Continuity Error

Rating: Null/10 (6 September 2007)

Hitchcock only suggested that the psychiatrist scene would be a "hat grabber" he gave Josef Stefano his blessing to write that scene as he saw fit; if Hitch had really hated that scene it would have been gone. Hitch only overruled Stefano's wish to use a female psychiatrist. (Had psychiatrist scene been cut, Hitch needn't have cut the poignant scene where Lila Crane and Sam Loomis converse at length, sharing that they have both become reconciled to the fact that Marion won't be found alive).
The most implausible thing in Stefano's script is the unhappy relationship between Marion and Sam. We learn that Marion Crane worked in Phoenix Az. for Lowery's realty company for 10 years. So how on earth would she have become romantically involved with a divorced hardware store proprietor, living 550 miles away in California?? Their tryst seems like a very clumsy and implausible plot device to me.
I may be nit picking to mention this error but it is surprising that Alfred and Alma Hitchcock missed this one, given their meticulous attention to detail. (Remember how upset Hitch got about there being a full moon in the rain-machine shoot outside the Bates Motel? - the plot development didn't really require it to be raining at all.) During the opening pan shot in Phoenix, the caption reads Friday December 11th. Later, in the "dead of night" scene Lila Crane tells deputy sheriff Al Chambers that Marion Crane left Phoenix "a week ago yesterday". This would make it Saturday December 19th, and thus the scene outside the Fairvale church would have been on Sunday 20th. Yet in the penultimate scene at the District Attorney's office we see a calendar on the wall that shows the Dec 17th (a Thursday).