Psycho
a film by Alfred Hitchcock
released through Paramount Pictures in 1960
Censorship is always difficult.
Though it has numerous forms, censorship on moral grounds is the most
contentious. To some it means protecting
the community, fostering individual decisions beneficial to all. But to others, particularly the artists who
create the films, censorship is to be fought to the bitter end: it prevents
others from sharing in an honest,
challenging commentary on life.
Extreme sex or violence is not
indicative of directorial brilliance.
The quality of a film has nothing to do with the conviction that went
into it. And extreme sex or violence
cannot convict the director behind a film of endorsing the behavior of his
characters. Some films clearly
demonstrate contextually that the actions of the characters are destructive or,
within the constructs of the film's internal logic and reality, wrong. Giving the creative team the benefit of the
doubt when the film plays to empty seats and critical paeans is a lot easier
than in the case of a multi-million dollar blockbuster.
What the filmmakers intend to do
ultimately does not matter if one is talking about objective morality, and not
the morality of a film (which is a world unto itself). A director can concoct a film with sex in
every other scene—graphic sex with jaw-dropping nudity, and be quoted as saying
that his intent was to create a film descrying the lack of substantive
communication and sacrifice in modern love.
Twenty people could watch the film and all of them find it blatantly
pornographic. But the director has
explicitly dismissed this label.
Part of the controversy of pornography over the years has been how it would be defined, particularly in the arena of film. Years ago a consensus arose that material designed to arouse is pornographic. So the producer of such material, which is designed to arouse, already despicable enough to demean women for the obsessing masculine millions, can lie. He can say he was making an artistic statement, and leave it at that. The burden of proof rests in the hands of the public, who can say very little about said producer's intent. But they're not idiots.
Artistic intent is irrelevant. It's always irrelevant. If somebody wants to make a statement it
needs to be unambiguous. Sometimes
communicating so that everyone can understand what is meant to be said is
difficult. However, film, with its
multitude of stimuli, is hardly the ideal medium for clear communication. It is a most powerful means of communication,
but messages, however clearly intended, are often rendered opaque. Art must be left to the audience, no matter
what the medium. If the speaker is
impassioned, let his passion be expressed clearly. He can make a speech, tell what he thinks is
wrong about the world, and everybody can go home and argue if he is right. With art, meaning is subjective. This is its great asset, the mystery that
forever fuels our fascination.
Censorship is pretty rare
nowadays. In-depth warnings from the
Motion Picture Association of America screen moviegoers from potentially
objectionable material. Prior to the
institution of the ratings system in 1968, the studios, not outside boards of
review, handled the bulk of censorship.
Now studios pressure filmmakers to cut certain material to permit it
PG-13 status, saving it from the risky 'R' designation. But the real kiss of death is NC-17. Many films hold back from going all out to
avoid the stigma and universally depressed box office commiserate with that
classification. Similarly, back in the
late 1950s, studios reviewed the scripts before production began on the latest
films. They decided what was
objectionable and excised the offensive material.
Alfred Hitchcock had met these
challenges for many a year, and had learned the game well. When he submitted his script for Psycho, he included horrid and patently
scandalous scenes that he had no intention of including in the finished
product. Shocked, the Production Code
office demanded changes. Hitchcock,
because of his awesome track record, was able to bargain with the
powers-that-be to keep what he really wanted in the film, despite their
qualms. Upon its release it proved to be
the biggest hit of the director's career.
Many still found it vulgar and ugly, reprehensible. Perhaps these critics, including Walt Disney,
believed that movies were always intended as an escape into a happy and
exciting world dissimilar to the ugly one displayed in the harsh light
outside. Working from this premise, they
logically concluded that Hitchcock found the subject matter of Psycho to be amusing. Indeed, Hitchcock did have fun with the film,
but because he felt he was really playing with the audience, not with the
subject matter. Hitchcock strove to
capture the human condition, and if that meant somebody didn't sleep easy, he
had done his job.
But this passing discussion of
directorial intent is relevant only in exposing its centrality to film
criticism as a misguided fallacy. We can
judge how well a director accomplished his stated goals—this is a critique of
the director. Taking the measure of a
movie, however, we have nothing to rely on but the film, itself. What is Psycho?
At the conclusion of a frenetic title
sequence that already has the audience on edge, a sudden calm in the music is matched
by the opening shot, mundane and despairing, a desert city on the edge of
nowhere. But within seconds, titles
announcing location, date, and time glide into the frame, echoing the visual
schizophrenia of minutes prior. Abetted
by dissolves we arrive at a window and enter into the world of two ill-fated
characters. Documentary in feel, it is
an audacious initiation, a departure laced with dread, the auspicious beginning
of an unforgettable film.
Marion Crane sets out for Sacramento,
eager to deliver the $40,000 she has pilfered from her boss and a boorish
client. The money is necessary to pay
off her lover's debts so he can marry her in good conscience (after bedding her
in secret). Sex carried no guilt, but
the debt did, and Marion resolved to free her indecisive merchant paramour with
a wad of absconded cash. Through
imagined dialogue and the unwanted attention of a suspicious state trooper and
car salesman, her sense of guilt is awakened.
