Psycho (1960)

I can add absolutely nothing new to the conversation about one of the most iconic films of all time. It is especially frustrating to try and put your thoughts into words when you don't find the film to be the masterpiece most do. Before you stab me with a butcher knife let me say I like this film very much. It is my third time sitting with it and I think I am safe saying I have landed where I am going to with Psycho. Through the first hour and fifteen I think this movie is absolutely perfect. I thought of The Birds a lot while watching because I think Hitchcock uses the same technique in telling both stories. Hitchcock Is so patient in his story telling. That's the word that kept coming to mind, patience. Hitchcock spends so much time building to that iconic shower scene that we are squarely in Leigh's corner by the time it comes. Despite her sins we are devastated when that scene finally arrives. There are so many great moments that lead us there. The millionaire she takes the money from, who is just the right amount of creepy. The officer who finds her and tails her. Of course her final moments when she is being sympathetic to one of cinemas greatest villains, Norman Bates.

Perkins bring us the perfect antagonist. His mannerisms and stare are intensely creepy. One of the things that came to mind this time that I don't remember thinking about much in the past is what audiences thought of this character the first time watching it. I am so jealous of anyone who got to see this film free of knowing the twist. I wonder if how I have always felt about the last half hour of Psycho is colored by the fact that I was familiar with what was coming long before I saw it. I will never know but what it doesn't change is what I sacrilegiously find to be the best scene in the film, the dinner between Marion and Norman. I love this scene so much. The tension that is building. The small ways that Hitchcock shows us Norman's capability for snapping. The way that Marion wants to mother Norman who she views as a poor innocent soul. Finally, the way Norman so coldly pulls that frame off the wall and views Marion on the other side. This had to be the moment when audiences knew the fear Hitchcock had been subtly planting was real.

The next scene in the film has been gone through frame by frame by so many people so many times that I feel silly bringing my opinion to it. I will say every frame is intense and perfect. From the stark white of the shower tiles to the simple but effective upward camera shot of the shower head. It's the end of the character that Hitchcock and Leigh have been so patient in letting us get to know. Sadly for me it is where the film goes from perfect to good.

There are still things I love. Perkins is still Norman to the fullest so I am still engaged. I really like the scene between him and the detective and then with Marion's lover. What I don't enjoy so much is the reveal of the dead mother. This moment I think would really be seen better through the eyes of someone not in the know. I don't enjoy the murder of the detective. This feels like the most antiquated scene in the film. Last but not least I hate the last ten minutes with the psychiatrist. Maybe it didn't seem this way in 1960, but I really feel like this is the point where Hitchcock loses faith in his audience. This might be a harsh criticism of a director who always held the audience in the palm of his hand, but I hate it. He spells out everything that we have spent the last hour and a half learning. It is only ten minutes but it takes me out of the film and I am left wishing I felt differently.

Psycho is a great film. One I enjoy going back to because I get to have the feeling that this is the time. This is the viewing Psycho becomes an all time favorite of mine. I get to get to know Marion all over again and go on this tragic journey with her. I get to watch a master at his all time manipulative best. My God, that first hour and fifteen. Hey, maybe there is a directors cut.

Art by Rodent

Writing about Psycho is not a task that I'm new to; if you ask me to explain everything that I love about this movie, I could go on for much longer than what would be deemed appropriate. For all the great movies I've discovered since first seeing it, there are still times when I feel like Hitchcock's iconic classic may be my favorite film of all time. Certainly, I know it better than any other movie; I've seen it countless times, on the big screen, in my home, with friends, scene-by-scene during a summer course at a local university. Hell, I've read a whole book on it. I'd say that at this point I know Psycho inside and out, but with a movie of this quality, I don't have any doubt that there's always more to discover.

I suppose I'll always have a deeply emotional attachment to Psycho (and yes, I realize this is a very strange film to be emotionally attached to), since without it, I never would've been set down the path to cinematic enlightenment that it began me on. Obviously, it takes a very special movie to do this, and Psycho is just that - a triumph of thrills and suspense matched by some very unsettling things to say about human nature.

