Psycho (1960 Paramount Pictures) Continued
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Written by Joseph Stefano based on the Novel by Robert Bloch
Cast: Anthony Perkins (Norman Bates), Janet Leigh (Marion Crane), John Gavin (Sam Loomis), Vera Miles (Lila Crane), Martin Balsam (Detective Milton Arbogast), Vaughn Taylor (George Lowery), Frank Albertson (Tom Cassidy), Patricia Hitchcock (Caroline), John Anderson (California Charlie), Mort Mills (Highway Patrol Officer).
The impetus behind Psycho was Hitchcock’s own divided psyche, and it is important here to define the relationship between the two distinct parts of his personality. The frightened schoolboy and the exhibitionist showman were constantly at odds with each other. The question was, how far would the schoolboy allow the showman to go? Hitchcock loved telling the tale of his fear of policemen (in almost every interview he recounted how his father had sent him with a sealed note to the police station where he was put in a cell and the officer said, “This is what we do to bad little boys.”). In this, both of his personalities were in accord. This was the schoolboy speaking through the showman as a way of explaining the stories he chose. They were all about guilt and retribution, but not always for real crimes. Mistaken identity and confusion reigned in many of his films. The best of both the early British films as well as the later Hollywood films dealt with mistaken identity and misdirection.
The 39 Steps and North by Northwest are two of Hitchcock’s most popular films that exemplify this paradigm. Both deal with a man pulled into an intrigue he knows nothing about as he is implicated in a crime. He is then forced to flee and at the same time try to figure out what is happening. Both run into a woman who to varying degrees aid and abet and threaten and hinder. Both of the women are of a type, blonde and beautiful and smart.
The year before North by Northwest, Vertigo was released (more about all three of these films later) and it exemplified Hitchcock’s obsession in no uncertain terms. Though mixed reviews undoubtedly hurt the box office (the film just about broke even on it’s initial release), but that didn’t didn’t keep the film from gaining momentum and finally on reevaluation, critical acclaim. In making North by Northwest it could be said that Hitchcock went back to what he knew best. Returning to the light hearted and dramatic heart of The 39 Steps and hiring Ernst Lehman (Sabrina) to concoct the screenplay proved to be a sure formula for success. It also proved to be a sound business decision and produced one of his best films to date, but was there more to it than that? Could it be that the master of suspense realized that he had given too much away in Vertigo? Was the audience aware that Scotty’s obsession was Hitchcock’s obsession? Had the schoolboy allowed the showman too much freedom? If we assume that was a subliminal part of his decision making process, Psycho then becomes an inevitability; a merging of both personalities.
Marian Crane is beautiful and smart and of course, blonde. She steals the money from her bosses’ client and immediately goes on the run. Her conscience begins to gnaw at her before she even gets out of Phoenix when her boss crosses the street in front of her car at a light. He looks puzzled for a moment and then moves on thinking, “but she went home sick!” It haunts her for the entire ride. Guilt. She cannot shake it. When she pulls over on the roadside to rest and falls asleep a police officer wakes her and his ominous dark glasses and uniform of authority (Hitchcock also claimed that the reason he never drove was his fear of getting a ticket) send her into a panic. She starts the car and the officer demands she shut it off.
She is so fearful after he lets her go and even after she watches the police car take an exit off of the highway that she stops at a used car dealer to trade in her car. While waiting for the salesman, she buys a newspaper to see if there’s any mention of her theft in the paper.
It is then that she notices that the police officer that woke her on the highway has parked across the street from the car dealership. The officer is standing and staring at her as he leans against his parked squad car. She is now in a controlled panic that makes the salesman suspicious, but since she has all the necessary papers he takes the trade and the cash.
Then the police car pulls into the lot and the officer gets out of the car. Marion is near hysteria and almost drives off in her new car without her suit case. One of the shop men runs out and puts it on her back seat as she leans over the front seat to open the back door of her car. As she finally drives off, her imagination takes over as she obsesses over what the officer is saying to the salesman. She imagines what her boss is saying to Carolyn and to her sister. The guilt runs rampant as night falls, and then it begins to rain so hard she can barely see out of the windshield. Then she sees the sign.
Hitchcock has been playing the audience: in the way that we hope she gets away with it and can be with her lover, in the way we smile with her when she thinks of Tom Cassidy taking the money out of her ‘soft white skin.’ He is in full control of our thoughts.
She pulls off the highway and up the drive to the Bates Motel.
NEXT: Norman Bates