“We all go a little mad sometimes.”

Plot Summary: Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) absconds with $40,000 of stolen cash from a Phoenix bank and drives toward California, where she plans to start a new life with her paramour. Before reaching her destination, however, fate delivers her to the Bates motel, which is run by the seemingly harmless mama’s boy, Norman (Anthony Perkins). Following Marion’s mysterious disappearance her sister and her boyfriend team up with a private investigator to find out what happened to her. Clues can be found in the shower of room #1 of the Bates motel.

Review:

In his discussion of Psycho with Truffaut, Hitchcock famously commented that he was playing the audience like a piano. The comment is entirely justified considering that the whole plot leading up to Marion Crane’s arrival at the Bates motel is simply an extended red herring cunningly employed to make the impending shower scene, and star Janet Leigh’s quick and early demise, all the more shocking. No doubt Hitchcock derived enormous pleasure from manipulating his audience so perversely and I can see him chuckling to himself thinking about all the people he had jumping out of their seats. But there’s something far more disturbing about the shower scene than its simple shock effect. Marion Crane’s ultimate fate was dictated by sheer, random chance; it was, after all, through pure bad luck that she accidentally turned off on the wrong road and ended up at the Bates motel instead of at more hospitable lodgings. And as a result Marion is snuffed out in an instant, cast into nothingness at the whim of a madman, rendering all her worries and dreams utterly meaningless. And therein lies the deeper point: that our own lives are governed as much by chance as Marion’s, and that we too could be cast into oblivion at any moment. This is the shower scene’s deeply disturbing undercurrent, which is sure to keep you shuddering long after the initial shock has worn away.

Psycho is primarily Hitchcock’s achievement but others make significant contributions, particularly Bernard Herrmann and Anthony Perkins. Herrmann’s ominous score is the first thing we hear and it sets the dark mood. As Miss Crane drives toward her doom, the thrusting, staccato intensity of the stark, strings-only score strikes a menacing mood of foreboding, almost anticipating Marion’s otherwise unexpected demise. Isn’t Herrmann’s score preparing us for the shower scene all along? Aren’t those shrieking violins, which pierce our brains just as Norman’s knife pierces Marion’s supple flesh, really the score’s coup de grace?

To call Herrmann’s score a classic would be an understatement and Psycho would not be as potent without it, but it should also be noted how inventively Hitchcock uses natural sound in counterpoint to the music. Consider Marion’s arrival at the Bates motel. After Herrmann’s score reaches its powerful crescendo the music suddenly stops and all we hear is the pitter-patter of raindrops hitting the car and the back and forth swishing of the windshield wipers. There’s something strangely unsettling about the sudden use of natural sound immediately following Herrmann’s powerful music, especially since it accompanies our first glimpse of the creepy Bates mansion looming menacingly on its hilltop perch. An even better example of this occurs in the aftermath of the shower scene. The grueling struggle between killer and victim has ended. The killer has exited the scene. The shrieking violins have quieted. All that remains is Marion’s lifeless body and the eerie sound of the still-running water of her ill-fated shower. This contrast between the frenzy of the shower scene itself and the quiet stillness of its immediate aftermath is truly haunting, made all the more so by the close-up of Marion’s lifeblood swirling down the drain and the subsequent dissolve close-up of her vacantly staring eye, which is held for an agonizing 30 seconds as the camera slowly pulls back to reveal Marion’s grotesquely contorted body lying half in and half out of the shower. These are precisely the type of brilliant cinematic touches that separate a master like Hitchcock from the run-of-the-mill director.

Finally, there’s Anthony Perkins in the role of Norman Bates. The genius of his performance, at once creepy and darkly funny, lies in how he subtly suggests, with a stutter or an awkward smile or a strange comment, the abnormality lurking beneath Bates’ boyish appearance and polite mama’s boy demeanor. Brilliantly conveying the duality residing within poor Norman’s twisted mind, Perkins stutters and stabs his way to a legendary performance.

Posted on February 9th, 2008 by Mat Viola
Filed under: Reviews