MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > I wonder if Arbogast died with

I wonder if Arbogast died with

posted 8 years ago by dilophux
5 replies | jump to latest

his eyes and mouth still open...creepy
Because with Marion...when she lay dead half in the tub and half on the floor, her dead eyes and dead mouth open that was just...haunting, (in-movie)minutes later when Norman found the slain body, we don't see it but her dead eyes and dead mouth were probably still open, when the corpse was dragged out of the bathtub, opened they probably stayed and then when the deceased was lifted up, carried out it's body mostly wrapped in that very same transparent shower curtain that in her final ever 8 seconds of life she really thought would save her, it's limp, dead, bare legs and feet hanging out of it and then seconds later when the carcass was dumped in it's car the body was probably still in the same state, when sank in the swamp probably no change, about what 8 or 9 days later when they dragged the swamp and inevitably found the week old cadaver , of course preserved in a swamp as a watery grave for the past week-plus or not it still would have been minorly decomposing it's eyes and mouth were probably still opened as they were, it's not like after the murder Norman took 2 seconds of his time to close the lifeless eyes and mouth of the body whilst he was busy disposing of the body they were part of .We saw the pale and stone dead face of the victim and the way Hitchcock shot it, it was probably even more haunting than any other movie murder before or after it..so I wonder, in terms of face did Arbogast go out the same way Marion did(it's something of a rhetorical question because I'm fully aware that we never saw him die like we saw Marion
and we never saw it disposed of either we all just saw the car go down the swamp, much like Marion the previous week),
cos...if so it'd be really disturbing. Just a random morbid thought that struck my mind for reasons that really are unknown....
I know its morbid
I know its disturbing...
Also i often used "the" and "it" in the place of "her"
"she" , "him" and "he" because really, they were both no longer people, they were just bodies, everything that made them people was gone just like both their lives.

[–] brendanchenowith 8 years ago

I don't think we saw him dead. We saw him being stabbed and falling down the steps, then Mother caught up with him and continues stabbing him. You can hear him moaning as the scene fades to black.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked.

[–] dilophux 8 years ago

Yea i know as my post stated something like "I'm fully aware that nobody really knows because nobody saw him die or dead unlike Marion" but with how disturbing the whole Marion thing was her dead eyes and mouth open like that in pure terror, it makes one wonder, in terms of the state of the body(eyes and mouth open upon death, staying open well after death.etc), did Arbogast go out the same way? Nobody knows we can only assume. But again it makes one wonder because I had seen death in hundreds of movies long before I'd watched Psycho, and none of them stayed with me, none of them at all pure topped Marion Crane's the way Hitchcock shot it in terms of sheer hauntingness.

[–] ecarle 8 years ago

Nobody knows we can only assume. But again it makes one wonder because I had seen death in hundreds of movies long before I'd watched Psycho, and none of them stayed with me, none of them at all pure topped Marion Crane's the way Hitchcock shot it in terms of sheer hauntingness.

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The OP touches here on some of the artful and intelligent decisions Hitchcock made in presenting his two landmark "shocking, grisly, violent and somewhat bloody murders." A dire kind of film history was being made here, but not without intelligence and thought(beyond the thought that audiences would flock by the millions to be scared by a kind of murder they'd never seen on screen before.)

Crucially: while Hitchcock shows us the murder of Marion "start to finish" -- the finish being her lifeless face staring out at us from the bathroom floor; the murder of Arbogast is a quicker affair that fades out before the man is actually dead and elects not to linger on his face or dead body at all.

I would expect that some of this decision came from the censors -- Hitchcock could "linger" on one death, but not two. There is also the issue that Marion is a more important character (a "star" character) than Arbogast, and thus entitled to a more lengthy murder and a more fitting farewell (her face staring out at us, a drop of water under her eye serving as either a tear...or just water.)

All that said, I'm sure that Arbogast died with a look of terror on his face, "locked in" just like Marion's. Not necessarily the "extreme" look we see when he is first attacked (for his expression changes various times while he topples down the stairs) , but something pretty shocked and horrified.

Hitchcock gave us the template for this look(eyes open, mouth open) with Marion in Psycho, and then, 12 years later, in his next psycho killer movie "Frenzy," "amplified" on the effect by giving us not just one, not just two, but THREE, separate close-ups of strangled female murder victims with their eyes open and bugged out, their mouths open and -- in a ghastly/funny touch...their tongues hanging out.

Hitchcock got these facial expressions, I believe, from REAL photos, of REAL murder victims, and then "dramatized them" on film.

