomination for Best Written American Drama and Edgar Allan Poe wins (Screenwriter Stefano).

 

Finally, in 1992, ‘Psycho’ was chosen by the National Film Preservation Board for the National Film Registry in the Library of Congress.

 

The film’s opening titles were designed by the great Sal Bass, who was influenced by the design of the original book jacket, by Tony Palladino. (Bass was also a key designer of the Shower Scene; I’ll get to that). It featured grey lines bisecting the black background of each frame, with the names of the cast and crew appearing in white lettering, also either severed apart or brought together by the grey lines. It has been much imitated since, and always means the same thing, somebody is gonna get cut.

 

The opening sequence is an aerial shot with the camera sweeping across Phoenix, Arizona and finally focusing on one hotel room window, and then entering that room to reveal a very risqué-for-its-day love scene that demonstrated that Hitchcock was as much a fan of the French New Wave as the French were devoted to him.

 

Those who have seen a lot of old Hitchcock understand he had wanted to pull off a sequence like this his entire career. “The Lady Vanishes” (1938) opened with a helicopter shot that wasn't really because helicopters didn’t exist yet, so the ambitious tracking-shot had to be done over a toy-town, like one would build along-side a model train set. The first actual helicopter shot in a movie wouldn’t appear until Director Joshua Logan’s “Picnic” (1955) and Hitchcock must have been pissed that someone else got there first. Hitchcock’s shot of Phoenix was described by Assistant Director Hilton A. Green as "the longest dolly (moving) shot ever attempted by helicopter" covering four miles. Unfortunately, the footage obtained from the helicopter was too bumpy and jerky, so Hitchcock was forced to use wipes and pans to obtain the desired effect, rather than a single, continuous shot.

 

This opening sequence would prove to be one of Hitchcock’s most important artistic choices, because represented one his deftest divergences from the novel (which the script was mostly faithful to). The novel introduces Norman in its first scene, he’s having a conversation with his mother. Hitchcock introduces Norman twenty minutes into the film. The original screenplay was Written by James P. Cavanagh and followed the novel’s opening, but Hitchcock rejected it as "dull." Hitchcock then hired Stefano, who had only two scripts that had been produced, neither Thrillers, but Melodramas about Italian Americans who pine to escape squalid and impersonal Urban Environments, and both notable for their strong female leads. Stefano stated that he won Hitchcock's approval by making the beginning of the film about the female lead and strongly engaging the audience's sympathy for her.

 

With compelling Naturalism (but also highly advanced technique) Hitchcock quickly lays out a tale of a fairly conventional Embezzlement wherein the woman from the love scene, Marion Crane (Leigh), is head-over-heels for hunky but poor Sam Loomis (John Gavin), sick of her dead-end job, and becoming over-whelmed with how deeply frustrating her life is. Hitchcock’s films almost always address what he considered the key elements of human happiness, "the humble treasures of love, marriage, home and family," but he as he made Thrillers, his films were really about being denied these things.

 

Deprived Marion impulsively Embezzles a large amount of money from her employer, but it wasn’t a well-thought-out Crime, and she regrets it almost immediately. She skips town without a plan, camera focused on her behind the wheel during a quite-long static medium-shot (the fact that the camera is frozen on an unmoving face is erased because of the motion in the rear-projection of the moving road behind her, a common enough trip, but much longer that most Directors would dare). We see her suppressed panic, even though she should have a whole weekend before her Theft will be discovered, she has nowhere to go, so she already feels the fear of a Fugitive.

 

She takes refuge in the Bates Motel, an isolated, and failing, establishment, left behind when a new highway directed most traffic away from it. The only other person there is the proprietor, Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), a shy, awkward, but still quite nice-seeming young man, who has a large number of stuffed birds on the wall. These birds have layers of symbolic meaning, but first and fore-most, they are the only reference to Real-World Killer Gein’s Necrophiliac Taxidermy that Hitchcock would risk. Norman says he cares for his elderly mother who lives in the house on the top of the hill that looms over the motel.

