MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > A Stretch of Precise Dialogue in Psycho

A Stretch of Precise Dialogue in Psycho

posted 7 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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Robert Bloch wrote the original novel, and Hitchcock controlled the visuals(like nine minutes without lines from the parlor scene to the hardware store, less "Oh, God Mother, Blood, Blood").

But Joseph Stefano gets the credit for the dialogue of Psycho. Its often terse and punchy, sometimes macabre("It would be cold and damp, like the grave," "I'll replace that money with her fine, soft, flesh") and rife with some "verbal tics" that proved(as we shall see) to be Joe Stefano's own.

The Psycho dialogue also proved -- over time -- to be chock-a-block with CLASSIC lines:

A boy's best friend is his mother.

We all go a little mad sometimes(with or without the rest -- "haven't you?")

Why, she wouldn't harm a fly.

Mother's not herself today.

And personal favorites:

If it doesn't jell, it isn't aspic. (And the great stuff after that: "...and this ain't jelling. Its' not coming together. Something's missing.")

There are plenty of motels in the area. You should have -- just to be safe.

But I'd like to take a look at a stretch of dialogue I really like, for a variety of reasons that I'll get into...

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Its the dialogue when Arbogast first enters the motel office to talk to Norman, after their initial pleasantries on the porch ("I've been to so many motels the past few days, my eyes are bleary with neon.")

The men enter the office, Norman takes his place behind the counter while Arbogast faces him. A bit of business for Norman: getting the clean sheets from a small closet behind the counter. A bit of symbolism for Arbogast: he's reflected in a side wall mirror.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

The dialogue:

Norman: Are you out to buy a motel?
Arbogast: No.
Norman: Reason I asked, you said you'd seen so many--
Arbogast: My name is Arbogast. (Shows his id). I'm a private investigator. I'm looking for a girl who's been missing, oh, about a week now. From Phoenix. It a private matter. The family wants to forgive her. She's not in any trouble.
Norman: I didn't think the police went looking for people who AREN'T in trouble.
Arbogast: Oh, I'm not the police. We have reason to believe that she came this way, may have stopped in the area. Has she been here?
Norman: Well, nobody's been here in a couple of weeks.
Arbogast: Would you mind looking at the picture before committing yourself?(Shows photo of Marion.)
Norman: Commit myself? You sure SOUND like a policeman.
Arbogast: Look at the picture. Please.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Norman: Are you out to buy a motel?
Arbogast: No.
Norman: Reason I asked, you said you'd seen so many--

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Norman opens the game with, perhaps, wishful thinking: he's trying to guess why this man saw so many motels. Its an intelligent guess, Norman is an intelligent man.

Arbogast's reply of "No" is superbly read by Martin Balsam. Its just one short word, but Balsam says it with a sort of "cutting Norman off finality." And a nice pause follows.

This tracks with the earlier scene when Arbogast similarly introduced himself to Sam and Lila(his sole name, his id. he's a private investigator):

Sam: What's your interest in this?
Arbogast: Weeelll...forty thousand dollars.

(Saying nothing more, letting the pause drive Sam nuts.)

Sam: Well one of you better tell me what's going on and tell me fast!

Here, Arbogast's "No" to Norman is similarly conclusive and mystifying. If this man is NOT here to buy a motel, why is he here?

Norman's already fearful

MORE:

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Arbogast: My name is Arbogast. (Shows his id). I'm a private investigator.

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The same introduction he gave Sam and Lila. Quick, concise, shows his id, announces his bona fides. Norman will miss a detail though: Arbogast is NOT the police (and hence, has no real legal right to make Norman answer any question; but he's bluffing and Norman acts nice and wants to answer.)

Noteable here to note that Arbogast only ever calls himself "Arbogast." As we know around here, he was Milton Arbogast in Bloch's novel, he is Milton Arbogast in cast lists for "Psycho" but he never calls himself Milton and there is no credit cast crawl. It matters a little. Arbogast himself in the Hitchcock film doesn't want to share his first name. He's officious. Ex-military? Ex-cop?

