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More Hitchcock
Last Laugh: Vertigo
Was Hitchcock's masterpiece a private joke?
Alfred Hitchcock: A Hank of Hair and a Piece of Bone
A photo study of the Master's fetishes — uh, motifs
Touch of Psycho? Welles' Influence on Hitchcock
Touch of Evil and Psycho: John W. Hall asks, "Can you tell the difference?"
Psycho is one of the most famous movies ever made; the shower sequence depicting the murder of Marion Crane is quite possibly the most celebrated sequence in all of film. Yet it is easy to think of Psycho as nothing more than a contrived potboiler, held together by blatant deceits that prevent the audience from guessing the "secret" right off the bat. Compared to classically great films like Jean Renoir’s La Grande Illusion or Carné’s and Prevert’s Les Enfants du Paradis, Psycho may seem like little more than a malicious joke.
Hitchcock himself did little to discourage this sort of thinking. Although he clearly didn’t mind being called a genius, he liked to present himself as being in the business of selling tickets, and that alone. Money, not art, was his concern.
Certainly, Hitchcock did like selling tickets. As a boy, he was fascinated by the popular London theatre that flourished prior to World War I. He liked the stars, the glamour, and the melodrama — the brave, handsome heroes, the pure heroines, the wicked villains, and the triumph of good over evil.
But Hitchcock also believed that this picture of reality was as false as it was alluring. Within the conventions of popular melodrama, he explored themes more often linked to the avant garde than popular entertainment: loneliness, loss of identity, sexual ambiguity, passivity, voyeurism, the triumph of evil, and the oppressive weight of a dead past.1
Hitchcock explored these obsessions through an elaborate set of images and cinematic devices that he worked and reworked from film to film. Sometimes his treatment could be lifeless, and sometimes powerful. In 1948, for example, he bought the film rights to Rope, a pathetically bad play based on the Leopold-Loeb murder case2 depicting two young homosexuals who plan and carry out a "perfect murder," which he improved not one whit by bringing it to the screen. A few years later, he revisited the same themes in Strangers on a Train (1951), one of his most satisfying thrillers.
When he came to make Psycho in 1960, Hitchcock had been making movies for more than 30 years. Prior to Psycho, he had stepped out of the thriller genre to make two "personal" films, The Wrong Man (1956) and Vertigo (1958), neither of which was successful at the box office.3 In Psycho, which was a thriller, and also an enormous box office success, Hitchcock gave powerful release to the obsessions within him, cutting deeper than he ever had before, and deeper than he ever would again.
In his highly enjoyable book Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, Stephen Rebello identifies the myriad of factors that came together to create the film. Donald Spoto’s excellent biography Alfred Hitchcock: The Dark Side of Genius supplies the necessary information from Hitchcock’s personal life.
Prior to Psycho, Hitchcock made two films about serial killers, The Lodger (1928) and Shadow of a Doubt (1943), which he often rated as his favorite film. Both films bear a great similarity to Psycho. All three killers are men; all three prey on women. The killer in The Lodger, like Norman Bates, kills women because they are young and attractive; in Shadow of a Doubt, Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten) kills them because they’re old and ugly.4
We never see the killer in The Lodger (he’s known as "the Avenger," though we’re never told what he’s avenging). The film is really about "the Lodger" (Ivor Novello), who is the Avenger’s double. (We never get the name of either man.) The Lodger is a rich, Norman Batesian young man who rents rooms from a working-class family who happen to live in the area of London being terrorized by "the Avenger." Their daughter, Daisy (played by an actress simply identified as "June"), is an attractive young blonde who works as a fashion model (she’s called a "mannequin" in the film), exactly the type of woman who attracts the Avenger! Naturally, the Lodger acts in ways that excite everyone’s suspicion, particularly Joe (Malcolm Keen), Daisy’s policeman boyfriend.
Many elements in The Lodger link directly with Psycho. Perhaps most interesting is the scene where the Lodger is first shown his rooms, which are filled with the same sort of "classic" erotic paintings that Norman has in his "parlor." The Lodger is a timid sort, and demands that the paintings be removed. In an interesting shot that shows Hitchcock’s fascination with mirrors, the Lodger stands facing the camera, pointing to a picture that we can’t see and describing how much it upsets him. But we can see it, because on the wall behind the Lodger is a large mirror, and the painting (as well as the Lodger’s back) is reflected in it.
Eventually, we learn the Lodger’s story. He is linked to the Avenger because his sister was the Avenger’s first victim! He has been pursuing the Avenger ever since, because his mother, on her deathbed, exacted a promise from him that he would never rest until his sister’s murderer was apprehended. In a flashback, we see the murder, which occurred at the sister’s "coming out" party.