 

In the evening, there is a long conversation between the two. Norman is an attentive listener, clearly attracted to Marion, but in no way lascivious in his manner. They both talk about their situations, though Marion does talk around the Criminal part of her plight. Norman’s polite company calms her, and she reaches the obvious conclusion, just turn around, go back to Phoenix, and return the money before the situation escalates; the audience understands this even if Norman hasn't got a clue. 

 

It is equally obvious to the audience that Marion is so wrapped up in her self-created crisis she only half hears what this considerate man has said to her. "I think that we're all in our private traps. We scratch and we claw, but only at the air, only at each other, and for all of it, we never budge an inch."

 

This folds back into the bird Symbolism, wherein all are Preying or being Preyed upon. Birds appear everywhere, referenced in the film’s aerial and high-angle shots, in the name of the city Phoenix, Marion’s last name Crane, and Norman commenting that Marion “eats like a bird.” And the taxidermy which also serves as a Sexual Reference, British slang expression for sex, "stuffing birds." Hitchcock’s follow-up to “Psycho” took this much farther, it is his only film with any fantastic elements, titled, “The Birds” (1963) which starts with a lover affair based on a Sexual Impulsiveness and then proceeds to be about the End of the World.

 

After Marion and Norman say good night, Marion decides to take a shower. We are now 47 minutes into the film, and in the next three minutes we will find ourselves disorientatingly thrown into a whole different kind of movie.

 

Or at least we would had we been part of the original 1960 Audience, but fifty-plus years later, the two great surprises, the legendary Shower Scene and the Killer’s Reveal in the end, are now known by everyone. Wrote Charles Taylor, "How is it possible to still watch ‘Psycho’ long after its secrets have been spilled? The answer is that beneath the shocker is a profoundly despairing film, a work as redolent of contemporary desolation and isolation as Eliot's ‘Preludes’... Beginning in a desert and ending in a swamp, ‘Psycho’ is a film in which the aridity of sex, work, family, and routine strands its two main characters in the quagmire of their private traps."

 

The Shower Scene is a Masterpiece within a Masterpiece, there was likely never a scene shot this way before. It was made up of 70 camera Set-Ups and assembled out of 78 pieces of film, with no actual shot of the knife piercing flesh. Designer Saul Bass's preparatory storyboards so closely detailed every moment of the sequence that some have suggested he should share Directorial credit with Hitchcock. (Bass had also claimed he did the shooting, but that claim has been contradicted by others).

 

Hitchcock’s manipulation of his audience was so complete that to this day there are those convinced he switched from B&W to color for the blood going down the drain (no, he didn’t, it was chocolate syrup).

 

No one will be surprised to learn that the brutal and repeated stabbing a naked woman raised issues with Censors, but one might be surprised that the shot of a toilet flushing caused more trouble than the Peek-a-Boo Nudity and Violence. It was apparently the first shot of a toilet flushing in the history of American cinema.

 

The three minutes of the Shower Scene was a seven-day shoot. Hitchcock had long been developing a reputation of being rough on his Actors, and there is a legend that he threw a bucket of cold water on Leigh to make her scream. She denies this, insisting that the water temperature was always kept comfortably warm, and Hitchcock and the crew were always quite considerate to her. (Ah, if only Tippi Hedren was treated so well in Hitchcock’s next film, “The Birds.”)

 

Leigh was near nude, at the suggestion of Costumer Rita Riggs, she was covered with flesh-toned moleskin in strategic areas. A Playboy magazine cover girl, Marli Renfro, was fully nude, because specific camera angles seemed to require it. Also, in an odd choice, she was asked to be on the sound stage nude even when not being shot, the assumption was her complete nudity would make the crew more comfortable with Leigh’s partial nudity (I know it sounds crazy, but I read it on the internet, so it must be true). Most of Renfro’s few shots were killed by Censors, but it was hers, not Leigh’s, body that Norman wrapped up and carried away.