But not until she drives off the map, arriving at the Bates Motel, does
she realize the consequences of her ill-conceived crime. Norman Bates, in the best scene of the film,
awakens her to the fear in hiding all her life, keeping the truth of her sudden
marriage secret, forever furtive. Norman
Bates speaks of the traps we never escape.
In the fear and pity she feels, the only reasonable decision is to
return the money, less she degenerate into somebody like him. Anything else would be insane. And that is what everyone wants to conclude
of Norman Bates once the story has closed.
That would be scary enough.
More frightening is the realization
that he may not be mad, just waywardly evil, lost on a path that he, with full
understanding, set upon many years ago.
His lack of foresight was his undoing and how far are any of us from
that?
Every day we trust each other. Just to get out of bed, get dressed and go
driving to work, we are trusting that people are not going to try to run us off
the road and shoot us in the head. We
trust that when we go to a restaurant the waiter will not poison our soda and
kill us. We trust that when we go to the
dentist he will use Novocain properly and will refrain from drilling the wrong
teeth out of spite or malice. A
functioning society is reliant on trust between its citizens. That is why crime is such a travesty. It is a breach of trust between people who
may not have met, but share in an unwritten covenant to honor the rights and
privileges of others for the betterment of the individual who shows restraint
each day, refraining from dark impulses, shallow-buried, suppliant with
impatience. Marion Crane trusted that
when she went to shower, as the only guest at an isolated inn, that she would
simply enjoy the water, free her mind of trouble, and prepare for bed. Instead, she was struck down in the most
vulnerable location in the most horrifying manner.
The shower scene gets a lot of
attention, and rightfully so. In Psycho it marks the shift from Marion
Crane to Norman Bates as a new protagonist takes over. It is also the most tightly edited, visually
spectacular section of the film, which on the whole, is inconspicuously shot,
with few of the camera-batics for which Hitchcock was legendary. After taking in the whole film, the shower
murder is very sad, a senseless slaughter, that, even with the killer captured,
reduces justice to a token idealism with no part in a hateful world such as
this.
As
Sam and Lila, the lover and sister, respectively, of Marion, go questing for
her, Norman Bates takes his place as the lead character, a sort of anti-hero
doing wrong but only trying to protect his ill mother. Sam and Lila are so dull that dismissing
Norman as an appropriate focal point renders the film directionless. Indeed, it is quite slack for the half-hour
that wily detective Arbogast pries his way into a life carefully hidden. Once Sam and Lila take on Norman, the man
distracting Norman in aggressive conversation while Lila searches the Bates
mansion, the film takes off again. The
tension is palpable, the audience left in the throes of cross-cutting. And still we can sympathize with Norman; Sam
badgers him about $40,000 he has never seen.
We have already witnessed two brutal
murders, Marion and Arbogast, and the possibility of Lila becoming the next
victim seems hopelessly certain, particularly as she snoops in the bedroom,
opening the wardrobe. Coupled with the
great tension in wanting Sam to break Norman while concurrently harboring
sympathy for Norman, hoping he can extricate himself from Sam's belligerent
interrogation, these last moments before The Great Reveal define Suspense. And it all unravels in broad daylight,
turning an enduring convention on its head.
Mother is the defining mystery of Psycho.
We get the background on what transpired before from the Sheriff, and
the Psychiatrist helps us understand her twisted legacy. But there are no easy answers. The truth is elusive; this living tragedy
cannot be explained away. It is not
Mother who is dead, but Norman. At the
film's end she instructs Norman on how to behave so to cultivate doubt in the
policemen watching him. Norman says
nothing, looking pretty grim, but soon he summons a hellish grin and, looking
straight into the camera, the skull of his mother is momentarily superimposed
over his living corpse. She carries on,
like never before.
Until Lila disturbs the solitary
cellar chair, Mother and Norman are two distinct characters, his only crime
protecting her guilt. Then we see the
rotten flesh of Mrs. Bates and know the rotten soul of her son. He has carried on a charade for ten years.
Soon after Marion arrives at the
motel, she looks up to the Mansion and sees a shadow move across an upper
window—gliding, ghost-like. Very soon
after, Norman emerges from the front door.
After he exits the Mansion a second
time, Marion, who has overheard a heated discussion, observes that she has
caused him trouble. His mother has
excoriated Norman,
first accusing him of treating this stranger with kindness because of her
attractiveness, then, ignoring his explanations, labeling him a coward unable
to dismiss this dinner guest. He refuses
to listen.
On the occasion of a premiere
viewing, a likely reaction to this scene is that Mother just wants to antagonize
Norman to compensate for her diminishing physical power. Upon further reflection, we can see that
Norman is wrestling with his own conscience.
He wonders if he so equitably engages with all his guests and then
descries his lack of assertive masculinity.
These are patterns of thinking, not speech. (He does lie to Marion, saying first that he
was going to eat supper, and upon serving it, declaring it all for her, as he is
not hungry!)
