FILMS… Psycho (1960)

#1960s #AllPosts

 

Marion is in hot water after she meets a mummy’s boy…

 

Alfred Hitchcock’s seminal movie villain leaves you with two minds about the plot.

 

Psycho (1960) Theatrical Trailer – Alfred Hitchcock Movie, Rotten Tomatoes Classic Trailers

 

In the unlikely event, that you haven’t seen or heard of Psycho (1960), I’m adding this quote from Alfred Hitchcock. As the director of this movie, Hitchcock stressed the following to those who watched this film at the cinema, due to his (rational) fear of a major spoiler within the plot being divulged.

This is quoted (by the site Far Out), HERE,

“The manager of this theatre has been instructed at the risk of his life, not to admit to the theatre any persons after the picture starts. Any spurious attempts to enter by side doors, fire escapes or ventilating shafts will be met by force.”

It’s also alleged that Hitchcock asked one of his assistants to buy every copy of this book… for the same reasons.

After seeing this film, in Realweegiemidget terms, I now concur with Hitchcock’s concerns. So I’m asking that if you have seen this movie read on, otherwise go and read another of my reviews. But please DON’T read the Hitchcock (2012) biopic review HERE which tells in detail about the making of Psycho.

So, now that the non-Psycho watchers have left this page, on with my review… (and you can check out Anthony Hopkins’ (and Helen Mirren’s) homage to this director and his right-hand woman, support and wife, Alma Reville later…)

Psycho is possibly one of the most written about, analysed and probably the most televised of Hitchcock’s movies. So much so, that I thought I’d seen it before this watch, but now I’m not so sure after seeing it. I know that I have definitely read about this movie and seen that biopic.

It is for many the one that we heard a wee bit of Bernard Herrmann’s score long before we watched it, and admittedly this was true for me. This composer’s most memorable soundtrack moment – heard at a pivotal part in the film – is usually repeated with appropriate actions in primary school playgrounds by kids of all ages. Most of them, I suspect haven’t heard of this film, let alone been allowed to watch it.

Psycho is like a certain Harrison Ford film HERE (if you want to know). This is as you begin watching this film thinking it’s about one specific genre and protagonist, but it switches focus and then tells you about others. But the difference between Psycho and Ford’s film is, that the Psycho switch is not as jarring, and is instead more shocking.

The black and white film begins with a panorama of a built-up cityscape (taken thankfully before the now more obvious drone shot) of Phoenix, Arizona on Friday, December 22 at 2.43pm (to be precise) in 1959 (the date of filming). After zooming in on a building Dallas (1978-91) style, the film camera enters a hotel room via an open window.

We see young Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) on her (extended) lunch break with her lover, Samuel Loomis (John Gavin). Her sandwiches are left uneaten. They are very loved up and they have clearly made love, before our intrusion by the open window. This is as he’s shirtless and she’s in her pristine white undies. Sam is on a business trip from his home in Fairvale (a fictional Californian town) and he has a plane to catch.

But he’s still feeling amorous and so is she, but she dresses for work. Marion tells Sam she wants to make things respectable and to get married. He’d love to get married but he is paying off his father’s debts and his ex-wife’s alimony. He wants to provide Marion with more than his current abode, a pokey wee room at his hardware store if she can wait a couple of years.

On Marion’s return to work in a Real Estate office, a client arrives with her boss with 40,000 dollars in cash to burn. He’s a horrible lech of a man and he flirts with Marion. Her boss feels uncomfortable having this cash in the office safe over the weekend. Marion leaves work early to take this money to the bank, and as she’s got a headache, her boss has agreed she can go home after this.

We then see her at home, and she’s now wearing black. She’s packed a suitcase and still has the client’s cash. After some deliberation about the fate of the money, she sets off by car to surprise Sam in Fairvale – with the cash – and imagines his happy voice when she sees him.

However, just after she begins her journey, her boss spots her as she drives through town. They make eye contact at a traffic light. After this, Marion looks and acts more than a wee bit panicky. She travels on as day becomes night on this long journey.

She sleeps in her car overnight and thus arouses a passing cop’s suspicions. This cop wakes her up and then (ominously) says she’d be safer staying in a hotel. Her anxiety is seen on her face and heard in her voice as they talk. She is jumpy, curt and over-keen to get to her destination. These visual and behavioural anxiety signs continue as she drives on and as she sees the cop appear to follow her.

Marion stops at a garage and impulsively trades in her car for one with Californian number plates. She additionally uses 700 dollars from the stolen money to cover the cost of the car. She notices that she is being watched by this cop from across the road from the garage. She’s jumpy, tense and blunt with the garage owner like she had been with the cop earlier.

As she leaves the garage, she’s super anxious and begins to hear worst case scenarios in her head. She hears the voices of the cop, the garage owner, her sister and her boss, the client and her colleague concerning the theft and her actions after this.

Later, it’s raining heavily and it’s now pitch dark. Marion spots a hotel just off the road and decides to book a room for the night. She spots neon lights advertising a room at the Bates Motel. She sees a woman pass by a window in a house up the hill from the reception. Then she meets the hotel owner, Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), a chatty and young, pleasant and polite and gawkily attractive young man. She discovers she’s only 15 miles from Fairvale. For a brief second, she seems to consider travelling on…

Norman books her in the first of the twelve empty cabins next to his office, and she signs herself in as Marie Samuels. These cabins are down the hill from the rambling old home, he shares with his elderly mother. He invites her to join him for dinner at his home, and she agrees.

