Psycho (1960)

 Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho"

A common piece of trivia you hear about Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 masterwork "Psycho" is that it is the very first film to ever feature a shot of a flushing toilet. Perhaps this is a mild piece of trivia, however I think it really connects me to a greater contextual understanding of the whole film. I'm sure seeing a flushing toilet on screen may have been a great 'shock' to a 1960's audience. I'm not entirely sure 'shock' is the right word, but given that the image may have been possibly taboo and perhaps anecdotal of unwanted imagining, its safe to say that Hitchcock and writer Joseph Stefano really wanted to hit their audience with an unsettling image. I think this idea holds the key to the whole film. The entirety of "Psycho" is really an unsettling shock to the audience's senses. 

After Hitchcock made "Vertigo" in 1958, many felt that it was a bloated, overbudgeted misfire (despite being hailed as a masterpiece later). Even his next film, 1959's "North by Northwest," despite being a critical and commercial success, was a huge undertaking that was both time consuming and expensive. For his next project, Hitchcock wanted to scale things back. This was especially true after Henri-Georges Clouzot's 1955 French psychological horror thriller "Diabolique," which many hailed as being more Hitchcock than Hitchcock himself. "Diabolique" was a gritty, small scale, black and white independent film that was a huge success. Hitchcock was not only conscious of this film, but other "B" horror film pictures at the time. He felt that many bad, inexpensively made black and white "B" horror films did well at the box office and wondered if he could construct his own version of that. So, he shirked the big-budget, star-studded movies he had been making in favor of a more experimental format of filmmaking. 

When he brought the idea of adapting Robert Bloch's 1959 novel "Psycho" to Paramount, the studio executives scoffed at the idea. They felt the source material was far too disturbing and graphic to make into a feature length picture. However, Hitchcock was desperate to make it. So, he countered Paramount with an offer of his own. Not only would he use the crew, cameras, and sound stages from his television series "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," he proposed to fund the entire film out of his own pocket. On top of this, he deferred his standard $250,000 salary in lieu of 60% of the film's box office grosses. Paramount felt that the film, due to its heinous subject matter, would be a total flop. So, they agreed to Hitchcock's proposals. Little did they know that the film would not only be successful, it would be the greatest box office success of Hitchcock's career. It earned a box office gross of $32 million, from which Hitchcock personally earned in excess of $15 million. 

With such personal responsibility on the project, using his own financing, his own crew, and his own reputation on the line, Hitchcock didn't hold anything back. The way he films "Psycho" is so unlike any of his previous work. Unlike the more formal works of his oeuvre, this film was far grittier and unsettling visually. The entire film is meant to shock and unsettle and every visual occurrence aides in that quest. One aspect of this film that differs from his others is the use of 50 mm lenses on 35 mm cameras. This provides an angle similar to human vision. This only further involves the audience in the things happening on screen. You're not just a third party observer to this horror, you're right there in it. This becomes more apparent in close-ups on faces. When Hitchcock provides a close-up to a character's face, their face is so full and close to the screen. It almost becomes uncomfortable for the viewer to be this close to a character's face. This is just another element of the film meant to provide discomfort. 

When we start the picture, we are presented the image of Marion Crane, played by Janet Leigh, in her bra in a hotel room. Right off the bat, we are exposed to a level of sexuality audiences had not yet come to be familiar with in Hollywood films. We learn that Marion wants to run away and get married with her boyfriend, Sam. However, they cannot get married because of Sam's debts. So, Marion decides to steal $40,000 from her boss and leaves town. We are presented a situation, not too unfamiliar, in which our protagonist is up to no good. Due to heavy rain, she stops at a motel for the night, the Bates Motel. 45 minutes into the film, we have done nothing but spend time with Marion, watch her steal, and watch her anxiety in trying to evade police as she heads to Fairvale to meet up with Sam. Marion has become our protagonist and we've done nothing but identify with her for the entire film. However, what happens next is yet another shock to the audience's senses, in more ways than one.

After Marion meets the motel's strange caretaker, Norman Bates, she settles into her room for the night and starts to undress to get into the shower. Little does she know that Norman is watching her through a peep-hole from his office. In the shot below, we see Norman's voyeuristic looking at Marion and are once again unnerved. 

After Marion gets into the shower, Hitchcock visually attacks his own audience. In a position where Marion, and we in general, are most vulnerable - in the shower - Marion, and we, are attacked. Hitchcock places his camera on the wall of the shower so that we can see the silhouette of a elderly looking woman coming into the room. We are held in suspense. Just then, the curtain pulls back and this shadowy figure is holding a very large knife. The 78 shots and 52 cuts that take place over the next 45 seconds would change cinema forever. As Hitchcock later states, the audience never once sees the blade of the knife being inserted into Marion's body. Rather, channeling his inner Sergei Eisenstein, Hitchcock uses rapid editing to provide a subjective sense of terror. The shots vary from Marion's face as she's screaming, shots of the knife coming down sharply, shots of blood running down the drain, shots of the shodowy figure continuing to drive the blade downward, and shots of the blade coming toward (but never being inserted into) Marion's naked body. On top of this, Bernard Hermann's screeching violin sound effects during the scene create an auditory experience equivalent to the shocking visuals. In fact, Hitchcock was so impressed by Hermann's score that he doubled his salary. The screeching violin noise would become one of the most iconic sounds in film history. All of these combined elements created something terrifying and shocking. It almost feels as though you the viewer is being attacked. Audiences in 1960 were so shocked by this scene, many screamed aloud themselves. Some fainted. Some left the theater entirely. 