At first timid, stuttering, nervous,
aware of Marion's beauty, Norman's embarrassment is most telling when he finds
himself unable to utter the word 'bathroom.' (And his hesitation is darkly ironic
considering this is where she would soon die.)
But soon he is tough, denouncing his lodger for her ignorance, insulted
by her suggestion about putting away his mother and freeing his life of the
troubles of caring for her and maintaining a dying enterprise in the Bates
Motel.
Quietly fighting the desire to do so,
Norman looks through the peephole to observe Marion undressing. His bearing calm, he simply takes her
forbidden loveliness in. Returning the
painting over the peephole, he ponders, his face thoughtful, void of lust. He retreats to the Mansion.
The murder is symbolic; wrong in her
larceny, Marion is punished, despite a change of heart. It may also represent Norman's buried sexual
impulses, the knife that most devastating of phallic symbols. But it is Mother who commits the crime. Her motivation could be jealousy, seeing
Marion as a threat to remove the old lady and live with Norman in the house,
since it was Marion who suggested unloading Mrs. Bates into an asylum.
We must also remember that she had
threatened to dismiss Marion from supper if Norman didn't have the guts to do
it himself. He told her to "shut
up," but she does take action when he won't listen. Possibly she knew the temptation Marion would
be for Norman, sexually. So to help, and
not out of jealousy, orders him to call off his dinner plans with her. The dinner does deepen his attraction to her. But Mother kills her, heading off Norman's
contemplations of rape, represented by the painting covering the peep
hole. As Norman relates to Arbogast in
one of his few truthful admissions, "She mighta fooled me, but she didn't
fool my mother."
Killing Arbogast, disgusting as the
crime may be, makes sense—he would soon stumble upon their twisted secrets,
disturbing a carefully ordered world and removing Mother for a crime she felt
justified in committing. The first crime
is totally senseless, but that is what Norman/Mother has become. Norman was said, by the windy psychiatrist,
to have voluntarily assumed the character of his mother to compensate for his
guilt in the wake of her absence. He had
poisoned his mother and her lover ten years before, and the police deduced
suicide. But at the film's end, wearing
none of her clothing, deprived of the wig, we only hear the thoughts of
Mother. She told the psychiatrist the whole
story because she couldn't have them thinking that she had been responsible. No, her dutiful boy would take the blame,
continuing to protect her. Norman looks
miserable. Upon accepting a blanket, it
is her voice, not his, that expresses thanks.
Her possession of him has become so overwhelming that in addition to
speaking (Norman imitating her voice), her words are already lodged in his
brain. Without her clothes and the
granny wig, Norman should be his own self.
But he is doubly incarcerated.
The masquerade is over and the awful dream world that was life at the
Bates compound is done for good. Mother
is imposing her guilt on him—making him believe that he committed the murders
(the Norman half). She steps in with
advice, and he, having failed to secure her trust, shifts more of his
consciousness her way. It's revenge—the
mother is taking over Norman. She will
live on and he will finally die in that room of nothingness. Remember, the last line is "She wouldn't even harm a fly." The significance of this line is that Mother
had been giving advice, as far was we can gather, to Norman. But now, referring to her son,
Voice-of-Mother uses the feminine pronoun, not the masculine. The game's up—not wonton killing, but
Norman's foolish notion that he could defeat his mother in death like he beat
her in life. We still don't know why all
this happened; the mystery remains, and Evil walks.
Norman's father had died when he was
young. It was just he and his mother,
surviving on the money her husband had provided for them. Norman claimed he had a very happy childhood. Either that is a lie or everything was good
until the new guy came around. He
convinced her to build the motel. And he
pulled her away from her son. Killing
the lover and the mother with poison presages Mother killing the three girls
(two missing persons before Marion) and devouring the person of Norman. In both cases, one party wants to maintain
the status quo, acting so vigilantly that even the possibility of betrayal is
forever quashed by doing away with the person who could stray from the
isolation of two, mother and son. But in
the process, both mother and son are destroyed.
The problem with the attacks on Psycho contemporary to its release was
the inability of the critics to specify their concerns. The film is not violent, but slow, pensive,
and bursting with an artistic flourish far exceeding its limited budget. The problem some people have had with the
film is what it says about us. On the
surface a fledgling slasher-whodunnit, Psycho
is a rich and disturbing commentary on the horrible capacity for sin and
malfeasance buried within, expressed here through a story of Oedipal
possessiveness. Censoring an idea subtly
impressed on an attentive audience is very difficult. Excising a scene or altering a line of
dialogue is ineffective. The whole thing
has to go, and that wasn't going to happen.
The ugly truths in this film were going to be heard, even if they were
slow to register in the titillation of a thrice-disrobed Janet Leigh or the
frightening blur of impressionistic kills unlike anything seen before in a
theater.
We really don't know what Hitchcock
intended to say with this film. The
message seems clear, but only because it is true. Interpretations will invariably differ, but
this remains:
Many critics took years to recognize the importance of Psycho. Let us not forget, and may we be willing to see that the incredible is often all too real.