Everyone knows the story - Marion Crane is a young secretary who steals $40,000 from her employer in order to pay for her boyfriend’s alimony payments and their marriage. On the run from the police, Marion hastily checks into the Bates Motel and meets its proprietor, Norman. Following their dinner conversation, Marion retires to her room for a sin-cleansing shower, and the twist that follows is well-known even to those who have never seen the film. This first act is perhaps the finest 40 minutes of Hitchcock’s career.

After Marion’s grisly demise, her boyfriend and sister are tasked with unraveling Hitchcock’s darkest and most chilling mystery. Of course, it is the film’s shocking Shower Scene that preserves its legend; Psycho single-handedly birthed the entire slasher genre and changed cinema forever. A significant turning point in the director’s career, its black-and-white cinematography (shot by the camera crew of Alfred Hitchcock Presents) was a far cry from the showy, bold Technicolor spectacles that Hitch was directing throughout the 1950s. And the level of violence and sexuality depicted in the film was unprecedented in a mainstream Hollywood movie and paved the way for much greater degrees of edginess in American cinema.
But enough about the vast influence of this great movie. On its own, Psycho is still a masterpiece - with a small budget, Hitchcock turned a grisly potboiler into the most thrilling movie of all time. There is something intriguingly sinister about the film's premise, and after countless viewings it never ceases to draw me in every single time.
Much of the endless appeal of Psycho's narrative relies on Hitchcock's gift for manipulating his audiences. One of the most stunning displays of directorial sleight-of-hand I've ever seen comes not long after the famous Shower Scene, when Norman is finishing his clean-up job by sinking Marion's car in the swamp. I'll never forget my astonishment when I realized that I actually wanted that car to sink; in a single scene, Hitchcock subverted my sympathies away from the young secretary that I had been following for the past 45 minutes to this strange, quirky young man who now also happens to be an accessory to murder. It is at this point when Psycho really begins to tread into disturbing territory. I no longer knew a whole lot about the protagonist, and only once it's too late did I discover the film had morphed into a portrait of a hideously diseased mind.
And speaking of dear Norman, no look at Psycho is complete without delving into this great character. Perkins' performance belongs up there with the all-time greats; his quirks and ticks contribute to his development as one of the most enigmatic characters in all of Hitchcock, so when I finally discovered the truth about him I knew I was in the presence of one of the most horrifying of all movie villains.

The "human nature" aspect of Psycho has become, on recent viewings, one of my favorite things about the film, yet this is rarely commented on. Maybe that's because most of the credit for it belongs not to Hitchcock, but to screenwriter Joseph Stefano. After the financial and critical failure of Vertigo, it's probable that Hitchcock was none too eager to delve further into "deep themes". Yet Psycho can be read in a number of ways. The deepest layer I have yet found is the idea of an escape from society - many of the principle characters seek a way to better their unsatisfactory lives in some way. Marion tries to escape her dull existence as a secretary to marry her boyfriend, Norman wants to get away from his isolation but cannot leave his "mother", Sam wants to build a better life with Marion but must give his ex-wife alimony payments. Yet all of their efforts fail once they are caught up in the web of madness found within the Bates Motel. This reading of the film is best summed up by Norman's great quote in the motel parlor with Marion: "I think that we're all in our private traps, clamped in them, and none of us can ever get out. We scratch and we claw, but only at the air, only at each other, and for all of it, we never budge an inch."
The other major theme of Psycho that I find most interesting is one that seems to turn up in many of my favorite movies: the notion of personal duality. Not only are most of the main characters seeking escape from their "private traps", but they also each hide parts of themselves (often their dark selves) from the rest of society. Marion lies to steal money and dodges the probing suspicions of a police officer and a used car dealer, among others. Norman secretly keeps his mother's corpse in the fruit cellar and kills women who come to his hotel, but outwardly he appears boyish and charming. Even Sam and Lila put up a false front when investigating the Bates Motel. The film seems to suggest that all of us have inner selves capable of amorality lurking within.
Does all of this sound a bit depressing? Don't be fooled; there's plenty of humor to be found in Psycho. Dark comedy has always been a specialty of Hitchcock's, yet for some reason it took longer for me to find it in Psycho, perhaps due to the film's naturally sordid subject matter. However, it is precisely because of this that Hitchcock's trademark gallows humor is put to such effective use in the movie.
So not only is Psycho immensely enthralling and gripping in a way that perhaps no other movie is, but it also possesses a great deal of commentary on the human condition, a quality for which the film rarely receives the recognition it deserves. And it's funny, too. Combine all this with impeccable direction, an unforgettable slashing string score, and one of the most terrifying villains in film history, and what more can one ask for? The result is a near-flawless work of art, and a film that I'm honored to have nominated for the MoFo Movie Hall of Fame. ~ by Hitchfan97

