Hitch's 2nd Best, But That Is Saying A Whole Lot

Rating: 10/10 (30 June 2000)

Hitchcock's 1960 film Psycho is probably the best horror movie ever made, and though slightly inferior to his Vertigo, it remains a true showcase of the master's talent. Though I was not around the 1st time the movie came out, I was lucky enough to recently catch a screening of it, with a guest appearance by Janet Leigh. I had already seen the movie twice, and anticipated everything that was about to happen, but it didn't really matter. It still scared me so much, I was petrified to think how terrified I would be if I saw it in the theaters in 1960, not knowing what was about to happen. We all know the plot--Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) embezzles 40,000 dollars from her company and is on the run. She stops at the Bates Motel where she meets Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), a friendly young man who is restrained from being close to anyone but his possessive mother. They talk, and she gets in the shower. Before she is done her shower, she is stabbed to death by Norman's mother. But who really stabbed her? And is she really dead? Marion's sister Lila (Vera Miles) and Marion's boyfriend (Jon Gavin) hire detective Arbogast (Martin Balsam) to investigate. Then he is similarly stabbed to death before he can question Norman's mother.... Psycho is simply amazing, one of the true artistic pieces of the cinema. Joseph Stefano's disturbing, sick screenplay will not soon be forgotten, though the plot is not the main part of the movie. The cinematography is some of the best ever put on the screen, from the several pans from the Bates Motel to Norman's house to the opening shot across the city. It is dark--undeniably bleak and dark, as is the mood of the movie. The art direction is necessarily scary--Norman's house is perfectly secluded from the rest of the world, and looks very spooky, as does the motel. As Balsam notes, the hotel seems to be "hiding from the world." The acting varies--Balsam is quite good as the always suspicious detective, Leigh is ideally cast as the every day woman who sees a chance to get away from life and takes it, and Perkins is nothing less than fantastic as Norman Bates, a roll that would define his career, and one he will always be associated with. However, Miles and Gavin are wooden anti-characters with no personality whatsoever showing. But that really doesn't matter. Hitchcock liked the idea from the start--getting a big star and killing her off in the first reel. It certainly shocked audiences, who before came into movies whenever they wanted, sometimes even 30 minutes to an hour into the movie. They were not allowed to do that with Psycho. "The film you should see from the beginning--or not at all" the taglines stated. Psycho is a perfect example of audience manipulation--everyone assumes that the story is about Leigh, and when she gets bumped off, Hitchcock takes the audience down a completely different road. The shower scene is one of the most memorable and suprprising scenes in film history. The scenes in which Leigh is driving are suspenseful, even though there's nothing really happening. And when Perkins is trying to dispose of Leigh's car by pushing it into the swamp, the way the car stops sinking for a second--everyone suddenly wonders what he will do now--but then it sinks away again. Surprisingly enough, the audience wants the car to go down--we want Perkins to get rid of the evidence. And untrue to Horror formula, the climax of Psycho takes place not in a rainy dark night--but in the bright, sunny daylight. These are all examples of audience manipulation--which no one does better than Alfred Hitchcock. But yet--Hitchcock's direction, I think, is not the best part of the movie--or at least it is tied for first. The best? BERNARD HERRMANN. If you do not know that name yet, write it down. BERNARD HERRMANN. He has done the score to the Hitchcock movies Marnie, The Birds, The Wrong Man, North By Northwest, Vertigo (ohh, the Vertigo score), and Psycho. He also did the score to Scorcese's Taxi Driver, and Orson Welles' Citizen Kane. He won an oscar for his score for The Devil And Daniel Webster. His score for Psycho is certainly his most well known--especially the shower scene part. Though not his best (Vertigo is his best) the score is the part of Psycho that stays with you after the film is done, days after. That keeps haunting you, that keeps scaring you. Psycho would be three or four times less scary without the shrieking violins of Herrmann's score. Herrmann also pulled an exercise in audience manipulation--for the score, frightening as it is, consisted of only 4 violins. The music truly sets the mood for the movie. Creating the madness and worry in Marion's mind while she is driving, creating the true horror of the murders, and creating the calm but suspenseful serenity of some of the dialogues, where there is no music at all, and the film is eerily silent. You know the shrieking violins are soon. Bernard Herrmann's scores are not often enough credited as a huge, HUGE part Hitchcock's success with his pictures. So write that name down if you don't know it already: BERNARD HERRMANN. And see Psycho. If you've already seen it, see it again to catch the little things you missed before. I guarantee you there are some.