More Morbid Anecdotes regarding this film: 

Renfro was not Leigh's only Body Double. Myra Davis AKA Myra Jones was used to check lighting. In 1988 Davis was Raped and Murdered by her neighbor and Handyman, Serial Killer Kenneth Dean Hunt, she was 71, another victim was 60 (the label "Serial Killer" general requires at least three Victims, but it is applied to Hunt the same reason it it applied to Gein even though they had only two confirmed kills, they were clearly aspiring to that goal). The Press repeatedly misidentified Renfro as the Murder Victim (Renfro is still alive). Also, Davis has been misidentified as the Voice Actress for Nirman's mother, there were three, but not her. 

Renfro was also a bit of an obsession of Robert Graysmith, a Newspaper Cartoonist turned Amateur Detective and True-Crime Author who was known for his obsessions.  “By God, the redhead had something. He wrote in his book, "The Girl in Alfred Hitchcock's Shower: A Murder that Became a Real-Life Mystery. A Mystery that Became an Obsession" (2010). Another Graysmith's obsession, identifying the Real-World Serial Killer known as "Zodiac" cost him his marriage but also led to him writing the definitive books on the subject, "Zodiac: The Shocking True Story of the Hunt for the Nation's Most Elusive Serial Killer" and "Zodiac Unmasked: The Identity of America's Most Elusive Serial Killer Revealed" (1986 & 2002, respectively) but the man Graysmith identified was definitely cleared in 2010.

The scene is brutal but, in fact, we imagine we see more than is actually on film. Leigh wrote, "Naturally, the knife never touched the body; it was all done in the montage. People swear they saw the knife go in, but they never showed that."

 

Though Leigh had no complaints about the shooting of this scene, when she watched it later it creeped the hell out of her. Legend has it that she "never took another shower" which is an exaggeration, but she eventually admitted that she took to locking the doors and leaving the shower curtain open.

 

And because the scene was so powerful, it enticed the marginals of our society. Until her death in 2004, Leigh received strange and sometimes threatening calls, letters, and even tapes detailing what the caller would like to do to the Character Marion, so really, what they'd do to her. One letter was so "grotesque" that she passed it to the FBI.

 

Critic Serge Kaganski observed, "The shower scene is both feared and desired…Hitchcock may be scaring his female viewers out of their wits, but he is turning his male viewers into potential rapists, since Janet Leigh has been turning men on ever since she appeared in her brassiere in the first scene."

 

An important aspect of the shower scene is that it harkens back to what silent cinema taught Hitchcock, what he often described the idea of “pure cinema,” which, most simply put, are films that rely heavily on their imagery, not their dialogue, for the storytelling. Interestingly, in recent criticism of any film, “pure cinema” is often used to justify a silly, but entertaining, self-indulgence, and frequently associated with Directors known for the Hitchcock homages (Brian DePlama, Dario Argento, etc.) but really, “pure cinema” is nothing but actual cinema. Still, keeping that idea in the front of one’s head does shape one’s choices. 

The conversation between Marion and Norman was the longest dialogue scene thus far in the movie, and it was followed by the long-ish, wordless, Shower Scene. After Marion re-entered her motel room, we don’t hear another uttered word until the camera moves away from Marion’s corpse, through the hotel room, and peers up to the house upon the hill. Then we hear Norman, who isn’t in frame, scream, "Mother! Oh God, mother! Blood! Blood!"

Observed Film Historian David Thomson, “Sex and violence were ready to break out and censorship crumpled like an old lady’s parasol. The orgy had arrived … the real measure of the breakthrough that had occurred—in the name of pure cinema—is in the bloodletting, sadism and slaughter that are now taken for granted. In terms of the cruelties we no longer notice, we are another species.” Hitchcock had succeeded in changing the way movies worked, “owning up to the idea that a film is a game to be played as opposed to a dream to be inhabited.”