Only thing I will disagree with is the murder of the detective being antiquated. I found the murder of the girl more antiquated. The execution of it that is. The way he stabs her looks beyond phony, and it's really distracting. They should have just shown her face and kept the knife sounds. That way you can just see the facial expressions without the artificial-looking stabbing.

Only thing I will disagree with is the murder of the detective being antiquated. I found the murder of the girl more antiquated. The execution of it that is. The way he stabs her looks beyond phony, and it's really distracting. They should have just shown her face and kept the knife sounds. That way you can just see the facial expressions without the artificial-looking stabbing.

Very fair. I just like the way the shower murder is edited a lot. I hate the way the detective falls in his scene. Just goes to show you that I think we look over antiquated techniques in films when the story is flowing well for us. Then we use it as a criticism when something isn't working as well.

Very fair. I just like the way the shower murder is edited a lot. I hate the way the detective falls in his scene. Just goes to show you that I think we look over antiquated techniques in films when the story is flowing well for us. Then we use it as a criticism when something isn't working as well.

@Cobpyth that's by Godoggo not Hitchfan.

Yeah, the way he falls is almost like he is walking backwards down the stairs. More realistically, he would have tumbled down.

I agree except you needed to see the wig to believe it wasn't Norman. Especially at the time when this would've been a groundbreaking twist.

Nope, it's by Hitchfan. She posted it because back then she was the organizer of the Hall of Fames and therefore also organized the general topic. She made all the important posts.

True. But they could have just showed the one shot of the wig at first, then the knife swing, and then just showed her facial expressions in reaction to getting stabbed. The parts that should've been left out is when they show the knife and her body together....when they make "contact". It would have looked more real the other way.

Yeah, i do mostly agree with you. Thing is we take it a way different way than the audiences at the time, we all have to remember that this was groundbreaking in the sense that usually at least fairly subtle Hitch felt the need to explain the film to his audience and warn them not to tell their friends what happened (the precursor to the MoFo Spoiler Tags) because this was something he felt would reach a large audience and could potentially change cinema. Mostly i just personally feel weird even critiquing it for things like that even though i completely get it. Not to say that it should be let off on modern standards, it should be judged like anything else i'm just saying i find it difficult to.

Yes, it does feel weird sometimes critiquing something that's held in such high regard. It would be like finding a fault with Citizen Kane. People would consider it sacrilege.

I'm honestly not bothered about it in that sense. I've critiqued highly regarded classics plenty and will continue to, Psycho is a special case for me though because i just find it so difficult to fault it for things that are only really minor problems in hindsight. The explanation scene i'll bitch about with everyone but i find the rest tough to care about. Basically, i think in 1960 with Psycho only available in cinema's until it was done it's run people just wanted to see the movie rather than think about its problems, nowadays we've had it on VCR/DVD/Blu Ray for decades and we can also access everyone elses problems with it on the internet. This is of course true about any old film, but even more-so for Psycho since it was the first real (mainstream at least) slasher, voyeuristic, film featuring murders not directly related to the plot (like Noirs/Gangster films) but for no reason at all other than happenstance.