Both The Lodger and Shadow of a Doubt play on the notion of "doubles" or "twins," which occur endlessly in Hitchcock. Your double is the Mr. Hyde to your Dr. Jekyll, the person who does the things you might dream about doing, the person for whose crimes you might be found guilty. The Avenger is the double of the Lodger. Uncle Charlie is the double of his niece (Teresa Wright), named "Charlie" after him. At the start the film she tells him they are "more than twins," and she must spend the rest of the film coming to grips with the fact that her "more than twin" is a serial killer. Norman, of course, simplifies the situation by being his own double.
The Lodger, Uncle Charlie, and Norman are all fastidious men who share an interest in women’s clothes.5 The Lodger buys Daisy a dress, and Uncle Charlie buys Charlie one as well. Norman, once again taking things to extremes, not only takes care of "Mother’s" dresses, he wears them himself.
Another Hitchcock film that has many similarities with Psycho is Vertigo. In both films, a man attempts to bring a woman back to life through hair and clothing. In the case of Vertigo, the woman, Madeleine Elster, that Scottie Ferguson (Jimmy Stewart) thinks he is trying to revive is actually still alive, in the form of Judy Barton (both women are played by Kim Novak). The payoff for both films occurs when it is discovered that two characters are in fact one and the same person. In Psycho, the payoff comes when the audience realizes it; in Vertigo, the payoff comes when Scottie realizes it.
The Lodger, Uncle Charlie, and Norman all have problems with women. In Shadow of a Doubt, there is ample evidence that Uncle Charlie enjoyed a "too close," quasi-incestuous relationship with his sister Emma (Patricia Collinge) before her marriage, and is bent on establishing a similar one with his niece Charlie. The murder of the Lodger’s sister can be seen as reflecting a prudish young man’s desire to prevent his sister from announcing herself as "available." Norman, of course, murdered his mother when she deserted him for a lover. In all three cases, it is sexual behavior on the part of a female relative that breaks up a "happy" home6 and sets murder in motion.
But Psycho does not begin with Norman. Psycho begins with the camera drifting lazily from left to right across the skyline of Phoenix, Arizona. Hitchcock used similar shots in the beginning of both The Lady Vanishes (1938) and Shadow of a Doubt, implying a movement from the general to the particular and from the objective to the subjective.7 Here, the drifting of the camera, and the fact that it seems to go past the window of the room where Marion Crane and Sam Loomis are having their affair before returning to it, gives a powerful suggestion of randomness. The camera just happened to stop at this window. It could have gone elsewhere. If it had, we would never have seen what we are about to see.
It would be difficult to find a Hitchcock film in which chance encounters and occurrences do not play a major role.8 Ultimately, Hitchcock is interested in randomness because it reflects his belief that the world is indifferent to our suffering. As other critics have pointed out, the random movement of the camera at the beginning of Psycho is picked up later in the film by the random movement of Norman’s hand as he reaches for Marion’s room key, reaching first for "3" but then moving his hand back to the left for "1". By choosing the key for Cabin One Norman dooms Marion to death, because if she is in Cabin One he can spy on her, and if he spies on her he will become aroused, and if he becomes aroused he will murder her. If he had chosen another cabin he would have spared her. And if the camera had chosen another window, we would have been spared all the suffering that we are about to endure when we watch Psycho.
Once we are inside the hotel room, the camera closes in on the "fine, soft flesh" of the lovers, Sam and Marion (John Gavin and Janet Leigh), with a level of sensuousness unprecedented in Hitchcock. While he always reveled in close-ups of kissing, prior to Psycho Hitchcock kept his lovers clothed. Hitchcock was never kind in his comments about John Gavin,9 but visually, at least, he and Leigh make a lovely couple.
In the exposition that follows, we are quickly back in Hitchcock territory. Both Sam and Marion feel overwhelmed by the dead weight of the past. Sam is burdened by alimony payments and the debts of his dead father, while Marion fears the moral judgment of her dead mother — if she had Sam over to the house, she’d have to "turn mother’s picture to the wall" before making love to Sam.
Marion Crane, as played by Janet Leigh, is blonde and beautiful, but clearly not a Hitchcock blonde. For most of his career, Hitchcock delighted in films featuring elegant society blondes, spoiled bad girls like Ingrid Bergman in Notorious (1946) and Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief (1955), girls who thought they were better than you and really deserved to be taken down a notch.