This film features Composer Bernard Herrmann's most famous score, we first hear it during the title sequence, but it's most famously associated with the shower scene, which Hitchcock had originally wanted the execute without music. Hitchcock had also, originally, requested a jazz score, probably playing into the atmosphere of the film’s first 47 minutes, but Hermann convinced him to embrace all-strings, which was supposed to evoke the stabbing knife. The was apparently the first ever score to be played solely by stringed instruments, has become one of the most highly praised and imitated scores in history. It’s also one of only a handful of scores regularly played by major Philharmonics separately from their films, and Recordings of Herman Conducting were released in both 1973 and 1975, both albums become Best-Sellers.

 

Even knowing these big reveals, Anthony Perkins is compelling in his seeming-innocence. Prior to this film Perkins was most often cast in romantic leads, many considered him the next Jimmy Stewart. Hitchcock was drawn to Perkins’ earnest, boyish, quality, so brutally subverted in the film. It changed Perkins career forever, he became permanently type-cast as dangerous Nut-Jobs (at least in USA films, his work in Europe and on the live-stage remained diverse). The Typecasting was probably not surprising, he was more attractive and likable than Norman Bates was in the novel, and as a result sold one of Bloch’s key ideas better than Bloch himself did, namely that the killer "could be the person sitting next to you."

 

After this, the first of two on-screen murders, Marion’s boyfriend Sam, who had disappeared from the film after Marion went to work and Embezzled the money, returns. He's trying to find her fast enough that he can convince her employer not to press Charges. We're also introduced to a few new characters: Vera Miles as Marion’s devoted sister, Lila, who is Sam’s ally in his cause, and Martin Balsam as the Private Investigator Milton Arbogast, whose agenda is not exactly the same as the lover and the sister, but not at odds with them either.

 

There is a perfect Irony in play here that is now lost to later audiences -- all these people Suspect Norman, but not sure what to Suspect him of, meanwhile while the original Audience wrongly believe that his mother is the Killer. This trio, ignorant of so much that the Audience has seen, prove to be closer to the Truth than those who have seen more.

 

Actor Balsam was beautifully described by Critic Isabel Quigly, “one of those unobtrusive non-starring actors who make the corner of every film they appear in seem distinguished.” Character Milton has a great scene wherein he subtly Interrogates Norman. It is a sort-of an inversion of the earlier Dialogue between Marion and Norman, and both Dialogues should be seen as fore-play for the Orgasm of immediately following Violence. Milton remains smiling and pleasant, preserving the proprieties of Civil Conversation, all the while Tightening the Screws. Norman remains smiling even as he's increasingly Terrified. The scene is Comedic is an uncomfortable way, maybe the best demonstration of Hitchcock’s insistence that “Psycho” was meant to be “a fun picture.”

 

Then Milton gets Murdered, a scene involving the camera being locked on his face as he stumbles backwards down a stair, also storyboarded by Bass. It proved even harder to shoot than the Shower Scene. film. A rig to hold Balsam safely while he fell down the stairs had to be constructed, and because automatic focus hadn't been invented for motion picture cameras yet, the lens had to painstakingly re-focused again and again as it followed his fall. According to most sources, it was the only scene Hitchcock allowed his Assistant Director Hilton A. Green to shoot on his own, but because of the technical challenges, Hitchcock ultimately chose to go back and completely reshoot it anyway.

 

It is unclear to me how seriously Hitchcock took the Sigmund Freud’s Psychological theories as a Real-World Analytical Methodology, but he was clearly drawn to it because of the rich, visual, language. He was apparently introduced to it by Producer David O. Selznick and it was explicitly part of the plot of their Collaboration in “Spellbound” (1945). Freud works into the last-scene explanation of Norman’s depravity in this film, but those familiar with the Freudian Methods and Assumptions, see it echoed throughout every element of the production.

