Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO, now 50 years old -- great 20th-century art or mere "carnivalesque" shocker?

First of the significant golden-anniversary analyses, maybe, by David Sterritt:

http://www.movingimagesource.us/articles/psycho-analyzed-20100302

So the knife DOES touch the body...?

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Interesting read. Funny that Hitchcock would say "Please don't give away the ending" - that kind of telegraphs that there is a twist coming, no? I like it better like when I go to movies like the Sixth Sense not knowing one is coming, makes the impact that much harder. Of course if this movie was coming out nowadays the ending wouldn't be a secret by the close of opening weekend - the internet sure does make it difficult to shock anybody anymore.

Psycho was one of those classics I hadn't seen in full for years - unfortunately, people became so focused on the damn "shower scene" (which is obv. awesome) that they forget how many other classic scenes there are in the movie. I truthfully only saw it in full about 3 years ago, and was surprised to find out that Psycho 2 was pretty good as well.

The penetrating knife shot not cleared up at all then, ha. Don't have a DVD of Psycho so I can't spend half the night trying to discover the truth.

Interesting that Hitch's carnie routine, which is so much of his public persona from at least the '50s on, isn't the kind of shit that a comparably popular auteur wd do in 2010. Nowadays even relatively modest talents seem to work on the po-faced pretence that they aren't in showbusiness. Always thought that the instructions to theatres re: Psycho came straight out of the William Castle school of building buzz tbh.

Before there were auteurs, there were SHOWMEN!

"Please don't tell the ending," a second message cajoled. "It's the only one we have."

apparently it was actually "Please don't GIVE AWAY the ending", which is stronger wordplay.

good to see thomson given a kicking tho

Those Thomson quotes were asinine.

classic, mainly cos there's some really eerie shots. end completely fumbles it tho, but everyone knows that don't thet?

hitch thought the exact opposite

i don't think we are meant to "buy" what the shrink said. but neither are we meant to scoff at it. i guess the film is saying (via don draper) "the universe is indifferent."

re the shrink's monologue: Try to imagine what the average American thought about crossdressing in 1959.

That final shot of the dude in his chair is creepy as fuck. Actually that whole sequence at the end where they're creeping round the guys house is terrificaly suspensefull, and as is usual with suspense, the payoff isn't quite up to scratch, for me anyway.

All in all, rather tame watching it now (shower scene esp hasn't been treated well by time) but you can totally see how it would fuck people right up in 1960.

The final shot is actually of Marion's Ford being pulled from the swamp.

In what ways do you think the shower scene "hasn't been treated well by time"? Not spoiling for a fight, but curious.

the music during the scene is probably the single most famous cue of all time... hard for it to have the same impact. but it's a character being killed. it seems p different to me than most slasher films i've seen.

the multiple camera cuts could be considered "hokey" by today's standards although the scene still rates highly just for the moment whre you see the sihlouette of Bates/Mother behind the curtain moments before he flings it open

idk *shrug* it's in black and white too

it could also be the overexposure of the scene. by the time I saw the movie in full for the first time I'd seen the shower scene about 250 times so it did dull the impact a bit

Van Sant's PSYCHO, now 12 years old -- great 20th-century art or mere "carnivalesque" shocker?

Time has just hyped it up to much, so it's never gonna have the same punch. Partly the music, partly the shots . . . all of Hitch's tricks have been pulled a million times in the last 50 years, so the scene doesn't have the impact that the pace of the film expects it to have, if that makes sense. It's my problem, not the film's. (xp)

Have you all seen the trailer? Hitchcock walking around the motel talking about how tragic it all is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdxNmvXusM0

Van Sant's Psycho was lol-worthy. Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates? only movie I've ever left halfway through at the theatre (mostly cuz we got in free).

I'd agree it's impact is different now than in 1960, most everybody now who watches Psycho for the first time will have seen a dozen spoofs of the shower scene before they ever see the original. Don't get how the editing is hokey, I feel like it strains for effect a lot less than plenty of other self-conscious stylists. If there's any shock in the scene, then or now, it relies more on what hm just implied - Marion is a rounded character by that point in the movie, certainly more so than a lot of the teen cyphers in post-Psycho slashers. I think part of what's still disorienting about the scene is the way Hitchcock's technique almost works against what is being portrayed - a brutal murder becoming abstract and symbolic which is kinda like some Greek tragedy going down - not that I think Hitch is referencing that at all.

