They’ll see and they’ll know, and they’ll say, “Why, she wouldn’t even harm a fly….”

Let’s start at the very beginning. A very good place to start.

My favorite director, bar none, is Alfred Hitchcock. Really, he always has been. (I realize this doesn’t make me especially unique among cineastes–Hitchcock has no shortage of devotees.) I was fortunate to be raised in a household that valued older movies, so I grew up watching classic films as a matter of course. As a result, it never occurred to me to be bigoted against a film simply because it was old-fashioned, or black-and-white, or the like. A good movie always was a good movie, and it always will be.

I loved the films all kids love, of course: The Wizard of Oz, Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, the classic Disney animated fare. But the objects of my affection were not so limited. I can’t recall a time when I was unfamiliar with Some Like It Hot, or Bringing Up Baby, or The Bridge on the River Kwai. I ate them up, one and all. (My parents begat a weird child.)

At the center of it all stood Hitchcock. I would watch enrapt as Jimmy Stewart whiled away his lame afternoons spying on his neighbors; as Grace Kelly fought off an attacker with her sewing shears; as Cary Grant ran for shelter from a malevolent cropduster. Most of all, I was fascinated by Vertigo. Something about its dreamlike melancholy, the beautiful surface and the sadness just underneath, spoke to me. (Again, weird child.) I must have seen Jimmy Stewart a dozen times standing on the precipice of a Northern California bell tower, forlorn, gazing at his lover’s corpse below for not the first, but the second, time. (My parents were not nearly as thrilled with Vertigo–for all their enjoyment of classic film, they preferred the standard PCA dictate of a happy ending. So the weird child often watched Vertigo alone. That or Mary Poppins. I was weird, not morose.)

Missing from the full Hitchcock experience was quite possibly his finest, and certainly his most famous, film: Psycho. My upbringing was fairly strict and quite conservative when it came to viewing experiences. Cheers was too racy a program to sully my virgin ears. Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was unacceptably provocative. And horror, understandably, was not a favored genre. So Psycho was my Bertha Rochester–known but hidden, too dark and forbidding to be seen.

That changed when I was about 13 years old. With the onset of puberty came ever-so-slightly looser restrictions, such as permission to see a 35-year-old black-and-white film with no nudity, no sex, no explicit violence, and no foul language. The glories of adulthood are many. Psycho quickly became not only my favorite Hitchcock film, but my favorite film overall. And while at the time my elevated opinion may have been (at least partially) a result of the allure of the forbidden, my esteem for Psycho has endured. And for good reason.

It is often said that, in the battle of book v. film, book always wins. After all, so much more detail can be packed into the 500+ pages of a novel, while a movie frequently begins to creak as it passes the two-hour mark. And this truism is borne out by our experience–most filmic adaptations do fall short of their literary counterparts. But this is not because of any intrinsic fault in cinema as a medium. Rather, these adaptations’ failure is usually a failure of imagination and ingenuity. Rather than treating the novel as a jumping-off point, narrow-minded screenwriters feel compelled to shoehorn the book into the film on the book’s terms, an endeavor bound to result in something lumpy and ill-fitting. Ticking off the major plot points of the novel and eliding the psychological and observational detail (the meat of any good book), one is naturally going to turn in a film unable to wade past shallow middlebrow waters. Instead, the mood evoked by the novel should be recast in a cinematic light. Reimagine visually, dispose with exposition, actualize the internalized elements, and cast aside specifics to the extent they do not lend themselves to the world of the movie.

Along with The Godfather, Psycho is a master class in turning a mediocre book into a grand film. Hitchcock and his screenwriter Joseph Stefano take the overarching sense of creep and decay hanging over Robert Bloch’s potboiler (along with the shocking idea of a stabbing in the shower) and abandon most of the rest. Instead of a middle-aged, overweight, overtly repellent Norman Bates, we are given a young, kindly, handsome Norman–slightly jittery, but in an endearing way. And instead of beginning with Bates and briefly glimpsing Marion Crane as one in a series of his victims, we begin with Marion, a fully-formed woman who acts in a moment of desperation and thus embarks unwittingly on a trip into madness. In the process, they deliver a brilliant exploration of 1950s Momism fears, the dangers of trusting strangers, and a host of Hitchcock’s favorite pet themes.

Chief among these is the misanthropic Mother. With the exception of Shadow of a Doubt, it is difficult to find a Hitchcock film that presents matrons as anything but unhelpful annoyances at best (e.g., North by Northwest‘s dismissive smart-aleck of a mother), and mentally disturbed harridans at worst (e.g., Notorious‘ murderous, controlling Nazi). Here, Mother is a poison that rots from birth onward, fostering an emotional instability that persists even after her death. Indeed, death does not kill her–it merely disembodies her, giving her a sort of terrifying omnipotence.