 

Slavoj Žižek observed that the old house on the hill had three floors, paralleling the three levels of the Human Mind postulated by Freud: The top floor would be the Superego, where Norman's long-dead mother “lives.” The ground floor is Norman’s Ego, where he functions as an apparently normal human being. Then there is the basement, Norman’s Id. Žižek argues that when Norman moved his mother's corpse from top floor to basement it reflected the connection between Superego and Id and predicted the erasure of Norman as Norman, his remaining Rationality in the film's final scene.

 

Immediately after the big reveal in the climax, the action moves to a Police Station, and it is only then that Norman’s Psychological issues are directly addressed. The scene has much of the Dark Humor of the Dialogue between Milton and Norman. Psychiatrist (Simon Oakland) comes to Sam and Lila to explain the situation but is so enchanted with his professional good luck in getting his hands on such a Career-Making Loony he can’t help but laugh only a moment after telling Marion’s lover and sister that she’s dead.

 

He also lays out Norman’s Psychosis with admirable clarity even though Censors would not allow mention of Incest with, or Murder of, Norman’s mother, nor Norman’s Transvestitism.

 

The scene then cuts to Norman in his cell. His personality is apparently completely erased, and we get a voice-over of his Demon Mother (Virginia Gregg, one of three voices that were used as Norman’s mother during the film) blames Norman for the murders the way, earlier, Norman blamed her. This scene is chilling:

 

“It's sad when a mother has to speak the words that condemn her own son, but I couldn't allow them to believe that I would commit murder. They'll put him away now, as I should have years ago. He was always bad, and, in the end, he intended to tell them I killed those girls and that man, as if I could do anything except just sit and stare, like one of his stuffed birds.

 

“Oh, they know I can't even move a finger, and I won't. I'll just sit here and be quiet, just in case they do suspect me. They're probably watching me. Well, let them. Let them see what kind of a person I am. I'm not even gonna swat that fly. I hope they are watching. They'll see. They'll see and they'll know, and they'll say, 'Why, she wouldn't even harm a fly.'”

 

There’s a very quick super-imposition of a skull-face over Norman’s insanely smiling face, and then a cut to Marion’s car being dragged out of the muck of a swamp by a chain.

That “Psycho” even got made reflected the erosion of the previous, and stupid, movie Censorship System, the Hays Codes were still in place, but had all but collapsed, and a new, more coherent, system was years-and-years away. If there was a working system in place in 1960, “Psycho” likely would’ve gotten a "X-Rating" just like “Midnight Cowboy” (1969 and perhaps the most respected of the once-large tribe of non-porn X-rated films), but “Psycho” wasn’t rated until 1968, when it was already an American icon, and received an “M” for Mature Audiences Only. Finally, in 1984 it was definitively re-rated as “R” for Restricted.

 

“Psycho” seemed to have changed everything, or maybe it was just first-in-line to demonstrate everything was changing on its own. It succeeded where “Peeping Tom” failed, survived the assault of Censors, and most shocking of all, made its way to network TV by 1966, so before the better-Codified Rating System. That was a bumpy ride, with nine minutes cut and a delay in airing because a Real-World murder made its timing seem inappropriate. That Murder Victim, Valerie Percy, was the daughter of prominent US Senator Charles Percy; she was Stabbed and Bludgeoned to Death in the Police believed it most likely a Burglary gone wrong though certain Serial Killers had similar MOs. The Murder remains Unsolved and the Prime Suspect, Frank Hohimer, became a successful Writer Author recounting his Career in Non-Violent Crime. 

Later, sometime during the 1970s, the cut shown on TV was the same cut shown in the theatres (so before it received its definitive rating which should've prohibited that).

 

The once-mixed Critical assessment has changed and now, it's all-but Heresy to allege “Psycho” is anything but Flawless. Donald Spoto, "This film is really a meditation on the tyranny of past over present. It's an indictment of the viewer's capacity for voyeurism and his own potential for depravity. It's also a statement on the American dream turned nightmare, and there's a running concern for the truth that physical vision is always only partial and that our perceptions tend to play us false ... Psycho is also ... a ruthless exposition of American Puritanism and exaggerated Mom-ism. ... In method and content, in the sheer economy of its style and its brave, uncompromising moralism, it's one of the great works of modern American art."

