Perfectly Normal Norman.

Rating: 9/10 (24 January 2011)

Hereabouts there be spoilers.
I don't usually bother with warnings that some reveals will be revealed because so few films actually HAVE twists in them that are in any way shocking. Many mysteries, possibly most, have surprises waiting at the end but they rarely leave you dumbfounded. "The Crying Game" is one of the exceptions, however, and "Psycho" is the mother of them all.
There isn't much point in going through the plot again, so I'll just note a few impressions that have lasted over many viewings.
One is that there are a couple of usually ignored people in the crew that deserve medals. One is the production designer, who is responsible for the overall look of the picture. His work could hardly be improved upon, from the oppressively bleak landscape surrounding Janet Leigh's car when the CHP officer wakes her up, to the haunted mansion on top of the slight hill, surrounded by gardens of weeds.
The other neglected contributor is the set dresser. Of course the director, the punctilious Hitchcock, decides questions of props and camera placement, but -- that soulless and bourgeois real estate office with its potted plants and its large picture of a sere landscape that perches over Janet Leigh's desk; the stuffed birds suggestive of Poe (a raven) or a menacing nocturnal predator (an owl), and the pictures of birds, juxtaposed with pictures of roly poly naked nymphs, some in the act of being violated. In Bloch's novel and in the film, the untitled book that Vera Miles examines in Perkins' little-boy bedroom is filled with pornography but it couldn't be shown on screen.
The murder in the shower doesn't need to be described but I've never been able to watch this without a sinking feeling that Janet Leigh really doesn't NEED that shower at this particular point in time and space. Leigh is a fine actress. When she's driving away from Phoenix and the camera is on her face, minuscule expressions come and go across her features, reflecting the conversations she's fantasizing about. There's even a hint of a wry smile when she imagines the outrage of Cassady, the fat and self-satisfied millionaire, when he discovers that Leigh has absconded with the money he flaunted, as in -- "Take that, you bastard." There's something aptly birdlike about Janet Leigh too. She's narrow shouldered and long legged, a little stork-like, as well as being just the right age. She has the desperation of a woman facing forty. Of course to a man who's spent the last ten years alone with a corpse, Leigh is an object of Paphian interest. She's old but not too old yet, just as she's a star but not too big a star to torpedo the movie when she is eliminated from it.
Two shots stand out from a multitude of originals. (1) When Balsam finds Leigh's fake signature in the motel's register, the camera is looking up at Tony Perkins, who is nibbling some candy. Balsam says, "Oh, yes. Here she is," and invites Perkins to examine the fake. The camera doesn't cut away but remains on Perkins' jaw as he leans over the unseen book and we watch his jaw and adam's apple working nervously away. (2) Perkins decides to move Mama from her bedroom to the fruit cellar. The camera follows him very slowly as he climbs the stairs and enters her room, but inside of going through the door, the camera rises about the transom and pivots around, an extraordinary movement, so that when Perkins exits lugging mother in his arms, we are too flabbergasted by what the camera has done to notice any discrepancy between the reality Norman has constructed for us and any reality that most of the rest of us might recognize.
(3) Just to be wanton, I'll throw in that shot of Janet Leigh's dead eye. The camera first follows a pale stream of blood down INTO the bathtub drain, then dissolves to Leigh's staring iris, then draws back along the floor while deliberately righting itself from a slight tilt to the proper vertical. (Check out the remake. The camera apes the original shot but practically twirls on its axis.) Two weakness or, let's say, things I wish Hitchcock would have done a little differently. One is that car gurgling and sinking into that accommodating swamp. You only find those swamps in the movies and Louisiana. The second is that experimental scene in which Martin Balsam tumbles backward down a rear-projected staircase. The director was more proud of the mechanical difficulties behind that shot than he had a right to be.
You know what occurs to me sometimes, when I'm watching this, or when I'm watching some of the garbage that now fills our screens? I wish that the people writing and directing movies like "Saw II" would rescreen "Psycho" so they could get some hint about how to make a truly horrifying movie with practically no blood, no monsters with chain saws and no teen agers screaming and running round in panties. Man, have we lost our grip, or what? And while we're at it let's have no more girls named Jillian or Megan, either. I'm tired of them. Bring back the old days when movies had little blood and girls had sensible names like Mary and Hepzibah. Oh -- and let's get rid of that hand-held electronic junk too. No more iPods or Pseudopods or whatever they are. No Blackberries or Strawberries either. Whatever happened to whitewall tires?