MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > "Unseen Lurking Mother" (in the Arbogast...

"Unseen Lurking Mother" (in the Arbogast Part)

posted 8 years ago by ecarle (14979)
19 replies | jump to latest

I've been mulling over my lingering distaste for what "Bates Motel" did to the Psycho legend as "set" in Psycho. A key element, for me, is how Vera Farmiga's "dead" Mrs. Bates(really more a youngish Norma Bates than an od hag) was so "always there" in the final episodes, hogging every scene in which Freddie Highmore's Norman also appeared, it seemed (though there was one great special effect where Norman opened a car door from the inside and NORMA's reflection was in the car window where his should be.)

Compare this to how and when Mother appears in the ENTIRETY (20 minutes or so) of the "Arbogast part of the movie": starting with Arbogast's appearance at Sam Loomis hardware and ending with Mrs. Bates stabbing the detective on the foyer floor of the house.

Clearly, Mother isn't around the hardware store for Arbogast' first scene, though she is "echoed" in the older woman who is buying bug killer spray and foreshadowed in the knives on the wall over Arbogast's head.

Once Arbogast reaches the Bates Motel, however, I will contend: Mother is around ALL THE TIME. We just don't see her, is all. But we worry about where she is...

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

To watch Psycho today during the "Arbogast part" isn't terribly suspenseful.

He talks to Norman on the porch(saying hello). He talks to Norman in the office(as dusk turns to darkness.) He confronts Norman on the porch (in the darkness) before Norman throws him off the property.

Then off to the phone booth to report to Lila(and Sam.)

Then, BACK to the Bates Motel, for some meanderings around the motel office and parlor until he climbs the hill to the house and...you know...

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But consider this "alternate version" of the above scenes:

Once Arbogast is in the office and darkness starts to fall, we are in fear. Thanks to that horrific shower murder, we know that Mother is around SOMEWHERE, and a horrible killer. And here's Arbogast in the office with his back to the door, darkness gathering around him as he hones in closer, closer, and closer on Norman's lies until he determines: Marion was here.

The close-ups on Arbogast in the office are very tight. Might not a 1960 audience be at least SUBCONSCIOUSLY worrying that Mother might appear right behind the detective and kill him?

Now, out to the porch. Arbogast SEES Mother (in the window) and now things are really bad for him. In the office, he found out "Marion was here." Now, he has found out a Mother lives...up there. Hitchcock positions Arbogast with his back to the edge of the porch..and the house. Darkness behind him. Why, Mother could just sneak up right behind him and...

...the suspense was no doubt excruciating. This wasn't just a dialogue scene(great as the dialogue was -- "She might have fooled me, but she didn't fool my mother" "Oh, then your mother met her! Can I talk to your mother?"

But Norman throws Arbogast out and so the detective's life is spared...

...but...

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

I wrote more, but the posts disappeared again...

...sigh.

I'll keep trying.

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

test test test test test test

test test test test

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

...but...
Arbogast drives to a rather spectral gas station (only part of a sign visible; no pumps, no personnel, no sounds) and climbs into a phone booth to report to Lila.
This is a key "plot device" scene in which Arbogast fulfills his plot role(Marion was here, there's a young man and his mother run the place), sets up the third act...and gets ready to die.
But beyond the exposition, I'd say there is gripping suspense here: Hitchcock's camera is tight on Arbogast and we must wait for him to dial all the numbers on the rotary phone. Suspense builds, because...
...what if Mother can drive?
Arbogast has damning information about the Bates Motel; he CANNOT be allowed to divulge it. What if Mother pops into the booth as she did into the shower with Marion?
I'll bet 1960 audiences feared that.

----
But back to the Bates Motel Arbogast goes. Suspense is at a maximum now, but at least in the long shots of Arbogast walking(into the motel, up the hill to the house) we can see that he is safe in the open.
However...in the motel parlor, Hitchcock keeps the camera tight on Arbogast as he kneels down to inspect the safe. I'll bet 1960 audiences were watching this through their fingers: what if Mother is there when he stands up?
As it is, Arbogast gets out of the motel, up the hill, into the house and THEN the suspense maximizes to its ultimate anguish and, of course...
Mother finally comes dashing out of her room to kill the detective and everybody screams.

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

My contention: terrifying as Mother's run out of the room is "on general principles"(and with Herrmann's screeching strings -- more explosive and noisy in this scene than in the shower), Hitchcock has had us cringing in fear of Mother's imminent appearance since at least when Arbogast first went into the motel office to talk to Norman as night fell.