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A digusted Time magazine reviewer wrote in 1960 of the shower murder "The camera describes at close range every scream, gasp, gurgle and hemorraghe by which a living human being becomes a corpse." True enough...and historic. Heretofore, oftimes the faces of corpses weren't even to be shown in movies. They were just bodies. We never really see the dead Harry's face in "The Trouble With Harry" beyond John Forsythe's drawing of it.

But Janet Leigh's expertly acted "death face" was, and is, indeed, one of the most haunting representations of the finality of death as the movies have ever given us.

Some folks wrote that the shot of Janet Leigh dead on the shower floor -- and let's add that she rather looks like a dead open-mouthed fish, if you've ever seen one of those -- was "disgusting and degrading." And yet Janet Leigh herself USED that shot for the cover of HER book on the Making of Psycho.

Simply put, in the right artful hands(Hitchcock's and Leigh's) , the absolute stasis of death can be something moving and profound.

Some folks cried at that shot of Leigh.

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Meanwhile, back at Arbogast.

Hitchcock chose not to linger on Arbogast's last moments and death. The shot fades out on Mother's hand slamming a knife down below the frame and then we hear ANOTHER of the great "grisly acting moments" in Psycho: Arbogast's scream. It is the only time he DOES scream in the entire scene, he fell down the stairs silently, with Herrmann's screeching strings providing the sound. But Herrmann's strings go silent for the brief moment necessary to hear Arbogast's final, guttural scream, and it is very complex: a low, shuddering "BLLEAAHHH!" that is very male and suggests both the pain of the killing and Arbogast's horrified recognition of Norman as his killer. That scream is, in its own way, as profound as the final shot of Marion on the floor.

Speaking of which: in one of the many YouTube "spoofs" of Psycho and its murder scenes, we get "Psycho in 3 minutes" and the ENTIRE Arbogast scene boils down to one shot:

Over the dialogue: "I think something's going on at that Bates Motel on the old highway, I think I'll go out there and check it out," we see ARBOGAST's dead face(with a hat on his head) on a carpeted floor, staring out at us just like Marion...and then dragged out of the frame. Nifty!

[–] VValkyrie 8 years ago

Arbogast's death is so freaky, Martin Balsam was great in this role. The panicked look on his face, bewilderment and fear, grabbing at the air only to land flat on his back & repeatedly stabbed by... I picture him curled up on his side with a pool of blood spreading across carpet; the carpet which Norman uses to roll up the victim and dispose of in the swamp.

Am using the sound from the shower scene in a Halloween parade. This is very, very disturbing to listen to - you know what's going on. I had no idea of all the screams, groans from Marion and then the plucking & long bow of the strings - OMG - it's her heat beat, slower, slower, skip a beat till stillness. Yeeks!

[–] ecarle 8 years ago

I picture him curled up on his side with a pool of blood spreading across carpet;

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In those millisecond-short final moments, Arbogast seems to be trying to hold a defensive position, but he can't. I don't think he got the chance to curl up.

The grand mystery -- left entirely to our imaginations -- is: how'd Mother stab him? In the heart? Most likely, and several times. But possibly also the throat. We'll never know. We can imagine. The blows would need to neutralize the tough detective quickly from any defense. (And, as Hitchcock said in his tour guide trailer of what the fall did to Arbogast "the back broke immediately.")

One very gory movie that I have seen only once -- and intend to see only once -- "Henry: Story of a Serial Killer" had one scene in which the killer kills his male victim much as Mrs. Bates kills Arbogast "below the frame." But in this case, the camera stays put and watches the entire process of killing. Its quite savage...and it reminded me why I LIKED that Hitchcock didn't show us that.

Back to the Hitchcock, I think its more than enough horror to see the "old woman" leap upon and pin down the "tough man" to kill him. These positions had been seen before in movies: gladiator with sword over Roman warrior victim; Native American with knife over cavalryman victim. But to make the pair an old woman and a non-combative man: shudder.

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the carpet which Norman uses to roll up the victim and dispose of in the swamp.

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In Robert Bloch's novel, that's exactly how Norman moves the body. There's a great "thought line" from Norman about the blood not being a problem: "These old rugs were absorbent."

In the movie, I think we see the foyer carpet again later...but perhaps Norman simply put a new one down...

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Am using the sound from the shower scene in a Halloween parade.

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This was done in a parade? How scary.

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This is very, very disturbing to listen to - you know what's going on. I had no idea of all the screams, groans from Marion and then the plucking & long bow of the strings - OMG - it's her heat beat, slower, slower, skip a beat till stillness. Yeeks!

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Good point. Near the end of the movie, as Lila moves from room to room in the Bates house, Herrmann's strings definitely pluck in the rhythm of a heartbeat. To bring up suspense...