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ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S PSYCHO

PSYCHO is a key film in Hitchcock's filmography. Stark and uncompromising in its treatment of sexuality, psychology, and violence, PSYCHO is far removed from the glamorous Hollywood stylings of his earlier work. Shot on a small budget, without his usual cast of personalities, Hitchcock crafted a film about the darkest abscesses of human nature. PSYCHO is a film about seeing, a voyeuristic masterpiece tainted with obsession, madness, and sexual deviancy. Throughout the film, Hitchcock uses a great number of forward tracking shots and subjective camera work. His objectives are simple: to push us into situations we do not care to be in, to implicate us in them, to show us that those dark, destructive desires reside in every single one of us, to make us face our own dark nature. While Hitchcock often mixed humor with his suspense as a way of releasing us from the almost unbearable tension his films are known for, we find no such release here. This is Hitchcock's heart of darkness.

PSYCHO begins with a long shot of an ordinary city. A title appears "Phoenix, Arizona", followed by a date "Friday, December the Eleventh", and then a time "Two forty-three P.M.". The camera tracks forward, stops, tracks again, stops, then presses forward to a single window. The camera moves, we move, closer and closer until we pass through the window and into the room. Inside we find Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) and Sam Loomis (John Gavin), lying in an embrace on the bed, having recently made love. Their talk is of respectability and of being secretive. It is her lunch hour. He's only in town for a few hours. She demands the next time they meet be in her house. Sam reluctantly agrees. As Marion dresses, Sam talks of money. He is stuck paying his dead father's debts and alimony to his ex-wife. His sense of pride doesn't allow him to think of marriage to Marion. "And live with me in a storeroom behind a hardware store in Fairvale. We'll have a lot of laughs. When I send my ex-wife her money, you can lick the stamps", he says.

Already, Hitchcock establishes one of the key themes in PSYCHO: the stifling, crippling effect of the past on the present. We have already been tied to Marion. All she wants is for them to be married. We can identify with her. After all, who hasn't had money problems? Who hasn't been in love? Sam's refusal to take their relationship to the next level until he can provide for Marion gives Marion the cause for the theft of the 40,000 dollars. The money is of no consequence to her. It's simply a way out. When she tells Sam, "I'll lick the stamps", a total disregard of the cruelty and irony of his remark, we see Marion for what she truly is: a good woman, hopelessly in love, willing to sacrifice everything, even pride, for the man she loves.

Back in the office, her boss, Mr. Lowery, arrives with his client, Mr. Cassidy, in tow. Cassidy, a brash, rich drunk, looms large over Marion. He tells her of his "baby", his daughter, who is getting married. He boasts that she has "never had an unhappy day". He continues: "You know what I do with unhappiness? I buy it off." He's buying her a house for 40,000 dollars. Joseph Stefano's screenplay contains the following line that was omitted from the finished film: "That penniless punk she's marryin'... (laughs) Probably a good kid... it's just that I hate him." Even without this line in the finished film, it's easy for us to see what this "gift" represents: his power over his daughter. He waves the two stacks of bills in front of Marion. "I declare", Lowery's secretary, Caroline, swoons. "I don't. That's how I get to keep it", Cassidy remarks with a smile. Hitchcock's framing of Cassidy, sitting tall on the edge of Marion's desk, a position of authority, and Frank Albertson's performance help alleviate our feelings of guilt when Marion, later that day, pockets that 40,000 dollars and heads off for Sam.

Hitchcock's use of black and white photography (unusual for it's time in 1960 when the vast majority of Hollywood films were being shot in color but chosen due to budgetary limitations and to help lessen the impact of several bloody scenes) is important. Though the film is anything but clear-cut in it's psychology, Hitchcock does allow for simple tricks. When we first meet Marion, in the hotel room with Sam, she is wearing a white bra and half-slip. Now, as Marion packs her bags and sets off to find Sam, she is wearing a black bra and half-slip. The difference between the abnormal and normal, moral and immoral, will be visualized in this fashion through the majority of PSYCHO. She sets off in a black car, stopping later after her run-in with a policeman to trade it in for a white car, an attempt to hide her guilt.

As Marion drives off, she begins to imagine the conversations that will take place: Lowery, Caroline, and Cassidy discovering the theft, the worried calls, the disbelief. Stopping for the night at the side of the road, she falls asleep, only to be awoken the next morning by a policeman. It's important to note that, in this scene, we never see the policeman's eyes. His vision is inscrutable just as ours is. He sees the guilt in Marion, but can't place it. So strong is our connection to Marion that the policeman becomes a symbol of fear. Later, after changing her car, she drives further on into the ensuing darkness. The conversations she imagines become more and more severe. She imagines Cassidy hissing in fury, "well I ain't about to kiss off forty thousand dollars! I'll get it back and if any of it's missin' I'll replace it with her fine soft flesh!", a verdict grossly disproportionate to the crime. As Cassidy rains down hellfire in her imagination, Marion allows herself a telling little smile.