Not only does this scene present a visual shocker, but an abstract one as well. What I mean by that is: we've been spending the entire film with Marion. She is the only character who we've identified with. She is our protagonist. She is US. Once "Ms. Bates" comes in and murders her, our perspective up until this point has been disregarded all together. Sure, Marion's sister, Lila, Sam, and private investigator Milton all come to the Bates Motel to find her - which continues her 'story,' but our subjective perspective with Marion has been stripped of us. Hitchcock allows us to spend 45 minutes in Marion's shoes, only to pull the rug out from under us and completely change the direction of the film. This narrative shock essentially is another way that allows us to feel as though WE have been murdered by 'Ms. Bates.' 

After Norman finds Marion's body, he cleans up and put her, along with her belongings, in the trunk of her car and dumps it in the nearby swamp. The remainder of the film is spent investigating the disappearance of the missing Marion by her sister, boyfriend, and a private investigator. The private investigator, Milton, arrives at the Bates Motel looking for Marion. His hunch leads him to the mysterious 'Ms. Bates,' whom Norman won't allow him to see. When he sneaks inside the Bates home to speak with Norman's mother, he is attacked by her. In another sudden thrill, once he reaches the top of the stairs, Hitchcock switches to an above shot, 'God's angle' as it's sometimes called. Suddenly, 'Ms. Bates' emerges from one of the rooms and stabs Milton. Hitchcock speeds up the frame rate so that her emergence and attack happen quickly, with no time for the audience to adjust their senses. After stabbing Milton, Hitchcock switches to a close-up medium of Milton and allows the camera to follow Milton falling backwards down the stairs. The effect creates a sense of us the viewer falling too. After the initial shock of the stabbing, we are then in a state of freefall WITH Milton down the stairs. Yet again, Hitchcock continues to shock his viewers.

After worrying about Milton's mysterious disappearance, Lila and Sam check-in to the Bates Motel, posing as a married couple so that they can investigate and look for both Marion and Milton. While Sam distracts Norman, Lila goes into the Bates' home. In the cellar, she stumbles upon what appears to be 'Ms. Bates' seated in a chair facing away from her. Right away, we are in suspense due to the knowledge we already know about 'Ms. Bates.' When Lila touches her, the body begins to swivel, only to reveal a decomposed skeleton. This sudden revelation provides an initital shock (once again). We are held in a moment of quiet shock, unable to allow any purge of this shock. Suddenly, Lila lets out a scream - allowing the viewer that purging moment of shared horror at what they've uncovered. Suddenly, Herrmann's screeching violins come back and Hitchcock turns us around to show us Norman dressed in women's clothes holding a knife standing in the doorway. Perhaps many consider the shower scene to be the most shocking moment in the film. I wouldn't argue with that. However, when I witnessed this moment, I felt a greater sense of shock and alarm personally. There was no relief from the dead corpse revelation, as we immediately get the visual of a deranged Norman ready to strike. This scene provides the culmination of all our built up suspense. The corpse, the revelation, and the image of a femininely dressed Norman is suddenly too much at once for the senses to handle (especially for a 1960s audience).

Once Norman is tackled to the ground, we switch over to the scene at the police station. A psychiatrist explains Norman's condition to both the characters and to the audience. Norman killed his mother years ago and kept her corpse. He started speaking for his dead mother until he eventually psychologically became her. After being caught, he is now no longer Norman, but Ms. Bates. After this explanation, Hitchcock walks us into the room Norman is staying in and we begin to hear a voice-over of him, only its in a woman's voice. That is to say, his mother is now inhabiting Norman. We are left with the image of Norman, speaking with his mother's voice, smiling at the camera. Eventually, that smile turns into an image of a skull, as we are then shows Marion's car being pulled out of the swamp. The final blow to the viewer's sense is that of psychologically inhabiting the mind of Norman. His deranged internal monologue is the final nail in the coffin that leaves the viewer unsettled and disturbed. For contemporary audiences, this may not be that extreme. However, in a film that was released in 1960 Hollywood, it was perhaps the most extreme thing they've ever seen. 

This is the very basic idea of the film. The idea of psychologically attacking its audience. After leaving the theater, you feel violated, disturbed, and shocked. "Psycho" is Hitchcock's most experimental and extreme film. It is an attack on the senses, an attack on your mental well-being, and an attack on conventional Hollywood standards. It is Hitchcock going full out on the themes he's been crafting in his films ever since the 1920s. It is him at his most uncensored. "Psycho" changed the landscape not only for cinema, but for the conception of the contemporary horror genre. Post-"Psycho" horror films are all children of "Psycho." To draw back on the original allegory of the flushing toilet, it seems as though this is what this film represents. It is meant to unnerve us, it is a debasement of morals, it shows us that which we do not want to see. It is Hitchcock throwing away the big-budget, star-studded Hollywood film for an independent style film that attacks its own audience. Cinema would never be the same again.