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I'm looking for a girl who's been missing, oh, about a week now. From Phoenix. It a private matter. The family wants to forgive her. She's not in any trouble.

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That's wonderfully concise and well-organized to me. ALL of the expository dialogue in Psycho is short, sweet and to the point. The scripts for The Birds and Marnie to follow will lack this concision, and suffer for it.

Consider the information: Missing about a week(helps us keep our bearings, two Saturdays apart.)

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From Phoenix. (Norman's heart likely sinks on that -- Arbogast is here about HER. Marion. She told Norman she had to drive all the way back to Phoenix...after signing in as from Los Angeles.)

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A private matter. The family wants to forgive her.

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Nicely put. Arbogast is saying "don't worry, the cops aren't after her, she's not subject to arrest, I'm not here to put her in jail, she's a nice girl, she has family who wants to forgive her."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

She's not in any trouble.
Norman: I didn't think the police went looking for people who AREN'T in trouble.
Arbogast: Oh, I'm not the police.

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A nice little roundelay. "She's not in any trouble" comes last in Arbogast's background statement on Marion, and thus feeds Norman's somewhat awkward response:

"I didn't think the police went looking for people who AREN'T in trouble." This syntax thing is Stefano's calling card all through Psycho("You make respectability sound disrespectful," "I hate eating in an office, its too officious.") And here it is again. But key(again): Norman didn't register that Arbogast is PRIVATE heat. It makes a big difference, and Arbogast makes sure to underline it:

"Oh, I'm not the police." (Which is meant to further relax Norman: don't worry, I can't arrest you.)

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Arbogast: We have reason to believe that she came this way, may have stopped in the area. Has she been here?

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Introductions and initial parrying completed, Arbogast now moves on to the meat of his questioning: was Marion here? One realizes how tiring its likely been to have to keep having done this routine at motel after motel after motel, and boarding house, and hotel...Arbogast is likely tired and irrititable when Norman cuts him off:

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Norman: Well, nobody's been here in a couple of weeks.
Arbogast: Would you mind looking at the picture before committing yourself?(Shows photo of Marion.)
Norman: Commit myself? You sure SOUND like a policeman.
Arbogast: Look at the picture. Please.

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A lot going on in the above stretch. Norman, caught off guard, opens with a big lie about NO ONE having been at the motel. This will set him up when he reveals that an old couple came by.

As for Arbogast, a little irritation -- Would you mind looking at the photo before committing yourself? (WHAT photo we wonder, but then we realize: Marion.)

Norman's response is another Stefano curlicue("Commit myself? You sure SOUND like a policeman") which matches an earlier one ("You sure SOUND like a girl who has been married.") Perhaps only those of us who have seen Psycho 10 times or more catch the repeat, but its Stefano's style.

Arbogast sees Norman's little joke as a irritating road block:

"Look at the picture. Please."

NOT "Please look at the picture." Which would be a request. "Look at the picture." A command. With "please" thrown in as an irritated afterthought.So very, very precise in the writing.

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This particular dialogue scene just keeps on a goin' and I won't say it gets better and better because its so good right from the start. I love to listen to these lines, I love to watch Balsam(who has command of this scene, a great perk for a character actor) and Perkins(so controlled and careful...but that stutter...) say the lines and enact the situation.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

As I noted upthread, Hitchcock rarely got this kind of writing again from his screenwriters. Anthony Shaffer for Frenzy, somewhat. But Stefano's lines have more punch, and are in a more classic film.

In this dialogue I have selected, I hope I have shown how the choice of exactly which words are to be said is important, and in what order. I've also tried to point out the personal quirks that make Stefano's writing...Stefano's writing.

Hitchcock realizes what a writing talent he had in Stefano. He tried to get him to write The Birds, but Stefano noted of the source material, "It was a short story that was short, but had no story." He DID get Stefano to write a first treatment of Marnie, but Stefano then segued to running The Outer Limits instead of writing the full screenplay for Marnie. Hitch never really forgave Stefano for that.

