Psycho (1960)

  What in the world is there left to say about ‘Psycho?’ It’s one of the most famous, most studied movies in film history. It’s been dissected frame-by-frame, entire books have been written about its themes and motifs, there was even a shot-by-shot remake directed by a talented director that I am not going to watch for this month. About all I think I can do is talk about my relationship to the movie and what I personally find interesting about it.

The first thing that strikes me about the film is its odd production history and how precisely it came to be. By 1960 Hitchcock had been making films for almost thirty-five years and while certainly respected by critics and one of the few directors whose name was recognized by the general public his movies were not always big box office successes. Looking back over his filmography I was surprised to learn how relatively little money was made by movies we now consider classics. ‘To Catch a Thief,’ certainly one of his most glamorous pictures, in today’s dollars only made $56,000,000 against a $30,000,000 budget. ‘Notorious’ reportedly earned RKO a profit of just over $17,000,000, adjusted for inflation. Even ‘Rear Window’ only earned an adjusted $66,000,000 versus a $12,000,000 production budget. So I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise that after 1958’s ‘Vertigo’ barely scraped even and 1959’s mega-budget ‘North by Northwest’ only earned an adjusted profit of $10,000,000 the studio might start jerking him around.

Robert Bloch wrote the novel Psycho in 1959, inspired by the crimes of serial killer Ed Gein. The book was selected for possible adaptation by Hitchcock’s assistant Peggy Roberson, one of the few people whose judgment he trusted. Hitchcock immediately bought the rights and shopped it to Paramount, who had already rejected it for treatment before he brought it to them. They balked at its contents and viewed it as essentially unfilmable. He came back with an offer to lower production costs by shooting the film in black and white and using the crew from his television show, “Alfred Hitchcock Presents.” The studio still refused, so Hitchcock countered that he would personally finance the film and give up his usual $250,000 director’s fee for a 60% stake in the film negative if they would merely distribute. Of course the movie ended up being far and away the biggest box office success of Hitchcock’s career and that percentage stake ended up earning him around $15,000,000, or about $170,000,000 in today’s dollars. This is the movie that made Hitchcock capital ‘r’ Rich.

It’s also an interesting contrast to the two films he’d made immediately before. ‘Vertigo’ is now rightfully praised for its deep, saturated colors and heightened, dreamlike sequences, while ‘North by Northwest’ is as big and broad a crowdpleaser as he’d ever made. Hitchcock had reportedly also recently been stymied by failed attempts at getting two other films into production, ‘Flamingo Feather’ and ‘No Bail for the Judge,’ the latter of which had gotten so far as to cast Audrey Hepburn, who had to drop out due to pregnancy. In a way it’s no wonder he felt like cranking out a smaller movie with a limited cast and few locations using an already assembled crew. It’s also likely he’d been keeping his eye on the film industry in general and had noticed a rising trend in exploitation movies, cheap thrillers making the circuits of drive-ins and smaller theaters. William Castle had been hustling for years by that point, as had Roger Corman. It would only be another couple of years before Herschel Gordon Lewis would start inflicting his brand of violence on moviegoers. He could see the way the tide was turning and decided that society was ready for a film like this.

I’ll admit something here: I don’t have much use for the first chunk of the movie, the headfake that plays like gangbusters the first time you watch, where Marion Crane thinks she’s in a taut crime drama but finds out she’s in a slasher picture. I’ve heard the term ‘gearshift movies’ used for films like this, where they suddenly switch genres on both the audience and the characters themselves. Other examples include ‘Audition’ and ‘Boogie Nights.’ Oftentimes both sections of the movie can be equally enjoyable. I don’t mind hanging out with George Clooney as a smooth but slimy criminal in ‘From Dusk ‘Til Dawn’ while waiting for the vampires to show up. In theory the story of a woman going momentarily crazy and stealing the equivalent of half a million dollars to go on the run with no idea what to do with herself is interesting. It’s exactly the right amount of money, too, enough to be blinded by all the zeroes before calming down and realizing that it’s not enough to build a life on. The movie even starts going in a direction you wouldn’t expect by having Marion realize after her creepy little talk with Norman that she made a mistake and needs to go back and fix it. Who knows what kind of noir twists Hitchcock could have dreamt up to complicate her efforts at redemption. Except, well, no.

Along the same lines I think the back half of the movie drags a little as well. When it becomes a succession of people coming to bother poor old Norman Bates I lose a little interest. The detective Arbogast is a nice little performance by the great Martin Balsam. The way he’s introduced with his big head filling the entire frame is great. But John Gavin as Sam Loomis is a dead fish and Vera Miles is too one-note as Lila Crane. Oddly enough both she and the character are much better in ‘Psycho II.’ As soon as the detective knows something is up at the Bates Motel the ending is kind of inevitable, if not entirely predictable. 

The part of the movie that I find fascinating and the reason I think it has the power it has is where the two halves of the movie overlap. From the moment that Marion Crane first meets the skittery motel clerk to the scene where Norman sinks her car into the swamp I am riveted. At first when she pulls into the rainy parking lot it seems like this will be just another interlude, like the section where she switches cars or meets the cop on the side of the road. Something about that house on the hill against the black sky, though, makes you a little uneasy. When she looks up towards the house she sees an unmistakably feminine figure walk past the window and the unease grows. But then Norman comes scampering down the steps with his lopsided grin and you’re reassured. He seems friendly enough, self-deprecating about the state of the motel, and certainly not very threatening. But then, at the 29:12 mark, unseen by Marion but seen by us, Norman hesitates over which room key to give Marion, then chooses room number one with a little half-glance over his shoulder, and the unease returns a little bit.

