ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S PSYCHO Film Criticism By Zachary McGhee
Rated R (re-rated for video release, though it's not clear why; the film met censorship standards for its original release and contains only mature themes and off screen violence), 110 minutes. Anthony Perkins, John Gavin, Vera Miles, Martin Balsam, and Janet Leigh. Screenplay by Joseph Stefano. From the novel by Robert Bloch. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Paramount/Universal.
"A boy's best friend is his mother." That line, uttered desperately by Anthony Perkins' Norman Bates during the infamous conversation between he and Janet Leigh, frightened me more than anything which came before it, or followed. The wispy vocal presentation, the secrecy of Norman's attitude; he yearns to protect what he knows is evil, for many reasons. First, loyalty to his mother, and secondly, a perverse, sexual longing that Norman has for Leigh's Marion. If she knew the truth, what he was concealing, she would never, in Norman's mind, entertain the idea of sexual congress of any kind with him; in reality, she would never consider it regardless, she sees right through him-to a degree; she obviously doesn't spot the murderous intentions and psychological torment going on inside this poor boy-she sees that he's being manipulated, that he's protecting something, though she doesn't detect precisely what.
Everything that Alfred Hitchcock tried to inspire in the viewer exists in that scene, everything about human emotion, hidden desire, pain, lust, and voyeurism (see the birds, lurking in the background of the frame, and later in the film when Norman spies on Marion as she undresses); the recognition of those basic, but covert, elements of the human psyche, that third face which we build to conceal our very selves with the facade of compassion were what Hitchcock was most interested, what he most deeply explored in his films. See Leigh sitting there, her body language conflicting; she closes off to this young man because, although he's personable enough, there is something obviously wrong. She senses it, she strives to decipher it, but she can't. Not, at least, to the point of saving her own life. Just as Norman refuses to acknowledge his own underlying distress, she refuses to recognize the depth of the danger which surrounds her. He tries, as much as he can, to open up to her, because he truly begins to care for her; she wouldn't have died if he didn't.
Friday, December the Eleventh, 2:43p.m. We pan to a hotel room in Arizona; two lovers are inside after a romantic encounter, flirting with one another. She is Marion, he is Sam Loomis (John Gavin). She wants to marry, he's content meeting in hotel rooms on the weekends, paying his alimony. They part, nothing's been settled. He retreats to his home in CITY, she returns to work. A large sum of money comes into her possession and she steals it, hoping to take it to Sam so that they might be married. It begins to rain as she drives, she grows tired, weary, sees a little motel, the Bates' Motel, stops there for the evening, chats with the young man, Norman Bates, who runs it under guidance from his contemptible mother, steps into her cabin for the evening, decides to return the money the next day, takes a shower in preparation for bed, and someone comes in and quickly and brutally murders her.
"He liked that whole introduction to the movie; he liked that it was going to be about her, and then we were suddenly going to do this awful thing to you and say, ‘No, no, it's not about her, it's about him'," recounted screenwriter Joseph Stefano of his meetings with Hitchcock. The deception is most effective, leading to not only one of the greatest films of all time, but also revealing one of the themes of the film: manipulation.
Psycho was based, loosely, on the novel by Robert Bloch of the same name. Having read the book for the first time roughly a year-and-a-half ago, I can say that it is a very powerful, striking piece of writing, but it has little in common with the subsequent film. "We never mentioned the book; we never returned to the book again," said Stefano. The changes made in the translation to the screen are appropriate, putting to shame the adaptations of many modern novels to film. In the book, Norman has regular conversations and arguments with his mother, and descriptions of her are given, making the end revelation a little less obvious, and indeed the ending itself is rather ambiguous until the absolute conclusion (i.e., Norman, Norma, and Normal). Stefano's script is more subtle than ambiguous. He and Hitchcock instead opted to create an incessant theme of our maternal attachments, with very few conversations overheard between Norman and his mother, which, in the film, makes the subject matter much more personal.
Take, for example, the framing of the scene in which Norman wraps Marion's body, carefully constructed so as not to show the nude, lifeless remains. Obviously censorship standards at the time would not have allowed it, but I doubt that the scene could have had such power otherwise; the mental firewall, the detachment, which Norman constructs for himself in that scene-which is the only way he ever could have concealed such an grotesque, evil act as a character-is communicated flawlessly with this technique, and drives the audience's self-examination of their own ego, their individuality, and how we as human being are able to, as Roger Ebert says, build mental firewalls between our outward personalities and the evil or sinful deeds which we commit.
The performances are heartbreaking. Perkins' Norman is a poor, misguided man who earns our sympathy quickly, if incorrectly (at least, as far as morality goes). Leigh is a little more distant, and aptly so, until her final moments when our hearts weep for her. John Gavin remains equally aloof, a man who can't quite deal with or accept the inevitable. Vera Miles as Marion's sister, Lila, is more greatly sympathetic; rightfully angry, but not hostile. And Martin Balsam's brief stint as the inspector seems out of place to us. He does his job, and we know that, but because, at the time, we sympathize more with Norman and Lila we don't understand the scope of his performance until his violent death. The score by Bernard Herrman is the soul of Psycho. Herrman's orchestra was all strings, no percussion or brass, but rather an eerie, stark representation of our inner selves, Herrman never lets up.
And then there's those final moments. The one flaw among perfection. The psychiatrist's speech. Stefano fought for it, because it was something he knew; he was in analysis at the time Psycho was made and found an explanation necessary. Really, though, ambiguity was more fitting here; to dismiss and explain away the madness, the torment, the suffering, the chaos of the past hundred minutes undermines the preceding material. "Hitch called it a hat grabber," he said. Indeed, Hitchcock had his doubts about it, but Stefano was adamant, and I'd have to agree with the master. If the speech was cut, Norman's experience would not have been easily labeled and resolved as a mere "condition", but rather as an unexpected, unexplainable force of evil, like John Carpenter's Michael Myers in Halloween. No explanations, no resolutions. Just a terrifying, and therefore more disconcerting, power.
Still, it's a minor qualm. If I had my way, I wouldn't have sat through seven, count ‘em seven, Halloween films in the first place, none of the Psycho follow-ups would've never been made, and Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt would've been "just friends" at the conclusion of As Good As It Gets. The speech in Psycho only dents, but does not destroy, the ultimate reputation of Hitchcock and his masterwork. Psycho is a devastating, potent motion picture from one of the greatest, most insightful directors who ever lived.
- Copyright 2000 Zachary McGhee
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