The impact of the first murder on an audience going in blind, at that time -- I'm kind of amazed more ppl didn't faint dead away.

Also I can't overemphasize how much better this works in a theater. The first time I stole away to NYC on my own as a teenager was to see Psycho at a revival house.

what about the other Psycho movies?

People talked positively about PSycho 2 and 3. I liked 2, as even though it worked better as a drama than a horror movie (and has a kind of farfetched plot), it was effective. The third one was pretty damn boring though.

haven't seen all of Psycho IV.

I think I've seen Psycho 2 in my late teens when I watched a lot of horror movies. Remember it being silly. Could've been 3 tho.

Couldn't give a toss about seeing any of the sequels now but that isn't a judgement on any merit they might have.

I mostly just saw em cuz i had a 4 dvd a month netflix plan and I loved the first one so much. the poster for Psycho II positively creeped the shit out of me as a kid though.

I don't remembera lot about Psycho II as I watched it while I was drunk the day before thanksgiving. Denis Franz was in it and my family told me I kept yelling at the television "THAT'S SIPOWIZCCZZ OMG SIPOZOWEWEICZ!"

i saw Psycho for the first time maybe three years ago. i knew the basic storyline and the mother/norman stuff, but this was still very much successful at pulling me in and creeping me out. i'm a fan.

I don't remembera lot about Psycho II as I watched it while I was drunk the day before thanksgiving. Denis Franz was in it and my family told me I kept yelling at the television "THAT'S SIPOWIZCCZZ OMG SIPOZOWEWEICZ!"

that's almost as assiduous as david thompson gets these days
(great post btw)

Have not bothered w/ any of the cash-ins aside from the first 20 mins of Psycho 3 (directed by Perkins), which looked at least reasonably spoofy.

I slept w/ a nightlight in my room for the duration of my childhood as a direct result of my parents letting me watch this with them when I was little. wtf Mom & Dad?

My Dad saw the film in a theatre sometime around the original release and says that he was more shocked by the scene where Norman's mom is finally revealed than by the shower scene.

^^^

i didn't see it in a theatre sometime around the original release but still, this.

shrink near the end saying "Yes...aaaaand no!" has brought the house down every time i saw this in a theater. that whole sequence is unfortunate.

also house has had ppl literally jumping out of their chairs followed by waves of laughter: ppl lolling at the poor newbies; ppl lolling at themselves. it's incredible in a packed house. in no way played out. myth of the film has ppl expecting to be terrified keyed up as the lights go out―so they duly are.

shot from above with speedy mother at top of stairs is slept on. at least equally shocking reactions to it as shower scene in my experience. what made him put the camera there? just to keep obscure the figure of mother i guess?

there's a pretty good crane shot at the start i think, finding Leigh in the sprawling metropolis a la Vidor? Hitchcock prob didn't want ppl to miss that. his injunction reminds me of the narrator 5 or 10 minutes into Bande a part, who says "And now for those who came in late, the story."

iirc it's three shots but very smoothly running into each other. it was "meant" to be a helicopter shot.

yeah def recall a join as it "enters" the room.

also, he wanted Janet Leigh topless.

I think Norman = Mom is pretty obvious after the Arbogast murder, at least (tho who among post-release generations can say).

yeah i don't think it's the revelation that norman is mom that made my dad jump, it's the “mom is a mummy” reveal in the basement

wait--this isn't the best hitchcock movie, but does anyone actually think it's a "mere carnivalesque shocker"?

also house has had ppl literally jumping out of their chairs followed by waves of laughter: ppl lolling at the poor newbies; ppl lolling at themselves. it's incredible in a packed house. in no way played out. myth of the film has ppl expecting to be terrified keyed up as the lights go out―so they duly are.

--this. i've shown this to big lectures full of students and they always love it. partly b/c they've been primed to.

this photobook includes a still from the shower sequence where you can clearly see the knife penetrating flesh:

http://www.yesteryearbooks.co.uk/shop_image/product/033120.jpg

I'm watching this right now. Two unoriginal thoughts:

* it's pretty audacious that the movie spends 1/2 hour with Marion and her plot before she gets killed off, I can't imagine a movie going that far just to fuck with you these days
* the score is amazing

* it's pretty audacious that the movie spends 1/2 hour with Marion and her plot before she gets killed off, I can't imagine a movie going that far just to fuck with you these days

i guess a kind of distant comparison would be-- the perfect getaway?

yeah, the score is fantastic. the part w/ marion driving in the car is particularly memorable no?

oh yeah spoilers alert for the perfect getaway which nobody will probably see anyway (it wasn't bad!)

