"When Marion Met Norman" - A Closer Look at "PSYCHO"

This is one of many film essays from my old blog. It was originally published in August of 2010. It breaks down key plot points from Hitchcock's classic (particularly the "Check-in" and "Shower" scenes) and explores Hitchcock's thematics and his 1960 promotion of the film. Writing comes easiest when the subject is something you're passionate about, and my love of Psycho made this a pleasure to write. It should be noted that if you've somehow managed to avoid ever seeing the film, the following essay gives up all the secrets and is essentially one big spoiler. ~WN
Read the essay after the jump. 

     For most of my life Psycho was just another pop cultural touchstone; a title to be casually referenced -- a movie everyone had heard of. My dad had told me that one of his most unnerving childhood memories was of his father taking him to see it in the summer of 1960, and how it took a large chunk of his formative years to finally shake off the psyche-scarring experience.
Dad has never been a big horror movie fan and even today excuses himself to fetch a bowl of cereal if a movie on TV gets a little spookier than he'd expected. So naturally, I took his appraisal of Psycho's effect with a grain of salt, lumping it in with other Saturday matinée screamers (The House on Haunted Hill, The House That Dripped Blood, etc.) he'd reference when sharing stories of his Cincinnati childhood.

When I finally saw it for myself it was not at all what I had expected. It was different than other "old" movies I'd seen. Darker, nightmarishly disorienting and more than a little perverse. Over the years I read a lot about Psycho (There are probably more books dedicated to its analysis than there are of any other American movie.) and while I never got too deep into Hitchcockian film history, I regularly found myself stumbling upon essays, articles and retrospectives dedicated to his most famous, if not best reviewed, title.

Psycho's simplicity is one of the first things that strikes me about it now. It's essentially a tightly-scripted murder mystery complete with red herrings and a final twist revelation. Forgetting for a moment everything we know about the brilliance of Hitchcock's direction, Joseph Stephano's script, based on Robert Bloch's novel, is probably as close to perfect as screenwriting gets (save one nearly unforgivable scene I'll discuss below). While punching all of the standard thriller buttons, Psycho still manages to defy expectations and toy with well-established rules of cinematic narrative.

Our primary identifiable protagonist, Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), has our sympathy and understanding from the start when she impulsively steals $40,000 from one of her boss' clients. This immediately dresses her up as the the classic "flawed heroine," and what suddenly, and shockingly, becomes a chilling thriller, first lulls us into submission with generic heist-movie trappings. We observe Marion's deviant actions and the conflict it stirs up behind her eyes. But beneath it all is the paranoia-inducing string subtext of Bernard Herman's intense score which hints of rougher waters ahead for our central character.

When we're finally a good twenty minutes into the story we're confident we've been introduced to all of the important primaries; Marion's married boyfriend, Sam (John Gavin), her boss, the client she steals from, and her flibbertigibbit office mate (played by Hitch's daughter, Patricia). That's twenty minutes in and still no sign of Anthony Perkins in the role that would (for better, but mostly worse) define his career: the twitchy, handsome, awkwardly charming motel clerk, Norman Bates.

When bad driving conditions force her off the road, Marion pulls up to the Bates Motel and --how nice!--they have a vacancy. We suspect that in addition to getting out of the rain, Marion is stopping to pull herself together and plan her next move. (Up to this point she's planned nothing and regret is already beginning to register across her face.) When Marion and Norman first meet we immediately notice that there's something off about the young man, but he lacks any known motivation for antagonizing her. He's not menacing at all. In fact his early scenes paint Norman as pitiable. He comes across like an embarrassed farm boy trying to chat-up a slick city girl. In the scenes that develop the (albeit brief) relationship between Marion and Norman we watch both characters cycle through a wide variety of reactions to one another. 

At first it appears as though Norman is making no impression on Crane whatsoever. She's got a lot on her mind and not looking for someone to spend an evening of conversation with. Norman, on the other hand, is obviously eager to please. He explains that the motel doesn't get many customers "since they moved the highway." Thus, it makes sense that he's tripping over himself to accommodate the beautiful young woman who has single-handedly pulled him out of what looks to be just another lonely evening in the motel office. 

