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

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