Psycho (1960) *****

Even though critically reviled at the time – “up to his clavicle in whimsicality” (Variety) /   “fairground sideshow” (Films and Filming) –  Hitchcock blasted wide open the doors to what would be deemed acceptable in modern American cinema. Made on a low budget in black-and-white following the sumptuous color of North by Northwest, it seemed a perverse choice. No studio wanted it. Hitchcock had to fund it himself, Paramount merely the distributor.

On paper, and based on a real-life case, it was certainly an unappealing prospect, leading actress murdered halfway through by a maniac with a predilection for dressing up as his mother. Using the crew from his television series, Hitchcock made it quickly for just over $800,000, a quarter of the cost of North by Northwest. An initial stab at the script from James Cavanaugh was discarded and working with Joseph Stefano (Black Orchid, 1959) the director shifted the focus of the Robert Bloch novel.

Instead of a fat, middle-aged, alcoholic, Norman Bates would become young and attractive like the character from French thriller Les Diaboliques (1959). The story itself changed from “Norman and the role Marion plays in his life…(to) the redemptive but ultimately tragic role Norman plays in her life.”  Although Hitchcock openly claimed he detested filming, having already worked out the entire shoot in his head, this was never entirely true. Some ideas just did not work. In Psycho, for example, the director had planned a helicopter shot tracking into Marion and Sam’s hotel room but “high winds kept jiggling the camera” and it was changed to three separate shots.

Also, by using two cameras, he allowed the opportunity to choose a different shot than originally imagined and, in a change from the shooting script, the post-shower focus changed from Sam to Lila, making her the focus of the film’s final section where she confronts the killer.

Nor is Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) a typical Hitchcock villain. She is not cut out for the work. Alone in his repertoire, she regrets her action, tortured by, not so much her conscience, as the thought of getting caught. Having stolen $40,000 she is so jittery she turns a harmless highway cop suspicious.

Once more, Hitchcock has us rooting for the bad guy or, in this case, the bad girl. In Vertigo (1958), the drive is silent, but here the silence is punctuated by imagining what people are saying about her, knowing pursuit is inevitable. By the time she reaches the Bates Motel, she is repentant, planning to return and face the music, “I stepped in a private trap back there and I’d like to go back and pull myself out of it.” 

Unfortunately, Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) has other plans. In Rear Window (1954) the peeping tom is a good guy, here he’s anything but. Although Bates is presented as fighting his demons, he always gives in, while Crane never hears a voice urging her on, telling her she will get away with it. Crane has a working conscience, Bates a defunct one.

Bernard Herrmann’s strings-only score behind the jarring opening credits is only the first in a series of taboos broken. In the opening scene beefcake Loomis (John Gavin) is shirtless, nothing unusual there for a male star, but to show an actress three times in her underwear and more flesh glimpsed in the shower is novel.

Killing her off is, obviously, not the done thing either, that scene a colossal shock at the time. Effectively, she is the bait, the sexiest MacGuffin ever, leading us to the mystery of Bates.

There are many brilliant scenes: Crane’s car sinking in the swamp, the murder of private detective Arbogast (Martin Balsam), the shrieking music as the strings hit their topmost register, the discovery by Crane’s sister Lila (Vera Miles) of the corpse of Bates’ mother, the motel’s neon sign flickering in the dark, the spectral house behind the motel filled with strange voices and, of course, the enigmatic Bates, alternating eager smile with defensive reaction. There are a host of great lines: “The first customer of the day is always trouble,” says the salesman; “We’re quickest to doubt people who have a reputation of being honest,” says Arbogast; and the immortal, “A boy’s best friend is his mother.”

On release, the director engineered a publicity coup by insisting nobody be allowed into the cinema after the start. This was an illogical demand for what did it matter if a patron missed the opening 10 or 20 minutes? But it certainly got the public’s attention – for a different reason entirely. It was an assault on their basic rights as theatergoers.

In those days people went into a film 30 minutes, 50 minutes after the start and left when the film came full circle. When it opened, long queues outside the box office, the best kind of word-of-mouth, attracted interest, thus alerting people who might otherwise have simply passed by. Even drive-ins were forced to comply. Trade advertisements showed Hitchcock pointing to his watch, exhorting, “Surely you do not have your meat course after your dessert at dinner?” Exhibitors were promised a special manual, “The Care and Handling of Psycho.” As well as smashing box office records, it demolished another convention by showing in local New York theaters while still playing at major first run theaters in Manhattan. 

The film has enormous visceral power. The shower scene has, rightly, achieved legendary status, every frame dissected by scholars, some images, the curtain wrenched loose, the hand reaching out, the dead eye, the blood draining away, imprinted on the universal brain, and the music unforgettable. The acting from Anthony Perkins (Pretty Poison, 1968) and Janet Leigh (The Manchurian Candidate, 1962) is excellent, Leigh nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar, Perkins not so lucky, ending up typecast. For collectors of trivia, Hitchcock’s daughter, Patricia, plays Crane’s office colleague.  And for academics, especially those with auteur on their minds, this was a good place to start.