Leigh's line readings in the "check-in" scenes are amazing by anyone's standards and her eyes communicate so much more than what can be found in the actual dialogue. After her initial indifference it becomes clear that Norman doesn't get many customers, much less young, attractive, female customers traveling alone. This registers with Marion and her indifference melts away. She seems charmed by his shyness. Next, we observe Marion go from charmed to sympathetic, as Norman offers her to share dinner with him. He clearly has hit a lonely boy's jackpot, and seems anxious about not letting the opportunity to spend time with a beautiful woman slip through his fingers. Marion obviously sees all of this clearly and doesn't want to hurt Norman's feelings, so she agrees to dine in with him - likely in his home; the large sinister looking house on the hill, high above the motel. But it's not meant to be. 

In one of the movie's more surreal moments, we see Marion, settling in her room and preparing to face a stranger over dinner, eavesdropping on an argument that must be occurring a quarter of a mile away(!) in the Bates house. Through her open window, she hears Norman being verbally abused by the voice of an old woman. A voice that's accusing Norman of much more than we see him being capable of. The old woman slices away at his masculinity and scorns what she interprets as lustful behavior. Through Marion's window we hear poor Norman, regress to a child ("Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!") before bolting from the house and heading back to the motel, dinner tray in hand, to serve Marion the sandwich he's made her. Curiously, Norman only brings food for Marion even though he had originally said he himself was about to eat, and that she should join him. "I'm not really hungry," he says smiling, embarrassed by the fact that Marion has overheard the conflict with "Mother." He knows, because she's told him so. "Sounds like I've caused you a bit of trouble," she says kindly.

Then something strange happens. The dinner venue changes twice more. Norman looks to be heading for Marion's room with her dinner tray, but stops himself short, as if remembering something. We suspect he feels his mother's eyes on him. (There's little doubt she'd have a lot to say about his spending the evening, unchaperoned, in Marion's room.) "Maybe we'd be more comfortable in the office," he says lamely. Marion seems to interpret this as a gentlemanly "save" - seeing Norman pull back after jumping to the conclusion that he'd be invited into her room. But Norman is evidently dissatisfied with the office as a dining room because, after all, an office can be "so officious." The dining venue changes for the third and final time.

Enter, "the parlor;" one of two locations that practically serve as characters in Psycho. Eating from the tray on her lap across the room from Norman, we watch Marion's sympathetic face change again, and now she looks intrigued. In the parlor, the room behind the office, Norman seems to let down his guard. He's clearly brought Marion to his secret hideaway and multi-purpose comfort zone. It's here he reveals that he has taxidermy as his unconventional hobby of choice. This interests Marion, and for the first time, we notice a flicker of concern behind her eyes. The more Norman talks, the more damaged he appears and by the time the topic turns to "Mother" he's an unambiguous knot of mixed emotions that he no longer bothers to hide. We realize later that this is the the real Norman and the parlor is an extension of him.(Essentially, Marion is having dinner in Norman's head.) He's venting now and saying angry things, and for just a moment, when Marion suggests Mother might be an appropriate candidate for what we'd interpret today as "assisted living," Norman lashes out. He misinterprets her statement as implying Mother is ready for the loony bin. He morphs from frustrated little boy to angry family protector. "Have you seen the inside of one of those places?" he asks Marion rhetorically. It's a moment that leads us to believe Norman has seen the inside of "one of those places" and it troubles him deeply to think of sending his mother there. "It's not as if she's some raving thing," he explains, softening his tone, obviously aware that he's tipped his hand by referencing a mental hospital so candidly. 

They commiserate for a moment about running away from their troubles. When he insinuates that Marion is running away from her own trap, we realize for the first time that Norman might be reading Marion better than she's reading him. The audience is struck by it, as is Marion, who snaps back to the reality of her situation; that she's committed a felony and is more or less, on the lam. She looks at Norman with pity again. He's stuck in a trap too, but she'll be damned if she's going to let it tear her down the way Norman's mother does him. She stands, thanks him for dinner, and makes clear to us, without saying it outright, that she has come to her senses and will drive back to Phoenix in the morning to return what she's stolen. As she's about to return to her room, Norman, practically pleading, suggests she stay awhile longer, "for the talking." When she politely declines, Norman becomes embarrassed and defensive. He's over-stepped his boundaries and made his attraction too evident. Maybe mother was right. Maybe women only want to hurt and take advantage of him.