But this is only the most obvious of Hitchcock touchstones. There is the MacGuffin (here, the stolen $40,000). There is the (semi-)innocent on the run (really another, larger scale MacGuffin). There is the mistrust and general incompetence of the police. There are the food-sex-death associations. There is the cool, attractive blonde, punished for taking an active role in her life. There is the bird as a harbinger of doom. Most importantly–and key to the shock of the film–is the specter of evil lurking in the most everyday of locations.

In fact, nearly every location in the film is ordinary and yet swathed in latent menace. The hotel at which Marion and boyfriend Sam meet at the outset is seedy, a place of illicit doings that practically uses shame as currency. Marion’s office is host to a crass oilman who drunkenly propositions her in mid-afternoon. And of course the Bates motel and the Gothic house on the hill behind are far more sinister than they appear.

All of this exists chiefly to provide us with the shower scene–with all due respect to Eisenstein’s Odessa Steps sequence, the finest example of montage in the history of cinema. Every element of the scene is so precisely choreographed, so well thought out, that the viewer truly believes she has seen a stabbing. Yet we see no nudity, no gore. All is suggested by the juxtaposition of cross-directional images, evoking a sensation of onslaught far beyond what footage of a gaping knife wound could produce. And just as the scene is impeccably structured as a series of colliding images suggesting worlds beyond what is actually shown, its narrative impact lies similarly in what surrounds it. Because Hitchcock fully invests himself in the Marion character, so do we. She is sympathetic and recognizable, a good person having made a mistake in an attempt to be with the man she loves. At the outset, we believe that the film will be about the aftermath of her mistake. And when she and Norman meet and eat and talk, we believe their relationship will animate what comes next. This (combined with the fact that Janet Leigh was the only star in the film) makes her ensuing death not only shocking but draining. With no protagonist left, the audience is unmoored and must latch onto the only other person around–Norman. Hitchcock forces the audience’s hand, culminating in the masterful sequence surrounding Norman’s sterilization of Mother’s crime scene and the audience’s inevitable gasp when it appears Marion’s car might not sink in the swamp. With no exposition or overt sign-posting, Hitchcock maneuvers his audience into sympathy with the devil.

The riches don’t end there. Bernard Herrmann’s haunting strings-only score, its aural slashing fitting the film like a glove, remains a creative high point in that respected composer’s career. Hitchcock’s trademark macabre wit is on full display (“Insect or man, death should always be painless.”). Janet Leigh has never been better. As Hitchcock so often accomplished with his leading ladies, Leigh’s limited range is put to character-based use, making Marion an average but uneasy woman, her attempts to hide her wrongdoing manifesting stiffly as befits a non-criminal. Anthony Perkins gives a bravura performance–one need only contrast with Vince Vaughn’s clammy, tic-ridden display in the ill-begotten remake to see what fine work Perkins does. To achieve the tone and the audience identification Hitchcock sought, Norman must come across not only as tiptoeing the line between harmlessly awkward and slightly unhinged, he must skirt the boundary between madness and sympathy. Norman must suggest the possibility of insanity lurking beneath, but must make that insanity justifiable, almost natural, earning the viewer’s understanding rather than revulsion. Perkins does so flawlessly, and Hitchcock’s brilliant use of mirrors and reflections to visualize the thematic duality reinforces this tension between surface and identity, expectation and reality, parent and child.

And so, as always, we arrive at the end. The chilling final scene, with Mother’s sad, mad voiceover, lingering with the audience long after the final shot of Marion’s car being retrieved from the swamp (a superficial restoration of the necrotic, not unlike Norman’s care for Mother).

Or rather, we stumble to the end. First, we must endure the film’s only misstep–the stilted diatribe by the psychiatrist. Stefano, greatly enamored at the time of psychoanalytics, got to play doctor vicariously through this dry, long-winded sequence, sucking the air out of a mystery that had already received adequate explanation. Why did Hitchcock stick with the scene? Was he afraid that a 1960 audience was not yet sufficiently immersed in superficial psychobabble, and so would be confused by Norman’s split personality? While Norman’s condition isn’t particularly plausible in real-world terms, it needn’t be for the film to work. If any explanation was needed, a simple line or two would have sufficed. Eventually, though, Dr. Windbag runs out of breath, leaving us with Mother. Looking agitated but oddly serene, Perkins conveys the warring internal factions, dominated by a woman convinced of her essential righteousness and actualized by a child willingly sacrificed to maintain the sanctity of her cloistered world, just another stuffed bird. Were it not for the penultimate scene, this would be the perfect film. As it is, it’s not far off.