And so...all we have from Joseph Stefano for Hitchcock is the Psycho script. And dialogue like this, which plays tight and fast and extremely intelligent. Its one of the hidden pleasures OF Psycho.

[–] telegonus (736) 7 years ago

Excellent choices from the Arbogast-Norman (let's call a spade a spade) confrontations in Psycho, EC.

Also worthy of honorable mention: the banter at California Charlie's, right from his (ominous for the viewer and for Marion) opening line "I'm in no mood for trouble", which after a beat or so becomes "first customer of the day is always trouble".

A great actor John Anderson may not have been, but could any other actor you can think of top him for his Cali-Charlie? His presence, folksy and familiar, as it is,--the guy's a real man, A REAL AMERICAN--of the sort that has, or maybe it's me, vanished from the scene. In movies anyway.

He continues to be unintentionally menacing (it's just his way, as we soon learn) with his odd speech patterns which suggest confrontation but are really just his brisk salesman's way of speaking. A western thing maybe. And yes, as Charlie and the highway cop both agree after Marion drives off (or is this in Marion's "fantasy") she sure acts suspicious, though in my view she doesn't seem like a "wrong one". More like what she really is: a young woman in trouble.

Also outstanding: Martin Balsam's performance and line readings from the pay phone when speaking to Lila, his calm, reassuring manner,--isn't this truly the only time in the movie in which Arbogast is truly wholly sympathetic?--and Balsam sells it. Marion mentions this later on to Sam when she heard sympathy, even empathy in his voice. Something was off, and Arbogast sensed it, and repeat viewers,--like us--can relish this retroactively, as it were inasmuch as it feels almost like a presentiment on Arbogast's part, on the true fate of Marion,--but how could he have known, was he psychic?--and yet these "truth epiphanies" do happen a lot in life, don't they? This is also a part of Psycho's brilliance: its at times almost "throwaway realism".

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Excellent choices from the Arbogast-Norman (let's call a spade a spade) confrontations

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Thanks, telegonus! . Yes, they might be conversations, they might be interrogations, but ultimately..they are confrontations. Notice how nice everything starts when Arbogast first arrives -- and talks on the porch with Norman -- and how rather ugly the final confrontation is....even as things remain rather polite. ("I think it would be much better if you left.." "You'd save me a lot of legwork but...alright.")

Norman and Arbogast are "cool Hitchcock cats." So MANY of his confrontational characters are. Think of Vandamm and Leonard being oh so polite in the Glen Cove mansion library, to "George Kaplan"(Roger Thornhill) in NXNW before deciding to kill him.

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You know, I just saw The Godfather on the big screen yesterday. It is justly famous for ITS great dialogue scenes -- moreso than Psycho, I'm afraid -- and yet they are rather "peas in a pod" with regard to politely framed conversations that have an edge. Think of all of Don Vito's dialogues in his study at the beginning of the film during the wedding. Or how he confronts the other five family heads a big sitdown near the end. Or the initial business discussion with Solozzo. Polite, but with edge. Lines you will never forget. Well...Psycho has them, too. "Pure cinema," my keester!

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

My replies on John Anderson et al keep disappearing. Back soon when fixed!

[–] movieghoul (213) 7 years ago

A line from Cali Charlie that always got hisses from revival house audiences:

You can do anything you want. (Pause) And being a woman, you will.

Yes, Charlie may be an old fashioned MCP, but it's a great line both in recalling what's already happened and foreshadowing what's about to happen:

If a woman wants to steal $40,000 and run off with her boyfriend... she will.

If a woman wants to hack up young women to keep them away from her son...she will (even if she happens to be dead!)

[–] telegonus (736) 7 years ago

Movieghoul: I've discussed the Cali Charlie line with the still MIA ECarle and we both agree that there's nothing sexist or anti-female empowerment (whatever) in Charlie's remark. He's an old time folksy guy of the sort I knew dozens of when I was younger and when I was growing up.

Whether barbers, shoe salesman, accountants or bank managers, they were quick with lines that fit a situation, could draw on them in their (virtual) sleep, and they meant no harm.

