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Notable cast/crew: Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates. Vera Miles as Lila Crane. John Gavin as Sam Loomis. Janet Leigh as Marion Crane. Martin Balsam as Detective Milton Arbogast. Simon Oakland as Dr Fred Richman. Patricia Hitchcock as Caroline. This was her third and final picture with her father. John Anderson as California Charlie. Original Music by Bernard Herrmann.
Running time: 109 minutesDirector: Alfred Hitchcock
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| Never shower with the door unlocked |
After running into her boss and an incident with the police after she fell asleep in her car after driving during the night, she sells her car and buys a new one with some of the cash. She continues on, intending to meet Sam and pay off his debts so they can run away together. She pulls into the Bates Motel during a rainstorm to find shelter for the night.
There she meets Norman Bates who runs the motel and lives with his mother in the house atop the hill overlooking the motel. He's amiable enough and rents her a room for the night. He offers her a warm meal at the house, and she accepts. He leaves to get it ready, and she unpacks, contemplating the stolen money as she does so. She hears Norman arguing with his mother, and Norman returns with dinner which they eat in the office due to his mother's refusal to let Marion in the house. Norman discusses his taxidermy hobby with Marion, as well as general philosophies and how they both want to escape feeling trapped in their lives. We do get the feeling that while Norman seems like an awkward, nice young man, there's something not quite right about him. He's a little too intense, and there is a hint he may have spent time in an institution. After their talk, Marion resolves to drive home in the morning and return the money. Unknown to her, Norman watches her through a peephole in the wall before he heads back to the house.
While Marion showers, a figure enters the bathroom. The curtain is thrown aside, and a woman wielding a knife attacks her and murders her. Norman's voice rings out from the house yelling, "Mother!" and "Blood!" He runs down to the motel and is horrified to find Marion dead. He cleans up the room, packs Marion's things and her corpse into the trunk of her car, and rolls the car into the swamp behind the motel.
Marion's sister, Lila, goes to see Sam hoping she's with him. Sam hasn't seen her either. Arbogast, a PI, arrives hoping for a lead on Marion and the missing 40 grand. Arbogast backtracks towards Phoenix and comes across the Bates Motel. Norman's nervous behavior makes him suspicious. Arbogast notices a woman sitting by the window at the house and asks if he can speak to her. Norman becomes even more defensive and asks Arbogast to leave.
Arbogast notifies Lila then returns to the house to see if he can get to Mrs Bates. When he can't find Norman, he heads up to the house and enters. At the top of the stairs, Mrs Bates comes out of her room and stabs him. He falls down the stairs, and she pounces on him, repeatedly stabbing him. Norman disposes of the evidence again in the swamp.
Sam and Lila go to see the deputy when Arbogast doesn't turn up. They want to know what happened to him since he was only going to talk to the mother and come back. The deputy knows this can't be true: Norman Bates' mother has been dead and buried in Greenlawn Cemetery for the past 10 years. It was a murder-suicide by poison. Norman's mother was dating a man and found out he was married. Norman found their bodies together in bed. Sam insists he saw the old woman in the window, and Arbogast said the same. This makes the deputy question who is buried in Greenlawn Cemetery. We then jump to Norman carrying his mother to the cellar over her protests so that she will be safe until every thing blows over.
When the deputy won't do anything further, Sam and Lila go to the Bates Motel themselves posing as a couple needing a room. Once Norman leaves them, they search Marion's cabin. Lila finds part of a note Marion had written in the toilet that hadn't flushed down. Sam goes to the office to stall Norman, and Lila proceeds up to the house. She finds the home empty but evidence of the old woman there. Sam has continued to press Norman and accuses him or his mother of stealing the $40,000.
Norman cracks Sam over the head with a vase and heads to the house. Lila sees him and goes down to the cellar. There, Mrs Bates is sitting alone. When Lila touches the chair she's in, it spins to reveal Mrs Bates' corpse. Norman bursts in wearing a wig and his mother's dress, brandishing a knife. Before he can attack, Sam runs in and grabs him, wresting the knife from him.
At the police station, the psychiatrist explains he got the story of what happened, not from Norman, but from Norman's mother. Norman Bates no longer exists. Norman has developed two personalities, and the dominant personality has won. Norman murdered his mother and her lover. The psychological shock of it fractured his personality. He dug up her corpse and a weighted coffin was buried. To perpetuate the idea his mother was still alive, he took on her personality in addition to preserving her corpse, even dressing as her at times.
Norman as "Mother" now thinks he will get off because a harmless, old lady couldn't kill anyone. The scene closes with Mrs Bates' skull superimposed over his face as we transition to the car being towed out of the swamp.