Random Thoughts and Favorite Quotes:

• Vital Statistics: 1960 / B&W / 1 hr 49 mins. Oscar Nominations – Best Director (Alfred Hitchcock); Best Supporting Actress (Janet Leigh); Best Cinematography (B&W); Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (B&W). National Film Registry – 1992. AFI Top 100 Movies – #14. They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They’s 1,000 Greatest Films (2012 ed.) – #30.
• Hitchcock Cameo: On the sidewalk outside of Marion’s office as she returns from her tryst with Sam, wearing a large cowboy hat.
• Psycho is also the first American film to show a toilet being flushed, obliterating the halcyon days when the PCA protected us from knowing that even beautiful people defecate.
• Would you steal a large sum of money to be with John Gavin? He has all the charisma of a tall, dark, handsome door stop.
• I would watch a TV show about Sherrif Chambers and his wife.
• Much is made about the switch in Marion’s undergarments from white to black following her theft, signifying her moral shift. But Norman’s clothes follow a similar pattern. He goes from a medium-shaded jacket and white shirt when Marion arrives to full black when Arbogast visits.
• It’s remarkable that, over 50 years later, the shower scene retains such immense power despite so many viewers knowing that it’s coming. It’s a testament not only to the power of the montage itself, but also to the skill with which Hitchcock, Leigh and Stefano convince the audience that Marion is indispensable to the story. Everybody knows you don’t kill the main character….
• “They also serve who meet in hotel rooms.”
• “Not inordinately.” – A great (non-)answer to a question you don’t like asked by someone with whom you’d rather not continue speaking.
• “Teddy called. My mother called to see if Teddy called.” – And the moral is, there are no good mothers.
• “He was flirting with you! I guess he must have noticed my wedding ring.” – I love that Hitchcock casts his own daughter in the role of the ugly secretary at the office.
• “Why?” – There’s something about the way Marion responds to the patrolman’s inquiry. The perfect blend of fear and manufactured insouciance, like a child caught stealing a cookie.
• “You–you eat like a bird.” “You’d know, of course.” – Leigh nails the slightly playful, slightly disdainful way in which the attractive interact with their inferiors.
• “You know what I think? I think that we’re all in our private traps, clamped in them, and none of us can ever get out. We scratch and we claw, but only at the air, only at each other, and for all of it, we never budge an inch.” “Sometimes, we deliberately step into those traps.” “I was born into mine. I don’t mind it anymore.” “Oh, but you should. You should mind it.” “Oh, I do–but I say I don’t.” – Such a neatly poetic way of summing up Norman’s existence as the logical outcome of Eisenhower-era Momism fears that excessive nurturing and maternal dependence would yield feckless, emotionally stunted men.
• “I’m looking for a private island.”
• “And I say, insect or man, death should always be painless.” – Right up there with “Sam, three southern fried chicken!” from The Birds for Hitchcockian dark humor.
• “Someone always sees a girl with $40,000.” – C’mon, Arbogast, be nice to the strumpet’s sister.
• “If it doesn’t gel, it isn’t aspic.” – Milton Arbogast’s 110-year-old grandmother.
• “Hate the smell of dampness, don’t you? It’s such a, I don’t know, creepy smell.” – Come to think of it, Norman probably does keep his house fairly dry.
• “Well I’m not a fool. And I’m not capable of being fooled! Not even by a woman.” – Er, Norman, you know that Mother is a woman…..
• “She might have fooled me, but she didn’t fool my mother.” – Nevermind, he caught himself.
• “I helped Norman pick out the dress she was buried in. Periwinkle blue.” – This line is hilarious. I have no idea why.
• “Well, if the woman up there is Mrs. Bates…who’s that woman buried out in Greenlawn Cemetery?”
• “It’s sad, when a mother has to speak the words that condemn her own son. But I couldn’t allow them to believe that I would commit murder. They’ll put him away now, as I should have years ago. He was always bad, and in the end he intended to tell them I killed those girls and that man…as if I could do anything but just sit and stare, like one of his stuffed birds. They know I can’t move a finger, and I won’t. I’ll just sit here and be quiet, just in case they do…suspect me. They’re probably watching me. Well, let them. Let them see what kind of a person I am. I’m not even going to swat that fly. I hope they are watching…they’ll see. They’ll see and they’ll know, and they’ll say, ‘Why, she wouldn’t even harm a fly….'”