In the next scene Marion and the audience hears the abuse his mother heaps upon poor Norman and our sympathies immediately go out to him. He invites her into the parlor and maybe at this point it occurs to you that this section with the motel clerk has been going on for a while, certainly longer than one would expect if it’s just another section of Marion’s journey.  Then Norman switches on the light and Marion and all of us see the stuffed birds.

I’m not special for focusing on this scene, just about every analysis of the film gets to it at one point or another as it encapsulates everything it’s trying to say. Marion crouched under the swooping, predatory birds, twitchy Norman to one side saying everything there is to say about his relationship with Mother that really needs to be said. Marion nibbling on sandwiches and teetering between feeling sympathy for Norman and feeling threatened. She’s obviously put off by his taxidermy hobby but is genuinely interested in what he has to say about his relationship with his mom. He tries to explain his situation by saying that he’s trapped by his circumstances, that everyone is trapped by their own circumstances. She chimes in that sometimes people step into their own traps. They’re getting along.

Then, when Norman haltingly explains about Mother, about the abuse and how he feels about it, about how he doesn’t hate her but hate what she’s become, what the disease has done to her, Marion makes what must surely have been her fatal mistake: she suggests that Norman put her in a home. And Norman becomes genuinely angry. There are times during the movie where I think the Mother persona is peeking through Norman from time to time, but I think in this moment he purely Norman. Up until this point he’s has been shot from below and to the side but as he leans forward the camera is at his eye level for the first time, his face filling the frame. There’s not hint of a smile on his face, nothing but barely controlled anger. Marion doesn’t move but her face instantly closes as she almost recoils. Marion stammers that she meant well and Norman throws it back in her face, saying that people always mean well but have no idea what they’re talking about. He finally collects himself, leans back, admits he’s suggested the same thing himself, and at the tail end of all that he says the thing that changes Marion’s mind, that convinces her to go back to try to pull herself out of her trap: “She just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes.” And he gives the least reassuring little smile you’ve ever seen.

I had to have this pointed out to me so I don’t feel the least bit self-conscious calling this next bit of film-making genius. After the impromptu dinner party breaks up and Marion leaves to go back to her room, at the 43:47 mark something new happens: instead of following Marion, the person who’s been with our main character this entire time, the camera stays with Norman. The movie is now from his perspective. I didn’t really notice this the first few times I watched because it’s done so smoothly, but ever since it was pointed out it’s been the central hinge of the film for me. The moment Marion is gone Norman becomes much less nice. He drops his awkward puppy dog energy and moves around much smoother. The fact that he turns out to be a pervert doesn’t help any either. I think it’s the way he nibbles on candy corn like a bird that really sours him for me, though.

So of course then we get the shower scene, and hapless Norman cleaning up after Mother, which is jaw-dropping the first time and seemingly inevitable every viewing after that. A masterful bit is when Norman almost forgets the newspaper with the money wrapped inside and then tosses it into the trunk, never knowing what’s inside. What really gets me though is the smile Norman can’t quite keep off of his face as the car finally slides all the way into the swamp. Most of the movie after that point is unfortunately just mechanics for me.

The only other point I find really interesting is the very end, when the psychiatrist gives his very long speech supposedly explaining Norman’s psychology for everyone in the audience. Let me be clear, I don’t think Hitchcock gave the least little shit about a plausible diagnosis for Norman and what was wrong with him, he was happy waving his hand and saying that his mommy issues turned him into a madman and had the screenwriter dress it up with some fancy words. On the other hand the profession of psychiatry was still very much a work in progress at the time. They were still on DSM-I in 1960, in fact it might not have even been numbered at all. Homosexuality was still considered a neurosis and most of the conditions we throw around in casual conversation these days hadn’t even been theorized yet so perhaps they were doing the best they could. I do think it’s interesting that they make a point to say that Norman isn’t a transvestite because he doesn’t derive a sexual thrill from becoming his mother. I think the television series “Bates Motel” would very much disagree with you there, but that’s another conversation. Despite the shrink’s assurances decades of queer theory have very much considered the movie part of Hollywood’s portrayal of both transvestism and transsexualism, concepts that the movie really isn’t prepared to grapple with. It could have been interesting to have an epilogue interested into actually digging into the issues raised by the movie but we got a quick wrap-up instead.

Until I actually saw the film sometime in my late teens ‘Psycho’ almost didn’t seem like a real movie. Instead it was some strange kind of melange of cultural references and charged imagery that was always just around. I must’ve seen a dozen parodies of the shower scene alone and a who knows how many Halloween commercials referencing Mother and split personalities before I knew to associate them with this particular movie. It was just a signifier loose in the air, free to have moments from it plucked to populate children’s cartoons and sitcoms alike. I don’t doubt that it was mentioned on a handful of times just on “St. Elsewhere.” I knew the twist before my first viewing of the movie because how could I not have? Even if it hadn’t been spoiled for me how could I have watched it for the first time sometime in the ‘90’s and experienced the same punch to the consciousness that must have walloped all those unsuspecting film-goers in 1960? At this point it’s an immovable classic, set in amber, and the best I can do is find the parts I find personally compelling and try to find meaning in those.