I'm convinced that Hitchcock selected his tight close-ups on Arbogast -- and positioned him with his back to "where Mother might come" -- just so to keep the tension high at all times: "Where is Mrs. Bates? Is she behind him?"

And then when she DID come out..screams.

This is how Hitchcock saw Norma Bates. Minimal and terrifying.

[–] swanstep (2715) 8 years ago

I'm sure you're right about original audiences being gripped by the possibility that 'Mother could be anywhere at any time around the Motel'.

First time though any well-constructed suspense movie there are zones of vulnerability that on subsequent viewings feel more like false alarms /red herrings. The big examples of this from my youth were Jaws and Alien and Aliens. First time through in the cinema your guts were in an exhausting knot a lot of the time in these films, whereas on subsequent viewings esp. at home you could laugh and relax and pace yourself towards the actions climaxes.

As for Bates Motel's always-around-Mother... I think the show explored the possibilities rather well and at its best *convinced* you of how horrible it would be to have Mother suddenly pop up in your field of vision (rather like Sixth Sense convinces you of how shocking it would really be to suddenly be confronted with around every corner). The show seemed to reach a climax of this when Madeline cooked for Norman and made a pass at him and Mother intervened from Norman's POV in a very throat-slashing De Palma-ish way. I *thought* that we were going to get more of that and, indeed, that Madeline (who seemingly tellingly looked a lot like Norma, wore her clothes etc.) was going to play a bigger role at the end of the series than she did. Somehow a De Palma-ish death and suspense sequence for her seemed the most likely. The revelation a few eps before the end that Norman had been been going to LGBT bars as Norma and having sex with people she met there similarly seemed to point the way to sleazy, suspense sequence possibilities for the end.... but instead the show went all classy and all gun deaths IIRC.
(more)

[–] swanstep (2715) 8 years ago

Viewers who'd stuck with the show for the whole 5 seasons seem to have been very pleased with the stately, shock-free, classical ending to the show. Those interloping viewers who checked in for Season 5 only, however, who were Psycho-fans first and foremost, I think were at least a little disappointed that the end didn't honor the basic fun/shock-machine side of Psycho a bit more.

I'm starting to think that one of the costs of these long (50 hours+) series is that all of them, just by having their audiences spend that much time with their characters, turn into the same low-action, meditative, elegaic swamps of endlessly excavated personal problems. It's as if *every* show regardless of whether it's about originally about something as exotic as serial killers or spies eventually turns into Six Feet Under/Mad Men. A show I really like, The Americans, has, by its penultimate Season 5, almost completely lost its action-component and has reached an almost zen-like state where a whole season can go by quite fascinatingly in the moment, but yet when you try to reflect on what's actually happened overall this season (beyond Frank Langella's character leaving) one draws a blank.

[–] lennonforever (2453) 8 years ago

i was terribly upset by the "re-imagining" of the disposition of Norman, esp when coupled with the entire Marion Crane fiasco.

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

I'm sure you're right about original audiences being gripped by the possibility that 'Mother could be anywhere at any time around the Motel'.

---

Its one of those things where I didn't particularly "see" it on first viewings of Psycho but where it manifested the more I thought about it. The Arbogast/Norman scenes are well-written, well-acted, funny as well as dramatic, all that -- but one realizes that given the horrendous shock power of the shower murder(as detailed in 78/52) audiences were probably in abject "generalized terror" the second that Arbogast arrived at the motel and darkness gathered. That shower scene(said Hitchcock) set up the suspense of the entire movie after it. One could only "relax" when the story moved back to Fairvale, and even then, the memory of the murder(s) haunted those scenes.

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First time though any well-constructed suspense movie there are zones of vulnerability that on subsequent viewings feel more like false alarms /red herrings. The big examples of this from my youth were Jaws and Alien and Aliens.

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I've always counted Psycho and Jaws as the great "zone of terror" movies. In Psycho, its Mother's house in the main(Lila's exploration is fascinating, but sheer terror for 1960 audiences), but also the motel in general(for Arbogast in the office.) In Jaws, its the ocean, whether for beach swimmers or the three men on the "too small boat" on the open sea. The suspense is always there about those "zones of terror." The payoffs eventually come.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

First time through in the cinema your guts were in an exhausting knot a lot of the time in these films, whereas on subsequent viewings esp. at home you could laugh and relax and pace yourself towards the actions climaxes.

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That's true. Once one knew where the shocks were coming, the movie became a different experience.

But oh that first time when you don't know WHEN its gonna happen.