I love this movie but I have to say it loses steam between the detective getting killed and the climax - the boyfriend is such a stiff (and Hitchcock wasn't very fond of the actor either, according to IMDB).

otm. that's why I don't put the movie in m Hitch top five.

Stuff I do love: the score, Marion lollying in bed after a good fuck (and Hitch got away with it), the long awkward chat b/w her and Norman.

why would you *need* a better actor for the boyfriend part?

can't imagine a movie going that far just to fuck with you these days

Antonioni had sort of a pretentious an arthouse version of this in the same year with L'avventura, where a lead actress goes missing and is just sort of gradually forgotten about by everybody.

the part w/ marion driving in the car is particularly memorable no?

Yes, it's very beautiful, marion alone in the night thru the rain on the windshield with the wipers and the score going. It's dreamlike. Surely she's lit by pools of light coming and going, supposed to be passing cars, or is that a false memory?

wait--this isn't the best hitchcock movie, but does anyone actually think it's a "mere carnivalesque shocker"?

welllll, if i had to say it was one or the other, i'd pick the latter option. i think it's really that far from his best. its misfires are probably part of why audiences (modern ones at any rate) find it so fun i think. perkins' bates is so odd it's quite funny, the prurience of marion's clunky bra in what is obv supposed to be raciness in the early scene reffed above, the denouement shrink exposition we've talked about, maybe the pulp thriller fake plot & dodgy acting in minor roles, the unreality of it. so when ppl are stricken by the imagery or the expert shocks they're thinking "can't believe this got me" maybe.

the score is amazing

yeah think the car scene is slept on in this regard but to talk about the famous stabs, heard a guy on a doc say these were bird shrieks, and the motions of the knife beak pecks, so connecting to bates' stuffed birds in some kind of irony echo or subconscious clue.

it's pretty audacious that the movie spends 1/2 hour with Marion and her plot before she gets killed off, I can't imagine a movie going that far just to fuck with you these days

have you seen audition

haha that seems different somehow but you're right. i guess Audition just takes a pretty extreme unexpected turn which nonetheless follows from and comes out of what went before, tho it still leaves you feeling like the movie you thought you were watching was taken away from you, pulled from under you liek a rug leaving u on yr ass while a voice goes tikitikitiki and yr all oh shi

I have seen Audition, but I was expecting the "twist" thanks to a million people talking about it on the internet

whereas psycho's twist came as a complete shock to you

I do think it's most definitely one of his best; Robin Wood in Hitchcock's Films Revisited is quite persuasive. And the eating scene in the office is one of the best dialogue-driven scenes in his oeuvre.

I perused that Anobile photo book linked above many times as a youth, but don't recall the knife shot looking penetrative.

Did Soderbergh ever make good on that threat to make a mashup of the original and vince vaughn versions with a split screen?

any sucker with adobe premiere and a youtube account could pull that off

Well, you kinda do need Ocean's 11 money to buy adobe premiere...

I perused that Anobile photo book linked above many times as a youth, but don't recall the knife shot looking penetrative.

morbs you made me doubt myself, so i went back to my copy and yep, the large image on page 101 clearly shows the knife entering the stuntwoman's stomach (i don't have a scanner, unfortunately)

I had never heard Perkins (or a dubber) shouting in the fruit cellar climax "I am NORMA Bates!!!" :o

number 1 is still - amazingly - really powerful. or impacting, at least. still made me jump when i saw it a month back.

saw number 2 too, never seen it before, but though it was obviously a bit more standard and not really directed with much flair, it was pretty great. lots of nice little twists. and perkins was excellent.

heard 3 is the worst.

uh, we shall not speak of this as a series.

the remake is one of the most pointless things ive seen though i felt i needed to watch just out of curiosity. it might have been better if rhe cast seemed like they were making more effort (only julianne moore seemed to really be doing that) and its sense of time/place was a bit clearer.

of the worst review i think ive read of the original was in my time out film guide where the reviewer, obv trying to say something newish about it, says its actually just a hilarious comedy.