It's a powerful scene that sets its audience on edge in a way that's hard to articulate. Something is off, but we're not sure what. Maybe it's the way he nervously eats his candy corn, or the fact that his parlor is decorated with stuffed birds, or the way he talks about his mother ("She's not herself today."). Something is making us second guess our initial reaction to Norman, and wonder if maybe Marion should feel slightly threatened by this shy desk clerk. Does he know what she's done, and if so, how? Is there a dragnet out for her? Will he try to turn her in? Or take her stolen money?

Soon enough we realize that we, the audience, have been barking up the wrong tree and each of the above questions is absolutely moot. Even if Marion is in some sort of danger, we only feel fear on her behalf up to a point. She is, after all, our lone protagonist. We take for granted that she'll be with us for the duration, even if things do end badly for her. This is still her story...isn't it?

The moment she's alone in her room, the tone of the movie changes. Norman, whom we've started to feel sorry for, moves lecherously across the parlor (I might mention the remarkable lighting in this scene. With the parlor lights out and Perkins' face under-lit, his character becomes unrecognizable. The shy desk clerk has been overtaken by the lech "Mother" accused him of being, as he spies on Marion through a hole in the shared wall between Marion's room and the parlor.) He watches silently as she turns on the shower, and then, having almost forgot, moves to lock her room's door. The moment she drops her robe, Norman backs away from the hole in the wall and replaces the painting that obscures it. He's seen enough. Too much even. He's suddenly a 12 year old boy sheepishly returning his father's Playboys to their hiding place. And Mother is everywhere, looking down on him through the eyes of stuffed birds. He retreats to the Bates house, pauses at the staircase to his mother's room, thinks better of it, and instead moves down the first floor hall to the kitchen where he sits at a table, looking contemplative and somewhat relieved. 

Meanwhile, Marion is beginning to relax, but we are not. In fact, she almost seems ecstatic as she steps into the shower, beaming with a smile that seems almost unnatural, or at least unlikely, given her big-picture circumstances. 

I knew, before my first viewing, about Psycho's shower scene and how it was exceptionally intense for 1960; a fact that, given Dad's verbal exposition, was a little difficult for even youthful ears (already jaded from the comparatively excessive pop-violence of the eighties) to comprehend. That said, after seeing and contextualizing Psycho, it makes perfect sense that this fairly short scene packed a hell of a wallop. 

Hitchcock breaks the rules and abandons his audience. In quick, grim film cuts and knife slashes, Marion's peaceful shower respite is invaded by the shadowy figure of an old woman beyond her shower curtain. The movie slams on the brakes and, through more of Herman's shrieking-string score, something devastating and unthinkable occurs -- something so abrupt and from out of nowhere that audiences in 1960 must have had the wind knocked out of them.

It's impossible to convey the jolt the iconic shower scene gives an unwitting audience on first viewing. Someone who might never have heard of Psycho and knew nothing about it (even a sophisticated modern movie-goer like yourself) simply could not have expected the horror that Hitchcock unleashes in this single set piece. Even if you were expecting something awful to happen to Crane, in 1960 you wouldn't have expected something this awful, especially from a studio movie and a well-respected director--not even "the Master of Suspense." We were just getting to know Marion Crane, and what's more, we were just starting to like her!In the aftermath we're left with nothing more than Leigh's lifeless eyes staring back at us from the bathroom tile. She's obscenely slumped over the edge of the bathtub, her shower curtain ripped from its rods, and we watch breathlessly as her blood spirals down the drain along with our preconceived notions about cinematic good and evil. Marion's dead and we're left all alone in her room with her corpse and the sound of a running shower. The camera pans around the room like the eyes of a voyeur at a crime scene. Now, with a lot of movie yet to unspool, there's only one character with whom we're allowed to identify: Norman.

That's the legacy of Psycho; a singular shining example of what happens when a director tosses aside the rulebook. Though those rules change over time, and such twists are more commonplace in modern cinema, in the late fifties and sixties even movies with the best stories maintained a comforting whiff of predictability.