Which reminds me. It is noted that only two people get killed in Psycho,but first time audiences don't KNOW that. Thus, we're scared for Arbogast after Marion dies, and then HE gets killed and, after that, we're scared for Lila(definitely, around the house) and even Sam.

The terror never lets up in Psycho.

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

As for Bates Motel's always-around-Mother... I think the show explored the possibilities rather well and at its best *convinced* you of how horrible it would be to have Mother suddenly pop up in your field of vision

---

Yes, Vera Farmiga's "dead mother" became a rather nerve-rattling figure given her ability to pop up.

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(rather like Sixth Sense convinces you of how shocking it would really be to suddenly be confronted with around every corner).

---

Ah, yes...the dead people who would just suddenly be there...often when Bruce Willis or the boy's mother could NOT see them.

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The show seemed to reach a climax of this when Madeline cooked for Norman and made a pass at him and Mother intervened from Norman's POV in a very throat-slashing De Palma-ish way.

---

That was a bit of a lift from "Psycho III," in which our hopes that Norman could carry out a normal romance with Diana Scarwid were dashed when Mother would rise up within him to foil the affair. In Bates Motel, this manifests and we SEE Mother, and its very, very sad: our realization that whatever normal impulses for love, lust and friendship Norman Bates might have, he has created "Mother" to block them. And the throat slash is indeed straight out of DePalma(Dressed to Kill) , rather than Hitchcock.

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I *thought* that we were going to get more of that and, indeed, that Madeline (who seemingly tellingly looked a lot like Norma, wore her clothes etc.) was going to play a bigger role at the end of the series than she did.

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Using Mad Men and especially The Sopranos as my examples, it sure is funny how the final episodes did NOT deliver on hoped-for expectations. Nowhere was this more devastatingly "un-realized" than with the infamous Sopranos non-ending, but that's another post...here, Bates Motel rather pulled the rug in the same way. (Though Chick and Alex were disposed of, summarily.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

The revelation a few eps before the end that Norman had been been going to LGBT bars as Norma and having sex with people she met there similarly seemed to point the way to sleazy, suspense sequence possibilities for the end....

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Well, that detour reminded me that today's TV makes accommodation for the LGBT angle quite a bit.

One hears from the "right wing side" of the street about a "gay agenda," but it seems to me a natural consequence of ANY community within a community(in this case, the LGBT community within the Hollywood community) that it will want to explore its issues in the storytelling it promotes. This also sounds in the Jewish and Holocaust related films produced by the Jewish community within Hollywood, and the African-American experience, in African-American produced films, etc.

In "Bates Motel," we had the shift to the gay bar scene on the one hand, and the producers determination to have Norman kill Sam Loomis NOT in drag.

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but instead the show went all classy and all gun deaths IIRC.

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Neither of which really match up with Hitchcock's Psycho, do they? It was a "knife movie." And Norman was not shot at the end. (Indeed, NO Hitchcock psycho was ever shot at the end.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

Viewers who'd stuck with the show for the whole 5 seasons seem to have been very pleased with the stately, shock-free, classical ending to the show. Those interloping viewers who checked in for Season 5 only, however, who were Psycho-fans first and foremost, I think were at least a little disappointed that the end didn't honor the basic fun/shock-machine side of Psycho a bit more.

---

I'm in the latter category, of course. I watched the entire pilot of Bates Motel back at the beginning and could see it wasn't going to be like the Hitchcock. In consequent years , I READ about the various new characters(teenagers, pot brokers, cops) and sensed that Bates Motel wasn't really intended for me.

But that "Bates Motel that wasn't really intended for me" is what needed to have a climax where Dylan mercifully shoots Norman, and in which his wife and child end up OK, and...that's OK.

---

I'm starting to think that one of the costs of these long (50 hours+) series is that all of them, just by having their audiences spend that much time with their characters, turn into the same low-action, meditative, elegaic swamps of endlessly excavated personal problems.

---

Great point. Its probably an indictment of the long form in general. I've opined before on the benefits of the three-act structure and the "story told in just the right amount of time." But continuing stories are as old as Dickens and its simply another way to get the job done.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

It's as if *every* show regardless of whether it's about originally about something as exotic as serial killers or spies eventually turns into Six Feet Under/Mad Men.

- Ha. Yes. Much of the promise of Mad Men happened sooner than I thought it would -- the Fall of Alpha Male Don Draper and the Rise of Career Woman Peggy. They got that done with about two seasons left to go and then explored how Don would rise again and how Peggy would have to cope with her new power. Etc.

