BSA 106 (Screen Arts) Semester 2 Week 8 : Psycho

This week in class we watched the classic 1960's horror film from Alfred Hitchcock: Psycho. Based on a book of the same name. Hitchcock reportedly bought the film rights anonymously for a mere $9500.

The film is about a secretary who steals $40,000 in cash and goes on the run. She ends up in a motel run by a young man and his mother, but it soon becomes apparent that things are not as they seem and the secretary goes missing. Her friends and a private investor track her down to her last known location: The Bates Motel.

The book was loosely inspired by the real-life figure Ed Gein. The main character of the book, Norman Bates, shares many similarities to Gein, namely the obsessive relationship that each has with their mother. Both Gein and Bates dedicated a room to their deceased mother, wore woman's clothing and resided in solitary locations. Gein has served as an inspiration to multiple horror properties, most notably Thomas Harris' Silence of the Lambs, a character who shared the more specific trait of making a female suit out of woman's skins.

Given the controversial subject matter it was a very hard movie to get produced. The studio that Hitchcock worked for at the time, Paramount, dismissed the idea and declined to provide him with his usually high budget. This was during the Golden Age of Hollywood where directors and stars worked for specific studios and were used like commodities to sell movies. Having faith in the project Hitchcock proposed doing the film on a much smaller budget, in black and white, using his television crew from the Alfred Hitchcock Presents television series. Paramount considered this more cost-effective approach but they were so opposed to the production that they refused him the use of their sound stages, to which Hitchcock hatched a new plan. he would finance the film himself, shoot it on the Universal lots and forego his usual $250,000 director's fee, instead opting for 60% of the films profits. The only thing Paramount had to do was distributed the film. They agreed and the picture was so extremely popular that Hitchock made more than fifteen million dollars from his sixty percent of the profits, a huge increase over his usual fee.

Hitchcock isn't called "the master of suspense" for nothing, this film stands as a shining example of how the director constructs a scene. There is a classic quote from Hitchcock where he says:

“There is a distinct difference between “suspense” and “surprise,” and yet many pictures continually confuse the two. I’ll explain what I mean:

We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let’s suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, “Boom!” There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene, of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware the bomb is going to explode at one o’clock and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one. In these conditions, the same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: “You shouldn’t be talking about such trivial matters. There is a bomb beneath you and it is about to explode!”

In the first case, we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense. The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed. Except when the surprise is a twist, that is, when the unexpected ending is, in itself, the highlight of the story.”

This is very much on display in Psycho. Before Norman Bates and the horror elements of the story were introduced (the first twenty minutes of the film), the film felt much more like a thriller. The scenes where Marion (the protagonist) is on the run continuously support the "bomb under the table" notion. There is a sequence in the film where she tries to escape a police officer who has taken a special interest in her. The entire time we know that she has a bag of 40,000 stolen dollars just out of frame. The way these scenes are written and executed (along with the amazing score by Bernard Hermann) create an unwavering sense of suspense.

The biggest surprise that I got from watching Psycho is that it is an extremely well written film, both structurally and scene-to-scene. I already knew about the twist and main beats of the plot beforehand so what really impressed me was how the scenes were constructed.

Even when the horror elements are introduced the film plays much more like a thriller, where we have long dialogue scenes as we wait for the bomb to burst. An example of this is the private investigators talk with Norman, it's a scene that reminds me a lot of scenes like the Bob Vaughn (basement) scene from Zodiac or the opening scene of Inglorious Basterds. We know something is going to go wrong because the person being interviewed is ,or seems, dangerous. Unfortunately the protagonist is unaware and is only now slowly coming to this conclusion. The suspense just keeps building.

Mentioning other movies as being similar to Psycho is common I think. I have seen so many of these same plot points or scenes repeated in other films, with the details just shuffled. The Inglorious Basterds and Zodiac examples are interesting because their structure and setup are nearly identical - and yet if you've seen one the other will still be just as enjoyable and tense. I think the reason for this is how the scenes are constructed and the outcome they provide. What happens if we take the scene from Psycho and place it at the start of the film, before we know that Norman Bates and his mother are dangerous? Then we have the scene from Zodiac, where the danger is only hinted at, and while suspicious, is never confirmed. The scene from Zodiac and the one from Psycho are basically the same in it's setup and development, and yet feel completely different. This is because of the information the audience has been granted is different. In Psycho we want the investigator to find the truth but also want him to stay alive, out perspective is more omniscient. In Zodiac we see the events from the point-of-view of the main character, and because of this we don't just want the character to find the truth, we want to know the truth. The villain character is also more creepy to us in Zodiac because we know absolutely nothing about him, in Psycho the mystery is also present, but the key emotion is fear for the character, not fear of the killer.

Inglorious Basterds has this setup end differently. Both Psycho and Zodiac leave the audience with an open ending. The suspense builds up and we are left cold, the bomb never goes off. It's only a scene or so later in Psycho that this is paid off. This means that the suspense in Psycho keeps building, in Inglorious Basterds the release of tension takes us back to a state of comfort. Psycho maintains it's tension throughout by spacing out the sequence of events. I think if the investigator dies immediately after his interview with Bates that we would be reset by the next scene. It would be predictable, killing the characters out of the blue keeps us on our toes.