Psycho IV had the kid from ET as Norman Bates, right? I have very vague memories of seeing that, probably when I was too young.
anyhoo, with all the talk on this thread about the shower scene not being shocking anymore because it's such a pop culture moment -- true enough, maybe. But I think what actually is more terrifying are the moments right *after* the murder, with Norman disposing of the body. It's totally silent and pretty chilling, given the sort of overload that has preceded it.

I actually watched some of the Van Sant remake not long ago after not having seen it since it was in the theater. In the meantime, I'd watched Hitchcock's original 2 or 3 times, so coming back to the Van Sant version, I was able to appreciate how he adhered to the original's very "movie set" style and the editing conventions that are never used in films today, but his choice of players really kills any likeability it could potentially have. Anne Heche and Vince Vaughan were both stiff as could be. Turned it off before Julianne Moore even showed up because I'd seen enough.

Psycho has enough brilliance to easily overcome its silliness.

Basically, everything leading up to the shower scene is brilliant x 10. Once it gets down to solving the crime it starts to bog down into an OKish cop vs. criminal duel of wits.

By the time it reaches the "twist" ending with the psychologist solemnly explaining why Norman was a complete nutsoid, it is bogus x 10. Even when I first saw it around 1967 and I was only 12 or 13, the psychological "explanation" rang false to me. Mommy fixation shit. Bah! Not buying it.

well, the imagery is way more powerful than the worst of the verbiage. It can't be reduced to the story skeleton.

also, the actual final sequence - of norman wearing the shawl and speaking in the voice of mother - is possibly the film's creepiest moment (especially when hitchcock superimposes the skull over norman's face.) the very last shot, the car being dragged from the swamp, is both a piece of incredibly economical storytelling and an image full of possibilities and dread

yeah it's pretty easy to see a lot of Hitchcock's films as a critique of psychoanalysis (Vertigo too).

The screenwriter of Psycho, Joseph Stefano, was in analysis at the time and admits the script reflects that fully.

It was Perkins' idea to eat candy, and Hitchcock picked candy corn. Especially good in the scene with Balsam where Norman cranes his neck right over the frame.

yeah, the way his throat is moving in that scene! scary, for some reason.

I saw it when I was 9, I didnt know anything about the story (Marion's death left me sick and dizzy) and it absolutely scared me to death - Psycho and The Innocents were probably the two most terrifying experiences of my childhood.

I still find a couple of details totally chilling (i.e. the mark of mum's body on the bed).

Still one of my favourite Hitchcock: obviously, Italian reviewers tore it to pieces back in the day.

William Goldman has some good interesting things to say about why the ending is there at all, in Adventures In The Screen Trade.

Tony Curtis, Leigh's husband at the time, claimed in his autobiography that Psycho's success, and the fact that all anyone wanted to talk to her about was the shower scene, drove his wife to drink, which eventually led to her breakdown and their divorce. Had she and Hitchcock been more open about how the shower scene had been achieved, it might not have become the subject of such speculation and obsession. Fifty years after Psycho's release, Graysmith hopes his book will finally bring this all to an end.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/mar/29/psycho-body-double-marli-renfro

obviously, Italian reviewers tore it to pieces back in the day

that's kind of ironic given Italian cinema's later contributions to the slasher genre.

Tony Curtis has said a lot of crazy/stupid things, and his daughter would agree.

"that's kind of ironic given Italian cinema's later contributions to the slasher genre"

For some reason, directors like Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento even today are critically more appreciated abroad. Kind of sad, really.

Psycho and The Innocents were probably the two most terrifying experiences of my childhood.

Still have not seen The Innocents, but my parents allowed me to watch Psycho with them on television when I was six or seven (wtf mom & dad??) & I kept a nightlight in my bedroom for the remainder of my childhood as a direct result.

"my parents allowed me to watch Psycho with them on television when I was six or seven (wtf mom & dad??)"

I saw it with my parents too. When Norman appears wearing his mother's clothes, I started screaming in terror, my mum tried to calm me down with a hug but I was so out of me that I bit her hand.

