Mundane Freudian Horror from This World

Rating: 10/10 (19 May 2010)

At the age of 60, Alfred Hitchcock decided to go wildly radical after his award-winning big productions. His next film, Psycho (1960), was an independent production whose budget was only 800 000 dollars. Through this Hitchcock was able to make a film, entirely in a way he wanted to but also achieve a naturally mundane atmosphere which was still characterized by psychological and film noir-like elements. Psycho is still Hitchcock's most shocking film and the most influential film he ever made. Just like The Beatles, the death of Elvis and the assassination of John F. Kennedy, so is Psycho a part of the cultural legacy of the 1960's. It marked a turning point in the history of American cinema and changed its being forever: reality was now approached in a brand new way, through a Hitchcockian prism of fear.
In the central of Psycho there is a run-down motel which has been left to the side of a new highway: a picture of alienation, a system which progresses quickly, neglecting the actual needs of people. The motel is run by an extraordinary man, Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) who lives alone with his mother. One day Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), a woman who has just stolen 40, 000 dollars, arrives to the Bates' Motel. Having disappeared, Marion's boyfriend and sister start to look for her. But Norman isn't too happy about it and tries to avoid their investigation.
Like in many films by Alfred Hitchcock, the opening credits of Psycho are extremely important and fascinating. These opening credits were designed by the storyboard artist and pictorial consultant Saul Bass, who had also designed them for The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956). The credits, together with the score by Bernard Herrmann, manage to set out the theme and the topic of the film. The credits are often seen to illustrate the decomposition of the human mind but also the change of order and disorder which is common for capitalist urban life. It is an expression of the "new" world order.
The graphics designed by Bass don't just reign the opening credits: they're everywhere in the film. In the beginning, we see the horizontal Janet Leigh and her brassiere, and the vertical John Gavin, completely topless. The geometric polarity of horizontal and vertical lines repeats in concrete forms throughout Psycho: for example, the horizontal motel and the vertical Victorian mansion in which Norman's mother lives.
Psycho is mundane, or as Michael Schmidt has said "Psycho combines wonderfully the everyday and mysterious." But it really isn't a b-movie. For Hitchcock the horror and excitement just happen to arise from ordinary, mundane things. Once again, the opening scene is a wonderful example of this: just a conventional, simple scene. Back then, the audience was affected by Janet Leigh's breasts and brassiere which were shown for the first time in the history of cinema but, what is more, the scene is so well filmed that the viewer can do nothing but get identified with the characters. Psycho indeed might just be the most polished thriller ever made. It's perfect, no matter how you look at it.
Psycho puts the society to a collision between the shadows of past and presence. It conducted dialog between the old past and trendy presence. In the film, we meet two modern urban clichés: a regular office girl and a lonely youngster who also spends most of his time at his office. There is one intriguing scene which is a wonderful example of this: an unconventional love scene between two loners which, in turn, conducts dialog with the opening scene: now the characters don't talk about money and sex but about loneliness.
The way I see it, if Psycho has got a thesis, it must be that fear is in ourselves. Marion is constantly put in scenes with mirrors: first in the office, then in the motel etc. The most luminous proof of the nature of this thesis is in the scene where Marion's sister (Vera Miles) scares her own reflection on a mirror -- a brilliant shot which soon became a cliché.
In Psycho money isn't really essential. Money is present, all the time, but it doesn't make a difference -- it is insignificant. Hitchcock obviously wanted to show money just as a part of the society. It is a part of the air we breathe, so to speak. However, Psycho does also talk more widely about consumer society. A good example of the consumer culture is the scene where Marion quickly changes her old car to a new one. Even if her motive was to get away from the cops, the scene doesn't just talk about her personal hurry but about the social hurry inside us all. Psycho talks about the American society and about the transition, in the 1950's: how it turned from the conservative to more and more liberal in the 1960's but at the same became more alienated and anguished.
I'm sure I could go on and on about Psycho but, unfortunately, there are limitations. To put it briefly, Psycho is one of the best American films ever made and its aesthetic, cultural and sociological influence is undeniable. Many have spent thousands of words just talking about the architecture of Psycho: how the mansion represents the Freudian psychic apparatus (id, ego and superego) and how much influence Hitchcock took from an American painter Edward Hopper (take a look at The House by the Railroad). Together with Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960), Hitchcock's Psycho opened the gates for the graphically clear treatment for violence. However, it is much more of a film about our world than violence. Psycho is all about an example of voyeurism and alienation but, in reality, the criticism hits the whole perverted culture and society. Its mundane, Freudian horror is straight from this world and those who criticize it for being horrible, actually criticize their own existence and twisted world.