This is an interesting technique to adopt, take a classic scene, like the example from Psycho, and change a key element. This could be based on perspective, structure or the outcome.

If we made Norman the protagonist, then the scene would play completely differently, not necessarily in how the events unfold, but in how the audience perceives it.The inspector finding faults in Norman's story would be tense because we care about Norman's fate. An example of these situations are common in the TV show Breaking Bad, where a key root of suspense is in whether or not the main character's lies will be seen through.

The lead character is hard to define in Psycho because of it's non-conventional structure. The main character dies halfway through and the rest of the film follows an ensemble of different, underdeveloped characters. And yet the movie still works.

The reason I think the audience is kept engaged until the end of the film is that there is a sense of unpredictability that is created once the main character dies. The way we think the story will go is subverted and that makes us more engaged now that we know anything is possible. This mentality is something also seen in the extremely successful HBO show "Game of Thrones", where the main character is killed off by the end of the first season. People love this kind of storytelling because it promises to tell you a story that you don't already know. Psycho delivers on this promise by turning everything on its head with it's iconic twist ending. Game of Thrones, the series at least, has failed by returning to a more stereotypical form of storytelling, not delivering on the promise that it will be different. What makes Psycho a classic is that it does deliver on its promise, Game of Thrones will be fondly remembered for its earlier seasons and rejected for its finale. Psycho will be fondly remembered always.

Some of the most popular stories are those that take the plot in a different direction than the audience thought. This is just as true for Psycho. A major factor in the film's success was the mystery surrounding it.

The movie wasn't the first to do a plot twist, not even the first to do it in the horror genre (see: The Cabinet of Dr. Calligari), but it was the first film to use it as the main selling point. Hitchcock realized the potential in the plot twist, going as far as trying to keep the book from reaching mainstream audiences before the movie's release. The advertising kept the true nature of Norman Bates a secret and encouraged people to not spoil it for their friends or to enter the film after it started.

Hitchcock's theory proved to be correct when Psycho did extremely well at the box office, making 32 million dollars on the small budget of 800 thousand.

Hitchcock had a good eye for what audiences wanted and Psycho was it. When we think about the most successful films from history, it is common that they became somewhat of a cultural phenomenon. Word of mouth spreads quickly and soon everyone has to see what the movie is about, something like Psycho transcends simple escapism and becomes a shared experience.

I believe that Psycho's biggest influence is in how it used it's plot twist and mystery to market the film. Thirty nine years after it's release the script for The Sixth Sense (another horror classic) sold almost instantly and at a ridiculously high price tag of 2.25 million dollars, because the producer, David Vogel, understood the financial possibility of the plot twist.

There are many different kinds of twists, the specific one that Psycho adopts, and one of the most prominent, is called Anagnorisis. In this situation the big reveal is that two things that the movie establishes as being different, are in fact, one. The most popular plot-twists use this: Darth Vader is actually Luke's father, Edward Norton is actually Tyler Durden and Earth is actually The Planet of the Apes. In Psycho we believe that Norman and his mother are two different characters, it is revealed that they inhabit the same body.

It's interesting that this same twist has been used so often and yet it still surprises us every time, I think the reason for this is that a good twist is one that the movie sets up to be both unlikely and still makes sense.

Even though Psycho felt like a suspense thriller it still obeys many of the horror tropes. The film is set in a secluded location, a horror trope that increases the danger by not allowing the main character to easily escape. Bates owns a motel that is away from the main roads and that no one else visits. This wasn't particularly noticeable when I was watching the film, but its presence does help. If it was in a populated location, the suspense and mystery would have become unraveled.

The setting while secluded is usually seen as safe and familiar, something used in horror movies to attack audiences where they feel most safe. In Jaws this is the beach, in Paranormal Activity this is the bedroom, for Psycho this was the shower. A place where we are completely vulnerable. I think the reason the shower scene is so effective is because it's something that we all share and a place that we all consider safe.

There is often a sense of mystery or investigation in horror movies, as already discussed I think this is Psycho's main selling point.

Of all these tropes I think the most unsettling part of Psycho is the psychological aspect. This is where most of the horror comes from. Norman is an eerie character, watching him is unsettling, his motives unknown. The most effective trope here is the villain who's intentions are not understandable, this is also what shocked people so much back during its release. The title is very fitting because the mind of Norman is the most terrifying part of the film.

One of the creepiest parts of the film for me was actually from the 1998 remake, at the very end a security guard hands Norman a blanket, we see from Norman's point of view him saying thanks and the reaction from the guard. Reason for this is because Norman speaks with his mother's voice, something that should not be able to come from his vocal cords.

I think the '98 remake had a lot of potential, small differences like this show how it could have distinguished itself from the original, unfortunately the director, Gus Van Sant, chose to make a shot-for-shot remake. After the New Hollywood movement I think it would be interesting to see the same story retold with those techniques in mind. During my viewing of the 60's original I noticed how we had to see every action carried out to it's completion, the more experimental editing techniques developed since would have been interesting to see applied to the same story. The ability to use jump cuts freely allows for much more time-efficient story-telling, I can only wonder how this would have affected Psycho.