Hitchcock liked to parade his disdain for the "vulgar" Marilyn Monroe style of glamour girl, whose appeal was openly sexual. (Hitchcock gallantly divided women into two classes: obvious sluts and secret sluts.) In Psycho, he deliberately switched gears, trading in the society girl for a "common bourgeois," as he pompously told Francois Truffaut in their famous series of interviews.10
Hitchcock, in fact, had to work with a real glamour girl, Kim Novak, in Vertigo, and did not enjoy the experience, even though part of the twist of the story is that Scottie’s idealized "Madeleine" turns out to be Judy, who is so "vulgar." In her first scene as Judy, Novak did not wear a bra, which scandalized Hitchcock. "As a matter of fact, she’s particularly proud of that!" Hitchcock told Truffaut in horror.11
When Marion gets back to the office (the poor dear has to work for a living), she encounters Tom Cassidy (Frank Albertson), waving the fateful $40,000 that’s going to buy "his little girl" a new home. A swaggering bully, Cassidy is immensely unlikable, and a perfect device for putting us on Marion’s side. He sits on her desk and levels a lecherous, unwavering gaze on her, no more than a foot from her face. Since the camera is right behind her, we learn how unpleasant it is to have someone stare at you and be unable to do anything about it.12 (This is the first of many times in Psycho that we see men staring at Marion. We, of course, were just staring at her ourselves a few minutes ago.)
Hitchcock’s job in the office scene is to make Marion’s decision to steal the money as little her decision as possible. If Cassidy hadn’t insisted in making the deal in cash, Marion wouldn’t have stolen the money. If he hadn’t been so obnoxious, she wouldn’t have stolen the money. If her boss hadn’t asked to take the money to the bank, she wouldn’t have stolen it. If her sister hadn’t been out of town for the whole weekend, she wouldn’t have stolen it. But all of these things did happen, and she does steal the money.
In the brief scene in Marion’s bedroom that follows, the camera, which has remained passive up to this point, silently moves forward to examine first the money and then the suitcase, letting us know what Marion is up to. The scene is filled with typical Hitchcock touches — the twin lamps13 at either side of the large mirror in Marion’s bedroom, which are themselves "twinned" by their reflections; Marion in her black bra and half slip, echoing the white bra and half slip in which we saw her in the opening scene; and the brief view of Marion’s bathtub and shower as she exits.
But it is the close-up of the money that counts the most. The money is Marion’s hope. It should bring her freedom and power, but of course it does not, because she cannot use it openly. She must keep it a secret. The necessity of keeping the money a secret is a burden on her that pulls her life further and further out of control.
Marion’s sad, desperate getaway is one of three long "silent" sections of Psycho.14 Hitchcock’s fascination with the idea of telling a story pictorially, along with his roots in silent film, encouraged him to construct a large number of such set pieces in his films. The concert hall section of the remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), for example, and Cary Grant’s high plains rendezvous with "Mr. Kaplan" in North by Northwest (1959), as well as the "win the tennis match/get the lighter" section of Strangers on a Train (the last two have minimal dialogue).
Marion’s flight from Phoenix consumes about 17 minutes of the film, and fills us with an ever-increasing sense of her isolation. Her plan naturally goes awry from the start — on the way out of town her boss crosses the street in front of her car and recognizes her (the aggressive "Psycho" theme, which we heard over the opening credits, here makes its first appearance in the film itself).
In the first "driving" sequence, Marion’s inner confusion and discomfort are made manifest to her reaction to the harsh lights of the oncoming cars. In Dial M for Murder (1954), Grace Kelly’s "trial" is depicted by showing her in close-up while bright lights play across her face. The opening credits of Vertigo show Kim Novak’s face in a similar manner, and in the "transformation" scene later in the picture, where Jimmy Stewart has "Judy" take on the appearance of "Madeleine," green light from a conveniently located neon sign plays on her face.15 In Psycho, as Marion’s distress increases, the camera moves closer and closer to her darkened, back-lit face. This is an image that we will see again.
We then cut abruptly to a day-lit long shot of Marion’s parked car. For the most part, Hitchcock uses his camera to tell us exactly what to see, but there are times when he takes precisely the opposite tack. The camera simply stares off into space, telling us nothing, leaving us to decide for ourselves what is and what is not important. The shot of Marion’s parked car is a case in point. There is nothing to inform us even that it is her car. As we strain for something to focus on, we see a police car, which we expect to move into the center of the frame. Instead, it passes the first car, comes to a stop, backs up behind the first car, and then parks there. Finally, we cut to the cars, so that we can see what is going on.
Marion’s encounter with the "death’s head" policeman (the sightless gaze of his dark glasses looks forward to Mother’s blind, staring sockets at the climax of Psycho) makes the implicit desperation of her flight explicit. Once more, she knows she is being watched, and once more is powerless to do anything about it. She flees from the policeman’s gaze as quickly as she is able, and rushes to buy a new car, an utterly useless gesture, because he is watching her do it. Her interactions with the car salesman, "California Charlie," repeat her experience with the policeman: the more she tries to escape notice, the more she attracts it.
The driving sequence that follows is similar to the one that we saw before. The lights of oncoming cars nearly blind Marion. In her mind she plays over the likely reactions to what she has done. She surprises us with the explicitly sexual twist she gives to Cassidy’s imagined response — his threat to take vengeance on her "fine, soft flesh" — and surprises us too with her reaction, a wicked smile. She is glad that she aroused him sexually, and looks forward to frustrating him. Unfortunately for Marion, she will "pay" for this wantonness. At this point it is her face that looks forward to Mother’s lipless grin.