 

Peter Bogdanovich, "Probably the most visual, most cinematic picture he has ever made."

 

Georges Sadoul, "Certainly Psycho is Hitchcock's most visually involving film and his most successful in terms of audience participation."

 

Robin Wood, "No film conveys - to those not afraid to expose themselves fully to it - a greater sense of desolation, yet it does so from an exceptionally mature and secure emotional viewpoint. And an essential part of this viewpoint is the detached sardonic humor. It enables the film to contemplate the ultimate horrors without hysteria."

 

So, now it is time for me to engage in some modest heresy.

 

It is not that “Psycho” isn’t Brilliant, it just isn’t all that Serious. Hitchcock’s skills were such that he could make a Dumb-film into True-Art, but how many of Hitchcock’s films were actual, Serious, Incisive, Dramas? Not bloody many. “The Wrong Man” (1956) goes to the top of that list, but despite how good it is, it not on most peoples’ list of “Favorite Hitchcocks.” Most lists of “Favorite Hitchcocks” are dominated by ultra-contrived, flippant, Romantic Thrillers.

 

Hitchcock was not without Depth in execution, but he definitely was Style-Over-Substance in his choice of material. His genius seemed to be his ability to provide Depth to Shallowness. Hitchcock was unusually articulate about his film Methodology and Philosophy, and once said (I’m paraphrasing because I can't find the quote), “It is not great novels, but mediocre ones, that make great films.” 

 

Norman’s reveal as the Killer in the end was great Surprise Ending, but it also denied any thoughtful examination of his Tortured Soul. This is quite consistent with how the media generally deals with Mental Illness, and there’s no getting around this Dehumanizes the Disabled. Even the title of both the novel and film gets Norman’s diagnosis wrong – Norman was not a Psychopath; he was far too Delusional for that label. He pretty obviously suffered from Schizophrenia, which real-world Ed Gein was diagnosed with, and Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), a far rarer condition the Bloch wove into his fictional Norman Bates. Schizophrenia doesn’t compel violence in its Victims, even though almost every film or TV show that addresses the Disorder suggests it does. The Mentally Ill are, by-in-large no danger to anyone but themselves, and in the Real World are more likely to be Prey than Predator. Also, Bloch got specifics of DID wrong, probably because the novel was written before the Modern Definition of it was hammered out. Add to that, there’s an ever-stronger chorus of Professional voices challenging the existence of the DID, it might be nothing more than an artifact of Patient Fabulation and/or unscrupulous Therapist Manipulation. Even if real, DID, like Schizophrenia, does not compel violence.

 

Though it would be wrong to call “Psycho” a Slasher movie, all Slashers are derivative of it (the first big Slasher hit, “Halloween” (1978) was director John Carpenter’s most Hitchcock-influenced film, and starred Actress Leigh’s daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis). Over-all, the Slasher is the Stupidest and Emptiest Sub-Genres of Horror, largely because they aren’t made by Hitchcock who could bring Depth to the Shallows.

 

I mentioned two rivals of Hitchcock above, Castle and Clouzot. As an artist, Castle was never in Hitchcock’s class, but in terms of applying seriousness intent to their Art, Hitchcock was often closer to Castle than Clouzot. A telling example of this would be that the same year as “Psycho,” Clouzt released “La Vérité,” a Courtroom Drama. Hitchcock had earlier made his own Courtroom Drama, “The Paradine Case” (1947), which is great fun, but doesn’t compare to “La Vérité” in its Thoughtful Examination of realistic Tragedy.

 

How harsh a criticism is that? I don’t know, maybe not all. I enjoy Hitchcock more than Clouzt (I adore both), and even Hitchcock himself admitted “Psycho” wasn’t all that serious, just flawlessly Suspenseful and Entertaining.