There was a familiarity to way Americans spoke to one another back in the day,--and Psycho is back in that day--especially away from big cities. If Marion had responded to Charlie with a quick witted "...and being a woman I'm nobody's fool, either, especially when I'm dealing with a man" she'd get a touche or some such from Charlie and response something like "you speak the truth, young lady", signaling genuine, unfeigned respect.

But yeah, today, that line's like dynamite. I personally don't see it as the least bit patronizing, but that's me.

[–] Doghouse (447) 7 years ago

As I pondered movieghoul's observations, tel, I considered the possible "sexist/MCP" aspects of the line. Although it's impossible to gauge its effect in 1960 (if any), such an audience reaction as movieghoul describes may be weighted not only with the baggage of assumed sexism of an earlier age, but with the conditioning of decades of it in pop culture: "telegraph/telephone/tell a woman" - "Can't live with 'em/can't live without 'em."

Perhaps the reaction is fed as well by the particular wording used in the film: "Do anything you've a mind to. Bein' a woman, you will."

The specific imagery conjured by the association of "mind" and "woman" invokes that conditioning, born of stereotypical portrayals of women as addle-brained ("Don't worry your pretty little head about it;" "You're only a woman; I can't expect you to understand"). And American films both before and after Psycho are full of references to the supposed inscrutability of the female intellect.

For instance, 1948's Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein has Bud asking a male acquaintance, "Do you understand women?" The question is met with a disgusted, "I don't even try." 1963's Move Over Darling has James Garner, in the back seat of a speeding cab in pursuit of an angry Doris Day, moaning, "I'll never understand women if I live to be...if I LIVE!" And those stereotypes of women's unpredictability persist to this day, currently perhaps most notably in politics.

So while the line may sound sexist, to consider it without all that baggage and purely on its own terms from a 21st century perspective, it actually speaks TO female empowerment. It's easy enough to imagine it earning this sort of a response today: "Damn right, buster, and no mere man's gonna tell me different."

[–] telegonus (736) 7 years ago

Fair enough, Doghouse, but for the sake of reality check, that line in the movie,--and it's only a line, only a movie--is just one MAN speaking to one WOMAN.

But what if, to switch things around a bit, the story was of a Yankee, leaving aside gender for the time being, driving around in the South, dealing with a small town Southern used car salesman, as Marion did.

One only has to change the dialogue from "woman" to "Yankee", with maybe a bit of "regional sarcasm" of the sort I remember well from years ago, and there's potential for a good deal of misunderstanding.

All one would need to fix this,--and admittedly I'm drifting into alternate universe scenario territory here--is a "Oh, I didn't mean that personally" and a "How did you mean it?" and with two or three more lines the two part on good or at least civil terms.

If the movie wasn't Psycho, and a couple of scenes later the Yankee walks into a bar where the car salesman is sitting, the salesman calls out "Hey there, Damn Yankee, set down here and let me by you a drink", and the two start talking baseball or something.

In other words, people offend (or "offend") one another in big and little ways all the time in real life and also in well written movies, often followed by a period of "making up". This happens several times in Psycho, one of the many reasons a lot of us like to talk about it. Arbogast was a big offender in this department, with Cali-Charlie small beer by comparison. Misunderstandings and misinterpretations abound in real life and in movies, and one can argue, and pretty reasonably I imagine, that such things constitute a major subtext in Psycho.

[–] Doghouse (447) 7 years ago

Y'know, with all this dissection of Charlie's rejoinder, it occurs to me there's a certain precision - as well as oddness - to the phrasing of Marion's question to which he's replying:

"Can I trade my car in and take another?"

It's rather like walking into a supermarket and asking, "Can I buy food here?" Phrasing it as a question at all is, in itself, odd, and I can assume only that it was done so by Stefano simply to enable Charlie's colorful reply. You'd normally expect something like, "I'd like to trade my car in on something newer."

