We all go a little mad sometimes. Haven't you?

Rating: 10/10 (20 April 2016)

It's funny to see so many reviews of this classic marked for spoilers because the shower murder scene of Marion Crane is perhaps the most prominent example of film being embedded into the cultural psyche - and then parodied and mimicked so much that it birthed an entire new genre. It is Hitchcock's greatest use of montage - each cut as an assault on the audience's senses, each as another slash of the knife to Crane's dripping, screaming face. Eisenstein's theory means we do not actually see knife ever puncture flesh, but the separate images creates a merged meaning. And would it be half as iconic without Bernard Herrmann's contribution? The screeching strings are built up apprehensively before the pivotal scene, and when they finally match up with the knife, it slips in seamlessly with each slash, each cut, and it is frantic, horrifying.
Hitchcock made history by killing her sensuous lead star less than halfway into his movie, but his mastery is shown in how effortlessly he moves our sympathies from the blonde to Norman Bates (actually they are not so different; compare the last, wicked smile with the furrow of the brow and the sneaking grin of Leigh in the exchanged car, as night's darkness descends on her but the light illuminates her face all the same - and those mischievous eyebrows!). We are continually shown the cop in the distance, a latent anxiety that makes the car swap all for naught. And we expect this to pan out somehow. This anxiety becomes Norman's as he discovers the murder - quickly, briefly, absentmindedly, as if he was just changing the sheets, he cleans up the mess. He puts on his boyish, gangly persona back on, and we pause as he does, hoping too the car will resume bubbling and sinking. And as his social facade is shaken by probing questions, we rally for him to regain his confidence and wish the detective away.
Perkins is at the film's centre, with a brilliant, brilliant performance. With each rewatch it becomes a game to note his marked switches of his persona, his adoption of the psychopath's empty chuckle and stare. The social skills breakdowns are subtle; just a tiny pause, an awkward question, but not enough to make Crane too apprehensive. His wary eyes darting around just ever so slightly. His 'hobby' of taxidermy treads on the line between normal and deranged, but it is not until later do we recognise the sexual motif of the birds (his mother being his first stuffed corpse) and the way Perkin's body language uncannily points towards his internal psychological delusion. As if we did not receive the message clearly, Hitchcock superimposes a skull onto that final, chilling stare.
Hitchcock also went to great lengths to hide his mystery whilst not compromising his visuals. The shadow behind the shower curtain and illuminating only the feminine wig. The bird's eye view of Arbogast's demise, complete with rear projection effect so it feels like he is falling into the stairs (not dissimilar to Hitchcock's own dolly zoom). The female silhouette high up in the Bates second-story window (it is not so far-fetched to imagine Norman propping up his late mother and having conversations with her). In one instance, the lazy-eye of the sheriff seems to address the audience itself and ask: "Who then is that woman buried in the Bates grave?" I have come to accept the final psychiatrist's explanation as a necessary evil; it was a different time, as evident by Hitchcock's promos which forbid late entrants to theatre showings. Would a modern viewer ever entertain the idea of walking in halfway through a film only to realise the star had already been killed off? But Hitchcock set a precedent; no doubt viewers were all thoroughly confused to find Leigh bubbling under the swamp, but it only piqued their curiosity, their determination to unravel the mystery of Psycho.