The horror and the terror combining on a broad canvas of genre manipulation; psychoanalysis and deconstruction of an archetype in what most say is Hitchcock's best.

Rating: 8/10 (21 May 2009)

Similarly to a lot of films from decades-past, nothing anybody here, or anywhere else, says about certain films will alter their status as ground breaking, or influential in certain aspects, pieces of cinema. Hitchcock's 1960 film Psycho is one of those such films, a film that put paid to an entire era and mindset in American cinema; a film that defied grammar and construction and went all out in its deconstruction of both genre and issues of censorship. A film made by a man usually uttered within the same breath as both Kubrick and Welles when it comes to the film-makers that shaped cinema in its first full century as an existing medium. Most will say Psycho is Hitchcock at his best, and you'd be hard pressed to disagree with them.
Essentially, Psycho is a film that covers a fair degree of psychoanalysis going on within a close knit locale. The majority of the film is dominated by a certain Norman Bates (Perkins), a young man whose mother still has a grip on him as he attempts to live whatever pitiful existence he has. Bates will predominantly inhabit one of either two spaces, briefly breaking off to inhabit a rural, swamp locale for the dumping of a car. The predominant two are a cabin, complete with motel rooms and an office as well as his house on the hill which he 'shares' with his mother. Something that Hitchcock does to a very basic level with these seemingly innocent, everyday locations is turn them into spaces of the 'uncanny' variety. That is to say, at a time when Hollywood's studio system permitted definitive genres to be shot on certain sets well suited to the genre film being made, (a mad scientist's laboratory for horror or the inside of a space ship for a sci-fi) Hitchcock manipulates offices and houses and other such 'spaces' and turns them on their heads for what the locations initially demand you produce there.
But the toying with the genre isn't limited to just this. The set up involves a certain Marion Crane (Leigh) and the theft of a large amount of money from her boss. What is set up as a road movie, in which we might assume chase to be the primary narrative drive, turns into something completely different. Initially, the film is driven by a woman. Marion is presented in a less than flattering light, established at the very beginning when it appears she has spent the entirety of her lunch break with another man out of wedlock. Following this is the theft and the complete disregard for authority and her own safety when it transpires she sleeps in her car and very quickly tries to get rid of a police officer when he questions her.
For this passage of film, Psycho relies on its suspense revolving around whether Marion will be caught as would-be lines of dialogue are exchanged within Marion's mind to do with what her peers are debating back at her work. What we assume will be a (routine?) chase film-come-thriller as her boss strives to get his money back will become something else entirely, aptly marked at a certain point in the film in which special attention is given to the removing of the money from the piece. Following this, a new plot drive, indeed protagonist, takes over the reigns of the film and it branches out into a different beast.
I suppose we are meant to consider Psycho a horror piece, despite it starting off as a thriller told from the guilty's perspective as essence of chase looms in the background. Later on, following the famous shower scene, tides will turn and what essentially remains a detective story is told from a killer's perspective. The film places the audience within the world of a murderer and we begin to see that world through the eyes of this character, something that occurs perhaps slightly out of turn when Norman spies on Marion getting undressed in her motel room by the office. It is a signifying of power; a placing the audience into a position of power that they are forced to share with Norman, whom, at the time, probably just comes across as a little eccentric. Later on, however, the audience are completely roped in and must share the stress with Norman. A clever move on Hitchcock's behalf is in the form of private detective Milton Arbogast (Balsam), who badgers poor Norman at the motel reception about recent visitors. Norman squirms and, as an audience, we may have an immediate reaction of not wanting Norman to get caught out. But should we be feeling these emotions given who he is and what he did?
If Psycho achieves anything, it is the manipulation of genre and film language, but it is additionally the breaking down of a character archetype. For the film to spend time with Norman, a seemingly normal human being, as this 'monster' inhabiting a horror film, is extraordinary. There is nothing initially uncanny about Norman and he is a far cry from previous horror genre 'monsters' in the form of anything Universal had to offer at the time. But the film retains a spooky and unnerving atmosphere, punctuated by set pieces involving the aforementioned Arbogast, in a memorable scene on some stairs; but also right towards the end when normal, everyday individuals move in on Bates' house to uncover the truth, in what is a sequence that is still rather frightening. Psycho is somewhat of a towering achievement, and the fact an individual produced this sort of a film yet still managed to cause debate as to whether it's his out-and-out best work, is arguably the most incredible thing about the Psycho.