***** out of 5

Rating: Null/10 (31 July 2003)

Warning: if you have not seen Psycho stop reading and immediately run to your nearest video store and pick up a copy of it at all costs. (may contain spoilers) Psycho was released during the year of 1960. It was director Alfred Hitchcock's response to a frenzy created by the media's first publicized serial killer Ed Gein. Psycho brings back memories of a time when film was just as much about story as it was style. Hitchcock embodied that, a true storyteller at heart. He was an inventor, using misbegotten images and twisting them into something darkly erotic through voyeuristic tendencies presided inside of characters. Hitchcock didn't make films to scare the audience with what happens, he made films to scare the audience with what they shouldn't see but can't help but want to. I have always said that it is not hard to scare an audience if the initiative is there, but it takes a true mastermind to produce scares that will not take away from the films point, rather uphold it. Hitchcock was that mastermind. Who else could have made a murder scene in which we see a victim stabbed to death but never once actually witness the knife penetrate the flesh and still have it disturb audiences forty years later? The story to Psycho is simple, given the routine inspection. The idea, on the other hand is complex, twisting and turning around corners and bends, leading the audience to grasp onto central ideas and characterization only to turn it around and reinvent itself, as if to have never even implied any motives in the first place. That was Hitchcock's way. Janet Leigh is Marion Crane. We open to a scene of her with her secret lover. She has a headache and is going to work; they may never see each other again. Our interest has already flared. After arriving at work Marion asks for the rest of the day off after she takes an envelope filled with forty thousand dollars in cash to the bank (a client's payment on a new home). But instead of depositing the money she skips town without telling anyone and checks in at the Bates Motel. Here she meets the owner, Norman Bates, who ensures her that he has a vacancy, `in fact I have twelve. Twelve cabins, twelve vacancies.' Normal takes a liking to the girl, he is lonely and has no one but his mother. He watches Marion through a hole in the wall of his parlour; he even invites her up to his hillside home for diner. His mother won't allow this, she is much to overbearing we learn, not from seeing her but understanding her through voiced assumption. Mystery begins to peak. This all seems minimal, it isn't. These opening scenes are a form of admission to the good ones, not to say they are any less enjoyable. They build up character, making us feel like we are part of something that we aren't through melding words of falsehoods. We see them as important to building story, they are really a distraction through explanation. Now comes the shower scene, one of the most famous scenes in film history. I should not be giving anything away by saying that Marion is killed off during this scene, that was one of the many twists. When it was first released audiences could not understand why Hitchcock would be killing off his main character in a climatic occurrence a mere halfway into the film. There is a reason for it as far as I can see. A lot of people regard it as the pivotal scene in the film, it isn't. The scene on its own does not have enough constitution to regard an explanation for itself. The key scene occurs mere minutes before, in the parlour, a scene that coined the popular phrase `A boys best friend is his mother.' It represented a breaking point in the life of Ed Gein that could explain the motives behind all actions to follow. It was speculated that Gein killed his brother after talking ill of his mother (Marions murder), but there was never any proof found to support this logic (we never see the face of the killer). It is for that reason why the parlour scene is to be placed in such high regard. Listen closely to the dialogue in comparison to such a true-life event and then survey the shower scene as, not an action on its own, rather a physical reaction from an emotional exploit. The remainder of the film is almost of an entirely different ilk, as Marion's sister and lover search for an explanation as to why she has gone missing, and a deeper pursuit into the Mrs. Bates character. I won't get into it, for these scenes are so full of uncomfortable mystery and bitter intrigue that they almost need to vindicate themselves. But what I lastly wish to touch upon is the Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates. Perkins reminds me of an old Vince Vaughn (who ironically played Bates in the Gus Van Sant remake of Psycho). He delivers a chilling performance from his nervous paranoia, what he says doesn't scare us, but what we think he isn't saying gives reason to worry. Perkins gives a truly masterful performance. There is not a lot of stones left to be turned when talking about Psycho. It has been receiving critical praise for over forty years. And though Alfred Hitchcock died in 1980 he is still greatly missed and still considered one of the most influential and important directors of all time. Revisiting this film only reminds us that, even though he has been taken away from us, his vision will forever live on through his timeless classics.