With that, the rain starts and Marion accidentally loses the highway. What she finds is the Bates Motel. The composition of the motel set is rather striking. A simple horizontal block for the motel and, in the background, a large vertical block for the Bates' residence, the flaccid and the erect, places of weakness and of power, the calm and the dangerous.

Much of the power of PSYCHO has been robbed from us. The film today seems almost quaint. Though it still has the power to frighten and disturb, we take for granted all the things that made PSYCHO so dangerous and so shocking in its time. Though the Hayes Code was springing leaks by the time PSYCHO made it to the screen in 1960, Hitchcock destroyed several major taboos (for example, Janet Leigh appearing only in a bra, a toilet flushing, a man and a woman embracing half-naked on a bed), making PSYCHO one of the most mature and sexual films of it's time. But that's not what is weakened for us as viewers today. No, it's that the mystery has already been solved for us. Anyone who has heard of PSYCHO knows the twist at the end. Even those people who haven't seen the film in it's entirety have seen the shower murder or, at the very least, a parody of it. To fully appreciate PSYCHO, a modern viewer must be willing to place that knowledge somewhere in the back of their mind and look with a fresh perspective towards the proceedings. Knowing the outcome of PSYCHO might not lessen your enjoyment of the picture but it definitely changes the tone. Knowing Marion's fate, knowing Norman's fate, makes the film less frightening but much more tragic.

While many hold the opinion that the shower murder is the most important scene of the film, I do not. For me, it's the scene that precedes it. The conversation between Marion and Norman is most certainly the core of the film, as it prepares us for the shift of allegiance that will follow Marion's murder. Norman, as played by Anthony Perkins, is an intensely sympathetic character. Handsome, charming, boyish, with a sense of sadness and loneliness, trapped by his devotion to a domineering, sick mother, Norman triggers in us the desire to protect and to help. His obvious emotional and psychological issues only deepen those desires. While sitting in the parlor behind the office, Norman shares his childhood experiences with Marion, his father's death at a young age, his mother's subsequent romance with (what we can infer as) a controlling, manipulative man, the lover's sudden death, his mother's eventual breakdown. For the first time since the start of the picture, Hitchcock allows us to look down on Marion. Her suggestion that Norman should put his mother in an asylum strikes us as rather cold. We forgive Norman for his reaction. His mother is all he has left. Would we rob him of her?

Norman speaks of "traps": "You know what I think? I think we're all in our private traps, clamped in them, and none of us can ever climb out. We scratch and claw... but only at the air, only at each other, and for all of it, we never budge an inch". On the surface level, we can take this as Norman's view of his everyday life, tied to a motel that no longer sees many visitors (the highway having been moved years back), his youth spent caring for an unbalanced mother. But under the surface, Norman is also describing the psychotic state. Trapped in a psychological purgatory, his development stuck in the past, Norman is unable to overcome the scars left after the murder of his mother. He has developed a dissociative identity disorder, his mother kept alive inside, the murderous jealousy that led to his mother's murder has boomer-ranged, his own impulses striking back. The past is the most vindicative of ghosts and Norman can never shake his. In the house overlooking the motel, Norman's bedroom is a weird mixture of adolescence and adulthood, toys and stuffed animals mixed with erotic magazines and recordings. He is truly stuck in his trap, unable to get out, unable to get free, a piece of him forever trapped by his childhood guilt. Marion's statement of "Sometimes we deliberately step into those traps" is true. Norman is paying the consequences for his matricide. It's Norman's statements that give Marion her chance at salvation. What she sees in Norman is a bit of herself, a person who has made a wrong choice. She realizes that unless she fixes this, her fate is sealed. Norman is, in her eyes, the logical outcome of her actions. Her decision to return the money is clinched when Norman asks: "We all go a little mad sometimes... haven't you?" She thanks Norman and goes off to her room.

Norman remains behind in the parlor. The parlor is full of stuffed birds, all birds of prey, a constant reminder of his mother, his guilt, that look down on him at all times. The walls are adorned with paintings of nudes, a painting of a rape hides a peephole into the neighboring cabin (the Freudian implications of the soon to be committed shower murder are obvious, a violent substitute for the rape Norman cannot bring himself to commit). Norman spies on Marion as she undresses. His actions afterwards show that maybe his conversation with Marion has placed a bit of resolve in him. He throws an angry glance towards the house and storms up the stairs and through the front door. He takes a single step towards the staircase but then stops. He can't bring himself to do it. Defeated, he simply goes and sits in the kitchen.