The Innocents, on the other hand, has the best movie ghost ever.

marco, i've always wondered abt how ppl like bava and fulci are treated in their home country, so it's interesting what you say (i thought argento was a bit more of a 'celebrity' in italy because he did have his own tv series ad so on). seen from the outside, italian popular cinema - not just the horror flicks, but the westerns, the peplums, the bud spencer comedies - seems to vital and intriguing, but i guess that domestic production has waned considerably since the heyday of the early 80s.

yeah, when i was abt ten (and already a horror film freak) i practically BEGGED my parents to let me stay up late and watch PSYCHO...and had terrible terrible nightmares for days afterwards. and again, it was the shot of norman entering the cellar in a dress that REALLY haunted me.

yeah, when i was abt ten (and already a horror film freak) - at around the same age, my mortal fear evolved neatly into a horror crush (lol transgressive curiosity). I still kept the nightlight on for another year or so, but only b/c I knew what was really out there maaaan (it definitely helped that that Greg, the Showtime Video clerk who was always wearing a metal t-shirt, was willing to let my friends & I rent whatever we wanted, from Faces of Death to Bloodsucking Freaks with a knowing wink & no parental consent)

I'm kind of interested in what you thought of the psychiatrist's explanation at 6 or 7.

I'm guessing that is sarcasm, but tbh it caused me to oversimplify the concept of schizophrenia to the point where I thought any given homeless dude was basically John Lithgow in Raising Cain.

marco, i've always wondered abt how ppl like bava and fulci are treated in their home country, so it's interesting what you say (i thought argento was a bit more of a 'celebrity' in italy because he did have his own tv series ad so on). seen from the outside, italian popular cinema - not just the horror flicks, but the westerns, the peplums, the bud spencer comedies - seems to vital and intriguing, but i guess that domestic production has waned considerably since the heyday of the early 80s

I am a big, big fan of this particular era of the Italian cinema and I still think Mario Bava is probably our greatest movie stylist.
At the time, this stuff was perceived like popular, trivial, intrinsecally fascist, because of the exploitation and the apparent lack of any politically conscious pedigree (but at least in Fulci's case I would disagree). It was seen as junk food for an americanized lumpenproletariat.
Just like you wrote, changing tastes and economic problems killed this popular industry, leaving us with Nanni Moretti and an endless string of bad family movies - so for some people it is weird and even embarrassing to see people like Tarantino praying today at the altar of Fernando De Leo and Ruggero Deodato.

ps do you know Bud Spencer?!! :)

that Italian stuff has never done a damn thing for me.

I mention that principally cuz while Psycho functioned as a "shocker" commercially, it's not 'pure' horror, probably bcz I find so many acclaimed horror films that followed in its wake so juvenile.

I'm reading the short recent David Thomson book on Psycho, and he is really down on it after Norman's clean up scene; he writes that he doesn't buy Mother "taking over" at all.

(btw Perkins is not wearing a shawl in the last scene, but a blanket the cops brought him)

xxp - I will never forgive Deodato for the turtle scene.

I mention that principally cuz while Psycho functioned as a "shocker" commercially, it's not 'pure' horror, probably bcz I find so many acclaimed horror films that followed in its wake so juvenile.

Whatever. Horror is one of the genres that can be said truly peaked in the '60s and '70s.

"I will never forgive Deodato for the turtle scene."
this is a hard scene to take but they ate the turtle right? hakuna matata and all that.

oh yeah spoilers alert for the perfect getaway which nobody will probably see anyway (it wasn't bad!)

― by another name (amateurist), Monday, March 8, 2010 12:05 PM (3 months ago) Bookmark

dope movie

I mention that principally cuz while Psycho functioned as a "shocker" commercially, it's not 'pure' horror, probably bcz I find so many acclaimed horror films that followed in its wake so juvenile

Psycho is obviously a lot better than every Italian shocker, still there was some illiterate, prodigiously naive greatness in a guy like Mario Bava.
Also, people like him, Fulci, Deodato, Argento knew a thing or two about cinema and are among the few Italian directors who can claim to be somehow "influential".

Do Argento or Bava have any actor-driven dialogue scenes on the scale of the one w/ Perkins & Leigh in Norman's office? i'm just saying I don't see them having a lot in common w/ Hitchcock in their narrative strategies.

You're right, I'm not implying any comparison between them and Hitchcock, I was just answering to Ward.
Bava and Argento had this almost comical disdain for compelling storytelling and narrative coherence, but if you like a surreal, visually intriguing take on the horror genre, sometimes they could do their job pretty well.

this is a little off-topic but since you invoke him, how is nanni moretti thought of in italy these days?

Maybe I'm not the right person to answer this, since I do not like him very much, but he's still very well known, maybe more for his political stances than for his films.