MacGuffin: Stolen money
Hitchcock cameo: Outside Marion's office wearing a cowboy hat
Hitchcock themes:
- Blondes
- Mothers
- Stairs
- Identity
Verdict: Psycho continued a string of excellent movies that started with Vertigo and ended with The Birds. Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh are superb and carry the movie. By hiding the twist until the end, Hitchcock is able to transfer the audience's sympathy from Marion to Norman after her murder because we think he's as much a victim of his mother as she is. Martin Balsam is also very good as Arbogast. Vera Miles and John Gavin are okay, but they're not given much to work with. They're more plot devices to capture Norman.
Obviously the idea of killing off your star halfway through the movie was shocking; it's still a shocking idea today, but it really emphasizes that anything can happen in this movie. That plays into the heightened paranoia you've already experienced seeing the first third of the movie from Marion's perspective. Then to find out at the end that the other star of the film is really the killer? It's a bold move, and it works.
Hitchcock deliberately wanted Psycho to look like a cheap exploitation film. He shot it, not with his usual expensive feature crew (which had just finished North by Northwest), but with the crew he used for his television show. He filmed in black and white with long passages containing no dialogue. His budget, $800,000, was cheap even by 1960 standards; the Bates Motel and mansion were built on the back lot at Universal.
The murder of Janet Leigh's character in the shower is the film's pivotal scene and one of the best-known in all of cinema. It was shot from December 17 to December 23, 1959, and features 77 different camera angles. The scene runs 3 minutes and includes 50 cuts. Most of the shots are extreme close-ups, except for medium shots in the shower directly before and directly after the murder. The combination of the close shots with their short duration makes the sequence feel more subjective than it would have been if the images were presented alone or in a wider angle, an example of the technique Hitchcock described as "transferring the menace from the screen into the mind of the audience. "Mother" was played by a stand-in during the shower scene because the feeling was Anthony Perkins' silhouette was too recognizable and would give away the twist too early in the film. "Mother's" voice was provided by three different people (one, a man) to further disconcert the audience over what was really going on. In order to capture the straight-on shot of the shower head, the camera had to be equipped with a long lens. The inner holes on the shower head were blocked and the camera placed a sufficient distance away so that the water, while appearing to be aimed directly at the lens, actually went around and past it. The soundtrack of screeching violins, violas, and cellos was an original all-strings piece by composer Bernard Herrmann titled "The Murder". Hitchcock originally intended to have no music for the sequence, but Herrmann insisted he try his composition. Afterward, Hitchcock agreed it vastly intensified the scene, and nearly doubled Herrmann's salary. The blood in the scene is reputed to have been Bosco chocolate syrup, which shows up better on black-and-white film, and has more realistic density than stage blood. The sound of the knife entering flesh was created by plunging a knife into a casaba melon. There are varying accounts whether Leigh was in the shower the entire time or a body double was used for some parts of the murder sequence and its aftermath. In an interview with Roger Ebert, and in the book Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, Leigh stated she was in the scene the entire time, and Hitchcock only used a stand-in for the sequence in which Norman wraps Marion's body in a shower curtain and places it in the trunk of her car. The 2010 book The Girl in Alfred Hitchcock's Shower by Robert Graysmith contradicts this, identifying Marli Renfro as Leigh's body double for some of the shower scene's shots.
There is a second great scene when Arbogast is in the house and heading up the stairs. The camera follows him up until he reaches the top where an overhead shot shows "Mother" emerge and stab him sending him back down the stairs in a shot reminiscent of Norman Lloyd falling off the Statue of Liberty in Saboteur.
The most controversial move was Hitchcock's "no late admission" policy for the film, which was unusual for the time. It was not entirely original as Henri-Georges Clouzot had done the same in France for Les Diaboliques. Hitchcock thought that if people entered the theater late and never saw the star actress Janet Leigh, they would feel cheated. At first theater owners opposed the idea, claiming that they would lose business. However, after the first day, the owners enjoyed long lines of people waiting to see the film.
This was Alfred Hitchcock's last film for Paramount. By the time principal photography started, Hitchcock had moved his offices to Universal, and the film was actually shot on Universal's back lot. Universal owns the film today as well, even though the Paramount Pictures logo is still on the film.
The Bates house was largely modeled on an oil painting called "House by the Railroad" painted in 1925 by Edward Hopper. The architectural details, viewpoint, and austere sky is almost identical to that seen in the film.
Immediately prior to the closing sequence of Norman Bates in his jail cell, as the camera moves down the hallway to where the police have confined him, the uniformed guard at the cell door is Ted Knight, best remembered as pompous, dim-witted news anchor Ted Baxter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
The last shot of Norman Bates's face has a still frame of a human skull superimposed on it, almost subliminally. The skull is that of "Mother". Hitchcock tested the fear factor of "Mother's" corpse by placing it in Janet Leigh's dressing room and listening to how loud she screamed when she discovered it there. Hitchcock had a canvas chair with "Mrs. Bates" written on the back prominently placed and displayed on the set throughout shooting. This further added to the enigma surrounding who was the actress playing Mrs. Bates.