The rest of the movie plays out as a fairly straightforward murder mystery with Sam teaming up with Marion’s sister Lila (Vera Miles) to find out just where the hell Marion disappeared to. Martin Balsam is the gumshoe hired by Marion's boss to help track her down. All three follow clues that deposit them at the office door of the Bates Motel where they each have their own run-in with an increasingly flustered Norman, whose behavior reveals he clearly has plenty to hide.

But Hitchcock has cleverly helped us eliminate Norman as a murder suspect by allowing his actions to paint him as more of an accessory than anything else. When he discovers Marion’s body it’s obvious he’s legitimately mortified by the grotesque scene and there’s no one but the audience around to convince. Further, we've already sneakily overheard the off-screen argument in which Norman hurls accusations at his witch-voiced mother; the most likely murder suspect. We observe him queasily but dutifully cleaning up the scene of the crime, mopping up blood in an almost hysterical panic just before we spy him disposing of Marion’s car by sinking it in a nearby pond.

In another context these red herrings might seem like a bogus cheat. It’s not until Psycho‘s final resolution that we understand how these details set it apart from other, more conventional, murder mysteries. In the end it was never about why Marion was murdered or for that matter, who murdered her. In fact, this movie was never really about Marion at all. It’s Norman’s story and a story of insanity and how an essentially good person is pushed to dark acts by a psychosis he doesn’t control. Norman doesn’t recognize himself as the murderer any more than we do, until it’s explicitly laid out in the film’s final act when we see him attempt an attack on Lila in the fruit cellar of the Bates house, just moments after she stumbles upon the real Mrs. Bates; a well-preserved corpse planted cosily in a rocking chair.

We see Norman in the dress and the wig, holding the knife with a deranged predatory expression obscuring Perkins’ boyishly handsome face. Only then do we begin to understand what’s happened and why.

It’s almost a shame that the final scene of Psycho takes literal steps to snuff out any lingering questions we might have about what we’ve just seen. Disappointingly, Hitchcock finally succumbs to underestimating his audience by employing a police-psychiatrist character to spell it all out, over-explaining Norman’s condition in a monologue that sounds torn from the first chapter of a Psych 101 text book.

Despite that (unfortunately glaring) flaw, Psycho still has time to leave us with one last morbid chill: the slow pan-in on Norman’s face as he sits, detained in the police station, wrapped in a blanket and staring directly at us with a face that is no longer his own. It’s Norman’s mother who is staring us down, with his eyes, as her voice-over assures us of what we already know: Norman wouldn’t even hurt a fly. Just as this shot is about to transition to the movie’s final final shot, of Marion’s car being dragged from the pond, we see the decomposed face of Mother’s corpse superimposed over Norman’s face. (If you’ve watched Psycho before and never noticed this, it’s worth a slow-mo run through.)

But alas, you’ll only ever be able to view Psycho for the first time once. After that, its surprises and secrets won’t have the same weight they had in your first go-round. But that doesn’t mean it’s any less ripe for repeat viewings. In fact, it’s probably one of the most rewatchable movies of its type. There are so many interesting and clever elements, both trivial and profound, to reward those who return to it.

There’s the recurring “bird” imagery. It’s purpose and meaning may be debatable but once you’ve noticed it, you can’t imagine how you missed that Marion CRANE, takes flight from PHOENIX to hide from the repercussions of her crime at the Bates Motel, whose caretaker’s parlor is filthy with dead-eyed birds of all kinds; from the accusatory stare of a stuffed owl, to the prophetically hysterical-looking black crow with its stiff wings urgently spread. “You eat like a bird,” Norman observed earlier as Marion nibbled away at her sandwich. And as I've mentioned we see plenty of Norman nervously PECKING at CANDY CORN, of all things. It’s a nice touch. (Also watch how, in the trailer below, Hitchcock makes sure we take note of the framed bird painting that covers Bates’ peephole into Marion’s room.)