Do Argento or Bava have any actor-driven dialogue scenes on the scale of the one w/ Perkins & Leigh in Norman's office? i'm just saying I don't see them having a lot in common w/ Hitchcock in their narrative strategies.

PSYCHO is inarguably the key inspiration for the Italian Giallo, but the films drew from other sources too - pulp fiction, especially Fredric Brown and Edgar Wallace, and Terence Fisher's early Hammer films, for example. In some ways, Bava and Argento's best work is closer to Hitchcock's colour films of the 50s, especially the more luridly nightmarish sequences in VERTIGO, where narrative cohesion gives way to candy-coloured spectacle and hysteria. Yes, it's true that even Bava or Argento's best films can't match PSYCHO in terms of knowing dialogue or peformance - but that's a matter of inclination, of intention, and most especially of budgetary limitation.

And of course dubbing (and, quite often, re-editing by American distributors) makes it difficult to judge the quality of acting in some of these films, but both Christopher Lee and Cameron Mitchell spoke VERY highly of Bava, and Karloff gives one of his very both performances in Bava's BLACK SABBATH, so Bava at least wasn't solely a visual stylist.

very BEST performances

isn't 'the girl who knew too much' sort of the key movie here

i guess that's bava's most 'hitchcockian' film, but BLOOD AND BLACK LACE is the one, imho

I'm sure many of you have seen this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdxNmvXusM0

esp as it was posted upthread, o well

some current anniverary pieces:

http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/1973

the original sarris review:

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2010/06/psycho.php#more

that's a great review, not so sure of the deprecation inherent in

the first American movie since "Touch of Evil" to stand in the same creative rank as the great European films

1960 was early days for the auteur theory and there probably were some sweet movies in 1959. otoh im basically fine with it.

sarris had a solid grounding in old-timey eisenstein-grierson-kracauer-type film theory before he heard about cahiers du cinema (which was in about 1956-8, i can't remember). so he was likely to rate 'october' over 'written on the wind' nahmean.

correctly too

that wd explain the lack of esteem for eg 59's 'imitation of life', if he even saw it

i've never read any of the old(young) sarris, only his stuff in the ny observer from recent years, which was often great and assuredly different to the general critical surmises

http://news.google.co.uk/archivesearch/advanced_search

^^ put village voice in the source field for vintage sarris

full of primo shit

cool

this is his 59 btw

01. Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman)
02. The 400 Blows (Francois Truffaut)
03. Brink of Life (Ingmar Bergman)
04. The Cousins (Claude Chabrol)
05. Ivan the Terrible, Part II (Sergei Eisenstein)
06. The Magician (Ingmar Bergman)
07. Room at the Top (Jack Clayton)
08. On the Beach (Stanley Kramer)
09. The Diary of Anne Frank (George Stevens)
10. North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock)

08. On the Beach (Stanley Kramer)

this is intriguing!

kramer especially became the auteurists' Most Hated. in 'the american cinema' (which i keep by my desk) (i dont have a job) he says kramer sux, but also that he's kinda an easy target.

love the lazy determinism of george steven's wikipedia profile

One result of his World War II experiences was that his subsequent films became more dramatic. I Remember Mama in 1948 was the last movie that he made with comic scenes.

seem to remember at least one instance of auteurist fandom for stevens tho

Sarris was a NY liberal just past 30, give him a break on Stanley Kramer

im not even hating

i can see why the auteurists took their stance against kramer et al, but i think it made it difficult for them to talk about politics-in-movies

on the shower scene and the rules of suspense:

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/126713-get-out-of-the-shower-or-surprise-and-suspense-the-shower-scene-and-/

sigh

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2010/06/psycho-babel.html

brody is a consistent bullshitter and know-nothing, but at least this has caused me to make an elementary check of something i mentioned upthread.