The shower murder that follows brings an end to the first half of PSYCHO (it also proves the 'less is more' philosophy of filmmaking to be true and puts every slasher movie death to shame). As the camera follows the flood of bloody water down the drain, the scene dissolves to a shot of Marion's unblinking eye. The camera rises, tracks out of the bathroom and into the main room, and focuses on the money. Marion's death is quite alienating. Up until this point, PSYCHO has been a simple story of a woman who has stolen some money. But now we are left with nothing to hold on to. Our lead character is dead. All that's left is a newspaper and 40,000 dollars. I once had a friend exclaim that the most shocking thing about PSYCHO is that 40,000 dollars gets tossed into a swamp. Hitchcock, well aware of our obsession with money, takes the time to remind us of it's existence. The money has, of course, been a MacGuffin during the first half of the film. It was simply the object of drama. Now, it's just a pile of paper.

We have been carefully prepared for what follows next. Norman discovers his mother's murder and, afraid of what will happen if anyone finds out, cleans up the mess. It's important to note that during the clean-up, Hitchcock adds a few subjective shots into the mix. Norman looks at his blood-covered hands and they are our hands. We are mopping up the blood in the bathroom and wiping down the walls. When Norman pushes Marion's car into the swamp (with Marion and the money, something Norman was unaware of, in the trunk), the car begins to sink and then stops. We hold our breath. When it finally goes under, we breathe a sigh of relief. From that point on, we are at Norman's side. He is our new focus, our new lead.

Every character introduced after the shower murder is a lesser character. Norman and Marion are the only two characters in the film that we get to know well. Lila, Sam (who we've already met), and the private detective, Arbogast, are merely instruments for the search. Marion becomes something of a MacGuffin herself. We already know what's happened to her, but no one else does. We are more interested in Norman's safety then whether or not anyone else finds out the truth. But Norman's safety means that his mother must be brought to justice, though that would mean terrible things for Norman. This conflict of emotions is essential to the success of the second half of the film. As we move forward, as bits of information are revealed, we find ourselves in a strange situation. Our views on Norman begin to twist. As the plot deepens and truths are brought to light, we begin to realize, slowly but surely, that the man we have so identified with may very well be guilty of something truly terrible. Arbogast is murdered by mother and Norman repeats the process of drowning his car in the swamp. Sam and Lila visit the Sheriff. They tell him that Arbogast was trying to speak to Mrs. Bates. "Norman Bates' mother has been dead and buried in Greenlawn Cemetery for the last ten years", the Sheriff tells them. "It ain't only local history, Sam, it's the only murder-and-suicide case in Fairvale ledgers! Mrs. Bates poisoned this guy she was... involved with, when she found out he was married, then took a helping of the same stuff herself. Strychnine. Ugly way to die." The Sheriff's wife adds: "Norman found them dead together. In bed." Our worst fears may be coming true.

The investigation by Lila at the Bates' residence is memorably creepy. The Victorian decor of the house is riddled with hints of sexual repression. Nudes, both paintings and sculptures, are everywhere. In Mrs. Bates' room, her bed features a permanent indentation of a woman's body, as if the occupant hadn't moved in years. The whole house is a Freudian nightmare come to ghastly life. Lila's subsequent trip into the fruit cellar (another unmistakable sexual symbol) reveals Mrs. Bates to be no more than a petrified corpse. Norman's arrival, knife in hand, confirms our worst fears. Sam manages to tackle Norman, dressed in a cheap woman's wig and dress, before he can attack Lila.

As groan-inducing as it is, the psychiatrist's explanation of Norman's behavior at the end of the film helps us distance ourself from what we have just witnessed. His examination has shown that Norman was not the murderer after all. It was the personality of mother that did the killing, Norman was just a dutiful son cleaning up after his mother. We are given an opportunity to rid ourselves of any guilt over the deaths of Marion and Arbogast. It's an important scene only because it's the first release Hitchcock has given us over the past hour and a half. Norman is reduced to a simple freak. All the easier to separate ourselves from. However, we still have one last character to hear from.

Alone in a cell, Norman, now totally under control of his mother (though he was always, in reality, under control of his mother), sits wrapped in a blanket. We see Norman's face, but we hear mother's voice, as she begins to speak in voice-over. This is, next to the shower murder, the most horrifying scene in the entire movie. As mother begins, "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", we begin to realize just what she is doing. "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", the voice-over continues. We are witnessing the total annihilation of a human being. This is mother's revenge upon Norman. She decides not to swat at a fly, her petty act of expiation, self-serving, 'proof' to the men who are watching her that "she wouldn't even harm a fly". Norman, mother's final victim, is no more. Only mother exists now. Robbed of her freedom, her life, by a jealous son, mother is finally free. She has escaped her trap and Norman has finally succumbed to his.