The decision to shoot Psycho in black and white was more purposeful than it might seem to modern eyes which equate b&w with “old” and color with “new.” In fact, most major studio efforts were being produced in color by 1960. Furthermore, Hitchcock had already shot Rear Window, Vertigo and North by Northwest in color. He knew that, aesthetics notwithstanding, the bloody terror he planned to unleash with Psycho would simply not fly with audiences, critics, or censors, in vivid Eastman color. Keeping Psycho black and white helped keep costs down and helped keep people from barfing in their laps when Marion is sliced to ribbons in the shower. (Though the foley effect of audible stabbing — accomplished by knifing a melon — probably got them queasy enough).

The shower murder is made up of no fewer than 90 quick shots that erratically shuffle your perspective around Marion and the shower. It creates a disorienting out-of-control effect that makes the viewer fumble for his bearings and think: Slow down! What’s going on?! The most obvious reason that the shower scene strikes a nerve is that it taps into our innate recognition of the fact that we are rarely more vulnerable than when we’re  in the shower. It’s why the quick flashes of Leigh’s naked flesh are so revolting. (Incidentally, there is no clear nudity in the scene. A body double in a nude body stocking stands in for Leigh in many of the quick cuts. When Psycho was first submitted to the studio, censors sent it back complaining of nudity. Hitchcock eventually submitted the exact same cut of the film again without making a single change and successfully convinced them that whatever they THOUGHT they’d seen had been removed!) This isn’t titillating exposure of a sexy starlet. For a moment this is YOU– caught off guard, exposed and defenseless.

The shower scene is immediately followed by a slow tracking shot that takes you, now very alone without Marion to cling to, out of the bathroom and around her motel room. A slow pan and zoom forces our perspective on the envelope of Marion’s stolen money, making it clear that the killer wasn’t after it, thereby eliminating any knowable motivation for the murder. This makes everything about Marion’s death even scarier as a result. (You can almost hear Hitchcock saying, “remember when you thought THIS was going to be important? — HA!”)

Hitchcock, almost P.T. Barnumesque in his commercial showmanship, devised one of the most effective and historically mimicked marketing campaigns ever when he set out to sell Psycho. First, an airtight lid was kept on the movie’s storyline. Hitchcock was so aggressive in his intent to whet the public’s appetite without giving anything away that the cast’s shooting scripts were incomplete, and a portion of Psycho‘s budget went to buying up as many known copies of Bloch’s novel as possible to keep answers out of the hands of prospective audiences.

His TV, print and radio ads pleaded with audiences to keep Psycho's ending a secret once they’d seen it. The entire campaign succeeded in keeping its name on the lips of everyone, making it one of the first true “event” movies, preceeding Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (which is credited with creating the “summer blockbuster”) by fifteen years. Even further, Hitchcock demanded that theater owners enforce his rule which asserted that no one would be allowed to enter a screening of Psycho after it had begun (back when studios could do that sort of thing).

If you want to see what truly great movie marketing looks like, watch this amazing tongue-and-cheek trailer in which Hitchcock takes you on a tour of the Psycho set; eluding to much, but revealing nothing:

Note that the woman seen screaming at the trailer’s end is not Janet Leigh but Vera Miles (whose character survives to star in the sequel!). Just one more great gag to keep audiences confused but guessing. Related to this strategy: rumors about who had been cast in the coveted role of Mrs. Bates were deliberately circulated around Paramount’s Hollywood studio, despite the fact that the character gets one on-screen shot...as a stuffed corpse!)

The exterior sets used for the Bates Motel are as iconic as anything else in the movie: the simple, boxy and benign roadside motel watched from atop a hill by the Bates-family home. If there’s a more recognizable piece of historic pop culture real estate, I don’t know what it is.

It’s a great gothic-styled structure, reportedly based on the Edward Hopper painting, House by the Railroad, and it’s been duplicated for sequels as well as both coast’s Universal Studio theme parks. The imposing architectural monster is far more menacing than anything we see in Norman’s face (until that final shot of him anyway), probably because it’s the embodiment of the late Mrs. Bates. Just as the parlor is Norman's id, the house, the birds, and the voice in his head are in fact, Mother, looking down on Norman, looming over everything he does, judging, nagging and tormenting the poor kid from where she’s impossible to ignore, high up on a hill.

-Will Nepper