Fresh from Paris, where he became familiar with the writings and the tastes (as well as the films) of the French New Wave, he returned home as the advocate of the American auteur and spread the “gospel” (as he called it in the review) that the French “Hitchcocko-Hawksians” had made their name on at Cahiers du Cinéma and elsewhere: that Hollywood was home to some directors who were artists of the first order, comparable to those anywhere and in any medium, and, in particular, “that Hitchcock’s later American movies stamped him as one of the screen’s major artists.”

ehhhh no. he went to paris in 1961, so wasn't fresh from it when he did this review in 1960. does that matter? yeah, it kinda does. sarris first knew about cahiers through his friend eugene archer, from 1957-8, when archer had been in paris. why can't brody just say something true? there's a suggestion there, too, that cahiers was the first magazine to call hollywood a home for artists, which is just baloney.

http://www.ica.org.uk/24715/Film/Double-Take.html

^ this any good?

d-i-a-l history was epic, and i wanna see this now. was all hitchcocked-out when it came out tho. solid reviews.

critics here were kinda underwhelmed

My only exposure to Psycho before actually watching it as a kid with my dad on PBS was the reference in American Graffiti and the Tony Perkins sketch on Saturday Night live, so I had pretty much no preparation for the scares or twists. Like a lot of great horror, I'm not sure it's possible to appreciate as much the second time.

Posted a correction on the New Yorker blog, btw.

nice

interesting that psycho was sarris first VV review (though not his first publicaish). robin wood's maiden piece (in cahiers) was also on psycho.

the SNL sketch doesn't appear to be online, so

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/75/75pbatesmotel.phtml

Ha, yeah, so I guess I should have seen everything coming, but I didn't. SNL got me used to the idea of enjoying humor without getting it as a child.

A friend is offering to lend me their DVD of Psycho 2, insisting its underrated. Doesn't cost me anything but time, of course, but is there any reason to watch this?

not a patch on the original, but not an offense against it either. fairly well made, perkins is great, worth a couple hours on a rainy day.

i'm guessing it's better than the christopher reeve 'rear window' or 'birds 2: land's end.'

oooh i had a orsen wells dvdf??

So much for the long list of masterpieces that period produced. I quote Thomson's nonsense because Hitchcock learned his craft in silent movies, and as Sidney Gottlieb has amply demonstrated, he remained committed to visual storytelling—the "pure cinema" he spoke about so often—throughout his career. Psycho is exemplary in this respect, most stunningly in the long stretch of wordless narrative that begins when Marion returns to her room after talking with Norman and ends with the cry of "Mother! Oh God, mother! Blood! Blood!" that rends the air after Norman has cleaned up the murder scene.

So is the shower music so horrifying because we've got someone who's used to working in silent and for whom a soundtrack is still, even in the 50s, something 'new'?

pitiful muthafucvkas etc

Maybe this is mentioned itt but AH famously wanted the shower scene to play without score. Hermann was all 'just let me try this' and AH was convinced.

Xp

http://www.shortlist.com/quizzes/the-ultimate-psycho-quiz#answers-shown

i got 16/20

I got 11, mostly wild-assed guesses.

16, with maybe 4 lucky guesses

10

shrug

19

14, guessed on three or four (but didn't get all the guesses right). Especially proud to have gotten the storyboard question--almost went with Woody Allen.

I knew all the cars are Fords and I'd read about buying up the paperbacks.

Wasn't there a famous trailer, too, where he instructed the audience about not revealing the ending? (Or was it telling them not to arrive late?)

In the trailer he takes a tour of the sets.

Theater owners were instructed not to admit anyone after the film began, very unusual then.

I got 9, guessed a lot. The saul bass one was one of the few I knew for sure!

14. I think the conversion into pounds got me on that one question. The buying up the paperbacks bit was in that terrible, horrible, no good, very bad Hitchcock movie last year.

Do you remember what you got wrong, Morbs? License plate?

I got lucky on that one, just guessed "National Film Board" lol

NFB = Norman Francis (as in the saint who loved birds) Bates

I got one of the numeral answers wrong, damned if I was gonna go back to see what the question was.

I probably read most of what was in books about the film by the time I was outta college, so that would help.

12 cabins, 12 vacancies.

and you got the bra right, surely.

Got it right, nothing. I'm wearing it!

http://images.mirror.co.uk/upl/mirror/mar2002/0/3/000632B3-10BA-1C93-BA5F80C328EC0262.jpg

Has anyone seen this? Is it worth a watch?

http://www.cia.edu/cinematheque/film-schedule/2018/01/7852-hitchcocks-shower-scene

I've heard it's no Room 237.

https://i.postimg.cc/5yHKmPBS/pyscho.jpg

In honor, let's all embezzle money today

We all go a little mad sometimes

https://i.imgur.com/VTr14ek.gif

if this movie was made today, Norman would be considered the hero and would be given keys to the city by the mayor for defending corporate interests and stopping blue-collar crime