I also believe that there were "two Mad Mens." Seasons 1-3 were essentially "the fifties"(as ended by the JFK assassination.) The series killed off JFK, the first Draper marriage(Don/Betty) and the first Draper ad firm(Sterling Cooper) all in the same final two episodes. Then the series started anew in "the sixties" (1964, I think) and plunged on into the counterculture. Rather canny. I liked the first half better.

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

A show I really like, The Americans, has, by its penultimate Season 5, almost completely lost its action-component and has reached an almost zen-like state where a whole season can go by quite fascinatingly in the moment, but yet when you try to reflect on what's actually happened overall this season (beyond Frank Langella's character leaving) one draws a blank.

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Possibly these series simply move on past the premise that sold them. Here, the undercover Soviet spies. They've become "real people" now, of sorts, and their stories will go their own ways.

Which reminds me...

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

...I have a minimalist experience with some "peak TV" last week that gave me some pause about where the trend has gone:

A friend invited me to watch some episodes from the first season of a Showtime show called "Billions." We watched three. Three hours. That's not much of the series (its now well into a second season...done?) But three hours is like watching The Godfather, so I've seen ENOUGH.

And I was intrigued.

The casting had all sorts of familiar faces, reassembled from previous projects and now thrown together for this one: Paul Giamatti(so famous for Sideways, my favorite movie of 2004, a non-thriller for once). Damian Lewis(a first star of Homeland, yes?) Maggie Siff(Don Draper's Jewish department store love in Mad Men, the biker guy's doctor wife on Sons of Anarchy.) And Malin Akerman, a wide-faced blonde beauty who started in movies("Watchmen") but figured out that peak TV was a better fit.

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

Billions is about Wall Street, and pits Giamatti's bulldog head NYC US Attorney against Lewis' supercool, superruthless billionaire. Giamatti's "gonna get" the billionaire. Put him in jail on crooked stock deals. The billionaire's "gonna get " the US attorney. Foil his prosecution, ruin his career.

Its an alpha male fight to the death, with the each man having an equally ruthless alpha female wife(the blonde Akerman for the billionaire, the brunette Siff for the prosecutor) to assist them in their bloodsport.

I see "House of Cards" as a progenitor, here. Just as Spacey's ruthless politician always eats at a hole-in-the-wall DC ribs joint, Lewis' billionaire always eats at the pizza parlor of his hardscrabble youth(run by a Sopranos cast veteran.)

Once I spotted THAT blatant "lift" from one show to another, it hit me: these "mean guy/mean girl" modern TV series are rather becoming cliché unto themselves. "All bad guys, all the time, both sides of the equation" can be tiring to watch.

But its been ever thus, hasn't it? Did not this all begin REALLY with "Dallas" and "Dynasty" (and Falcon Crest and Knots Landing.) What has changed is the caliber of the writing(somewhat) and the caliber of the actors(debateable, I mean Larry Hagman was better than he seemed...)

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

Before leaving Billions, a take on its one key twist:

The pilot opens with US Attorney Giamatti bound and gagged for some S andM with a sexy, unseen dominatrix who proceeds to burn a cigarette in his bare chest and put out the flame with, er, her bodily fluids. THAT's Showtime. Ick.

As the episode develops, it turns out that the dominatrix is actually the attorney's WIFE, and after they put the tots to bed , this is how this power couple blows off steam.

But wait, there's more: the dominatrix/wife of the US Attorney is also the head psychistrist for the Attorney's ENEMY: the billionaire.
And as the billionaire's company shrink, the wife's job is to battle-harden the Masters of the Universe for their hedge fund tasks.

Its all very high-powered and demoralizing, really, a reminder to us regular people out here that we would probably crumple and die if forced to compete for...billions. And of course, which alpha male will the attorney's wife/billionaire's psychiatrist side with? I don't know if I'm going to hang around to find out.

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

A final point on a provocative angle of Billions:

The show features the legacy of 9/11 first and foremost. It turns out that Damien Lewis' billionaire was "out at morning meetings" the morning of 9/11, and all of his partners perished in one of the Twin Towers. He now funds memorial scholarships for all their kids, gave 100 million to the firefighters fund...and seems to have benefitted AS a billionaire from being a 9/11 survivor.

Provocative. And a reminder that for all the horrors of that shocking American/international tragedy, those Twin Towers had a LOT of alpha male and alpha female bloodsport traders in them. (Think of where Martin Scorsese filmed Leo and Matt McConaghey talking in Wolf of Wall Street -- way up in a skyscraper dining room.)