The novel upon which the film is based was inspired by the true story of Ed Gein, a serial killer who was also the inspiration for Deranged (1974), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), and The Silence of the Lambs (1991).
This is the first American film ever to show a toilet flushing on screen.
Out of five bananas, I give it:
Obviously the idea of killing off your star halfway through the movie was shocking; it's still a shocking idea today, but it really emphasizes that anything can happen in this movie. That plays into the heightened paranoia you've already experienced seeing the first third of the movie from Marion's perspective. Then to find out at the end that the other star of the film is really the killer? It's a bold move, and it works.
Hitchcock deliberately wanted Psycho to look like a cheap exploitation film. He shot it, not with his usual expensive feature crew (which had just finished North by Northwest), but with the crew he used for his television show. He filmed in black and white with long passages containing no dialogue. His budget, $800,000, was cheap even by 1960 standards; the Bates Motel and mansion were built on the back lot at Universal.
The murder of Janet Leigh's character in the shower is the film's pivotal scene and one of the best-known in all of cinema. It was shot from December 17 to December 23, 1959, and features 77 different camera angles. The scene runs 3 minutes and includes 50 cuts. Most of the shots are extreme close-ups, except for medium shots in the shower directly before and directly after the murder. The combination of the close shots with their short duration makes the sequence feel more subjective than it would have been if the images were presented alone or in a wider angle, an example of the technique Hitchcock described as "transferring the menace from the screen into the mind of the audience. "Mother" was played by a stand-in during the shower scene because the feeling was Anthony Perkins' silhouette was too recognizable and would give away the twist too early in the film. "Mother's" voice was provided by three different people (one, a man) to further disconcert the audience over what was really going on. In order to capture the straight-on shot of the shower head, the camera had to be equipped with a long lens. The inner holes on the shower head were blocked and the camera placed a sufficient distance away so that the water, while appearing to be aimed directly at the lens, actually went around and past it. The soundtrack of screeching violins, violas, and cellos was an original all-strings piece by composer Bernard Herrmann titled "The Murder". Hitchcock originally intended to have no music for the sequence, but Herrmann insisted he try his composition. Afterward, Hitchcock agreed it vastly intensified the scene, and nearly doubled Herrmann's salary. The blood in the scene is reputed to have been Bosco chocolate syrup, which shows up better on black-and-white film, and has more realistic density than stage blood. The sound of the knife entering flesh was created by plunging a knife into a casaba melon. There are varying accounts whether Leigh was in the shower the entire time or a body double was used for some parts of the murder sequence and its aftermath. In an interview with Roger Ebert, and in the book Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, Leigh stated she was in the scene the entire time, and Hitchcock only used a stand-in for the sequence in which Norman wraps Marion's body in a shower curtain and places it in the trunk of her car. The 2010 book The Girl in Alfred Hitchcock's Shower by Robert Graysmith contradicts this, identifying Marli Renfro as Leigh's body double for some of the shower scene's shots.
There is a second great scene when Arbogast is in the house and heading up the stairs. The camera follows him up until he reaches the top where an overhead shot shows "Mother" emerge and stab him sending him back down the stairs in a shot reminiscent of Norman Lloyd falling off the Statue of Liberty in Saboteur.
The most controversial move was Hitchcock's "no late admission" policy for the film, which was unusual for the time. It was not entirely original as Henri-Georges Clouzot had done the same in France for Les Diaboliques. Hitchcock thought that if people entered the theater late and never saw the star actress Janet Leigh, they would feel cheated. At first theater owners opposed the idea, claiming that they would lose business. However, after the first day, the owners enjoyed long lines of people waiting to see the film.
This was Alfred Hitchcock's last film for Paramount. By the time principal photography started, Hitchcock had moved his offices to Universal, and the film was actually shot on Universal's back lot. Universal owns the film today as well, even though the Paramount Pictures logo is still on the film.
The Bates house was largely modeled on an oil painting called "House by the Railroad" painted in 1925 by Edward Hopper. The architectural details, viewpoint, and austere sky is almost identical to that seen in the film.
Immediately prior to the closing sequence of Norman Bates in his jail cell, as the camera moves down the hallway to where the police have confined him, the uniformed guard at the cell door is Ted Knight, best remembered as pompous, dim-witted news anchor Ted Baxter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
The last shot of Norman Bates's face has a still frame of a human skull superimposed on it, almost subliminally. The skull is that of "Mother". Hitchcock tested the fear factor of "Mother's" corpse by placing it in Janet Leigh's dressing room and listening to how loud she screamed when she discovered it there. Hitchcock had a canvas chair with "Mrs. Bates" written on the back prominently placed and displayed on the set throughout shooting. This further added to the enigma surrounding who was the actress playing Mrs. Bates.
This is the first American film ever to show a toilet flushing on screen.
Out of five bananas, I give it:
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