The rain and the slashing wiper blades increase Marion’s tension. At this point the vague image of the Bates Motel sign emerges out of the darkness, an image that will, of course, draw Marion into its darkness. Hitchcock used a neon sign in The Lodger, a sign for a nightclub that announced "To-Night Golden Curls." In The Lodger, it was the sign that drew the murderer out in search of his victims. In Psycho, the sign draws the victims to the murderer.
NEXT PAGE: The "Psycho house"
NOTES
1. Hitchcock was a declared fan of the films of Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí, recruiting Dalí to do the dream sequence for Spellbound, although little of what Dalí did was ultimately used. The arches of the mission in Vertigo look like deliberate homage to the "Metaphysical" landscapes of Giorgio de Chirico.
2. In 1924, two wealthy young men, Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb, kidnapped Loeb's distant cousin Bobby Franks and murdered him in a deliberate attempt to commit "the perfect crime." Aside from its content, Rope is unique in that it is the only major release ever made with no cuts. It consists entirely of eight-minute "takes"—eight minutes being the length of a single reel of film. It also possesses perhaps the most deafening subtext in the history of Hollywood, the love that dare not speak its name raging so loudly between the two leads (John Dall and Farley Granger) that you can barely hear the actors speak. With all this going for it, Rope ought to be at least an interesting failure, but it isn’t: it’s just terrible.
3. The Wrong Man proved how boring truth can be. Hitchcock’s obsession with Vera Miles may have weakened the film. Vertigo is considered by many Hitchcock admirers to be his masterpiece. For what it’s worth, I am not one of them.
4. In Hitchcock, women can’t win for losing.
5. The interest that Hitchcock’s characters take in women’s clothes palls before the interest that Hitchcock himself took in them. He frequently had the fashion designer for a film design clothes for the leading lady off the set as well as on, so that she always looked the way Hitchcock wanted her to look. Janet Leigh did not have to put up with this in Psycho, because she was not Hitchcock’s type, and because Hitchcock deliberately gave Psycho a non-glamorous look.
6. "More than happy," as Norman puts it.
7. In The Lady Vanishes, Hitchcock pans across a model of an Alpine village, coming to rest before the window of a hotel and then cutting to the interior. In Shadow of a Doubt, he uses a double progression of similar images, first of exterior shots of a city before moving into the bedroom of a cheap apartment, where a desperately bored Uncle Charlie lies in bed, wondering if he has the will to go on living. We then move through a comparable set of scenes set in a small town, ending up in the bedroom of his niece Charlie, who lies wondering if she will ever escape the ennui of adolescence. Cotten lies with his back to the right of the screen while Wright lies with her back to the left.
8. See, for example, the openings of such films as Strangers on a Train, North by Northwest, and The Birds.
9. Reportedly, the chemistry between Gavin and Leigh was so poor that Hitchcock despaired of getting the scene off the ground. According to Rebello, Hitchcock took Leigh aside and asked her to supply Gavin with some "motivation," which she apparently did. Gavin’s work with Perkins in the closing scenes of Psycho has won more praise.
10. Thank you, Lord Alfred.
11. Hitchcock’s disdain for uncorseted knockers did not prevent him from building Psycho’s original ad campaign around Janet Leigh’s looming bust, photographed from below to emphasize its resemblance to the Hindenberg.
12. To have people "spying" on you and not be able to do anything about it was clearly one of Hitchcock’s deepest nightmares. Joan Fontaine, the nameless heroine of Rebecca (1940) is always turning around to discover the pitiless eyes of Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson). The elegant Mrs. Paradine (Alida Valli), in The Paradine Case (1947), imprisoned for murdering her husband, is similarly hounded by vulgar, disturbingly masculine matrons. (Both films have a fairly explicit lesbian undertone.) In Psycho itself, Marion’s suggestion to Norman that he institutionalize Mother, thus submitting her to the unrestricted gaze of others, first reveals to us Norman’s capacity for violence. And, of course, Psycho ends with Mother struggling to maintain an appropriate demeanor for the prison guards.
13. Hitchcock had an endless obsession with lighting fixtures. He seems to have hated overhead lighting. His films are filled with wall fixtures and table lamps of all sorts. He used them for composition, but their significance seems to go beyond that.
14. Naturally, there is some dialogue between Marion and the policeman and "California Charlie," and she also hears the voices of many of the film’s characters in her head.
15. One wonders if Hitchcock, who spent a great deal of time lighting his leading ladies to make them look beautiful, didn’t also fantasize about lighting them to make them look ugly or uncomfortable, to show them who was boss.