 

In addition to being endlessly Imitated, “Psycho” became a Franchise. These later additions only started appearing after Hitchcock’s death in 1980.

 

There were two novel sequels written by Bloch, “Psycho II” (1982) and “Psycho House” (1990), but neither was adapted to film. Universal was gearing up to make a second film when the first sequel was released but had no interest in Bloch’s novel (when Bloch sold the screen rights to his original novel Psycho, he "lost the rights to any sequel films based on any subsequent Psycho novels." Bloch received no royalties for the use of his characters in the filmed sequels). As for Universal’s disinterest in what Bloch wrote, there are two stories: In the first version, the first sequel novel was ignored because it had unkind things to say about the movie industry. In the second, Universal was already working on a script and asked Bloch not to write a competing novel, and that annoyed him so much, he went out and did it just to spite them.

 

The movie sequels were “Psycho II” (1983), “Psycho III” (1986), “Psycho IV: The Beginning” (1990), all starred Anthony Perkins (who also directed “Psycho III”). Then there was a remake (1998) not starring Perkins. The franchise extended to television with a pilot for a series that never materialized, “Bates Motel” (1987) and then a second, quite successful, TV series, also named “Bates Motel” (first aired 2013).

 

I haven’t read either sequel novel, and only saw some of the film and TV follow-ups. I will only comment on those I watched:

 

“Psycho II” concerns Norman being released from the hospital, largely cured, but fragile, and those who don’t want to forgive him and are deliberately trying to push him over the edge. It was well acted, featuring Vera Miles returning as Marion’s sister, Lila, whose last name is now Loomis, so apparently, she married Sam. The acting is all quite good, it has Suspenseful moments, and is not stupid, but it could not escape the fact that it was a pointless exercise.

 

“Psycho IV: The Beginning” Norman has recently been released from the hospital yet again and tries to take on the Road to Redemption. He's in a stable relationship with one of his former Caregivers, but full of Guilt and Fear of the Future. His twisted relationship with is mother is told through flashbacks that were intercut with his long conversation with/interrogation by a radio talk show host. One could not fault it for lack of Ambition, but it also was clearly Biting-Off-More-Than-It-Could-Chew and ultimately came off silly. Moreover, like “Psycho II,” it doomed to be seen as a pointless exercise.

 

Speaking of pointless exercises, I can’t imagine the thinking behind the “Psycho” remake. It was Directed Gus Van Sant, a much admired and quite inventive Indie Film maker who’d soon be earning significant Mainstream success. His version an all-but shot-for-shot, frame-by-frame recreation of the original, except in color, which wasn’t such a good idea. The very talented Actor Vince Vaughn proved to be a terrible Norman Bates.

 

The first of the two made-for-TV “Bates Motel” was a jaw-dropping travesty that perhaps must be seen to truly appreciate the most wrong-headed idea in the history of American media. In it, Norman died in the Sanitarium and left his family’s Motel to another Patient, who was then released. That former patient reopens the Motel and … well … it wasn’t even remotely a Horror or a Thriller, nor did it try to be. It proved to be a knock-off of Rom-Com TV series “The Love Boat” (first aired 1977). Really, I kid you not.

 

The oddest entry into the franchise wasn’t that TV pilot though; it was the art installation, “24 Hour Psycho” (1993) by Douglas Gordon. In it, the original film was slowed down to two frames per second (instead of the usual 24) so the original 109 minutes took 24-hours to unfold. The was kinda cool, though in a head-scratching way. I didn't watch much of it, but then no one is expected to watch much of it.

 

The length of the above list, and oddness of some of the entries, says something about the Power of the original film holds in our Culture, but what exactly each addition to the franchise is trying to say is a little bit less clear to me.

 

Trailer:

 

Psycho (1960) Theatrical Trailer - Alfred Hitchcock Movie - YouTube