She unpacks, wrapping the money in a newspaper as she overhears his domineering and angry mother loudly reprimanding her son for meeting with a young woman he doesn’t know in their house. Later she apologises for upsetting his mother after Norman brings her dinner to her room.

He then talks to her in a wee parlour next to the office. Norman enthusiastically tells her about his love of taxidermy – as seen in many stuffed birds as seen in this room – and metaphorically about traps that people find themselves in. He talks about his fears about his mother’s current mental health, his childhood and his negative views about patients’ presentations in mental health hospitals.

Marion is concerned for him and suggests his mother needs mental health support. The relaxed atmosphere turns dark, he won’t hear of his mother being admitted to a mental health hospital. She also changes her mind about keeping the money and vows to return it the next day. She leaves and states she is going to Phoenix in the morning to get out of the “trap” she’s put herself in, and tells him her name is Marion.

After she leaves the room she returns to hers, Norman observes Marion undress – as she prepares for a shower – through a peephole he’s made behind a framed picture in his office. Marion then works out how much money remains from the stolen 40 grand on some note paper, then rips up and flushes these papers away.

Then not long after, a shadowy figure is seen behind the shower curtain as Marion happily showers. This figure lashes at her with a knife… she screams and is now mortally wounded, and as she dies she pulls the shower curtain down and collapses. We see an old woman leave the scene.

We hear voices coming from the house, and Norman is horrified to see his mother with blood on her. Norman enters Marion’s room and is horrified to see what his mother has done. He cleans up the bloody bath and wraps up Marion’s dead body in the shower curtain. He looks for all traces of her and puts her dead body in the boot of her car along with her belongings – including the newspaper containing the money – then pushes the car into a swamp… and tune in for more as it’s here the film focus changes, and my analysis begins.

This film begins with a thriller and with Marion’s tale. Meeting Marion and Sam, the film begins with a love story as you invest yourself in these lovers’ plight. Much of this initial scene has little hints in the storytelling about future characters and storylines in what seems like throwaway comments in their dialogue. We learn Marion and Sam live miles apart, she has a sister and he’s heavily in debt and because of this debt, they can’t marry.

At work opportunity knocks, as Marion is entrusted to take 40,000 dollars in cash to the bank by her boss. While she is at home Marion’s clothes change from white to black, this may relate to her turning from good to bad after she deliberates on stealing the money. A packed suitcase may or not be a red herring regarding her thoughts of running away with the money. We relate to Janet Leigh’s facial expressions in these scenes and those voices in her head combined with Herrmann’s pulsing soundtrack in the journey to Fairvale that indicate her increasing anxieties and heartbeat.

Janet Leigh continues to convince us of Marion’s deteriorating mental state and she is visually seen and heard to show signs of anxiety. These symptoms peak after she decides to keep the money and her boss and is seen in her verbal interactions with the cop and the garage owner, with her hearing those accusing voices in her head. These thoughts mirror Norman’s later talk explaining his mother’s behaviours to Marion, saying, “We all go a little mad sometimes”.

The over-vigilant policeman appears to follow her with shots showing her point of view with his car viewed in her car mirrors. His behaviours lead to her fears that he knows about the theft.  At the garage, as she swaps cars, with a few jump scares thrown in you believe – and she thinks – she will get her comeuppance for this crime as this cop reappears. (As he turned off the road before this, his presence is then questionable, as her anxiety has increased).

When booking in at the motel – perhaps to avoid this cop, who you’ll note once stated forebodingly on their meeting she should do this to “stay safe” – she meets Norman. Norman on appearances seems a pleasant, eloquent and polite young man. Yet on talking about his mother –  and “best friend” – he switches demeanour and then seems on edge, and his voice is more angry and defensive of his mother’s actions before he tries to make light of things. There are little hints in his dialogue and behaviours, that his mother has killed others before.

The dual meanings of his dialogue are made clearer on a second viewing, where you will understand more about Norman and his mother. And as the focus changes you will meet characters again and new characters played by Vera Miles, Martin Balsam and John McIntire. I will let you discover their roles for yourself.

This film prompted Hitchcockian tributes in film and TV. To name one I saw before seeing Psycho, the Angie Dickinson and Michael Caine movie, Dressed to Kill (1980). I was as shocked and stunned  – as I was watching Psycho – when the assumed leading lady Ms Dickinson’s character was introduced at the beginning of the movie, then some time into the film murdered in a confined space by a mystery character.

But on watching the full film relating Ms Dickinson’s untimely demise in Brian De Palma’s film, you’ll discover this is not his only Hitchcock tribute. He has added a shower of Psycho references when the plot changes directions, leading to a new, unpredictable route for those characters, the plot and its final destination.

 

Weeper Rating: 😦😦 😦 /10

Handsqueeze Rating: 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂🙂 🙂 🙂 /10

Hulk Rating: ‎ ‎ ‎   /10

 

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The Second Master of Suspense Blogathon 2024, No 6

This film was added to the Second Master of Suspense Blogathon. Other reviews with this cast include,

• The making of Psycho was written about in my Hitchcock biopic post.
• Janet Leigh also starred in Night of the Lepus, The Fog, Circle of Fear and more. 
• Martin Balsam starred in Middle of the Night, Night of Terror, St. Elmo’s Fire, and more.  
• Anthony Perkins was written about in ffolkes /North Sea Hijack, Evening Primrose, and Murder on the Orient Express.
• Vera Miles stars in Into the Night, The Man from UNCLE, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and more.
• John Gavin starred in The Love Boat, Fantasy Island and Hart to Hart.
• John McIntire in The Incredible Hulk and The Fox and the Hound.

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