Something else odd about the phrasing: "...and take another." It may be an example of a Stefano quirk, that of "dialogue echos" (ecarle referenced a couple upthread: "You make respectability sound disrespectful," "I hate eating in an office, its too officious"). This one's echoed later by Mrs. Chambers - "Norman took a wife?" - and rolls comfortably off the tongue of a small-town, old-fashioned woman of her generation. It sounds less so from a "big city" one of Marion's.

I wonder also if "take" isn't meant to draw a subliminal connection to the reason she's in her predicament. Or maybe I'm full o'beans.

Going back to Charlie's line, it's interesting to note that, among instances of dialogue modernization (inflating the amount stolen to a late-'90s level or changing "aspic" to "Jell-O") that line was left intact. If I recall, James LeGros's Charlie, short on folksy charm and longer on used-car-salesman sleaziness, utters it as more of an aside than directly to Marion's face. It's obvious, at any rate, that Hitchcock and Van Sant were after different things: Hitch made Charlie imposing but likeable; Van Sant, neither.

[–] telegonus (736) 7 years ago

Well, yes, Doghouse, Marion's word usage was a bit strange, but I've noticed this in Joe Stefano's writing many times. If you want to hear some odd and at times very long stretches of dialogue, watch the first season of The Outer Limits. There's even a brief mention of strange word usage in It Crawled Out Of The Woodwork.

There was an at times near surgical precision of phrasing and choice of words on the series, as when, in The Guests, Wade, the guy being interrogated by the jellyfish-like alien mention that the word most people who'd known him used to define him was "defiant". The perfect word for this refined beatnick of a young man.

There is that repetition and turning around of words and phrases in Stefano's Psycho script, and moments of real humor as well, as in the deputy sheriff's office when his wife mentions picking out the color of the dress Mrs Bates was to be buried in (I think I've got this right) as "periwinkle blue". Also good: the way, as she mentioned how Mrs B was found dead, she spoke in a whisper that she was with her lover "in bed". Now THIS is very old-fashioned. Not the in bed part, the church lady whispering of those words.

As to Mrs Chambers query "Norman took a wife?", this is so old school and old American. It was a near archaic way of referring to a young man's marriage back in the day, but way back. I suppose it survived in rural area. The boonies, in other words, and a middle aged woman like Mrs C would use it. I was friends with a minister years ago who referring to his dating the woman he was seeking to marry as "wooing", and that wasn't all that long ago; nor was he old-fashioned. More a channeling of his vocation. I don't think you're full of beans, though sometimes a word is just a word.

I think there's more meaning in Norman's choice of the word passive to describe birds. Some birds, yes, but as a bird fancier I see little that is passive in birds for the most part. Even the gentle duck can be quick and aggressive.

[–] Doghouse (447) 7 years ago

Although the patterns in Psycho are noticeable, I realize after perusing Stefano's filmography that I'm otherwise largely unfamiliar with his work (I only occasionally watched The Outer Limits). The precision we've been discussing got me thinking about another Hitchcock collaborator, Ernest Lehman, and the precision (of an entirely different nature) of the dialogue in Sweet Smell Of Success...although I don't know how much of that is due to Clifford Odets.

Which brings us again to Lurene Tuttle and her wonderful Mrs. Chambers (who brings to mind that old rhyme, My son is my son till he takes him a wife / But my daughter's my daughter all of her life): so prim and proper yet so sunny and cheerful ("Why don't you come to the house and do your reporting around dinnertime; it'll make it nicer...you too, Sam") in Psycho and such a jaded sophisticate in the earlier film, describing her poring over the Racing Form for $2 bets as "compensation, Leo, for the marginal life we lead."

I checked the final draft of Psycho and noticed that her whisper ("...in bed") isn't noted in the script, nor is the disapproving little look she then gives Lila. I'm inclined to think those were her touches rather than Hitchcock's, but who knows? A gemlike example of revealing as much about a character in a few seconds as pages of dialogue could, in any case.

I've had some personal experience with what you say about the supposed passivity of birds and Norman's description of them as such. What Rosie O'Donnell said in Sleepless In Seattle may apply: "It's not true...but it feels true."

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Y'know, with all this dissection of Charlie's rejoinder, it occurs to me there's a certain precision - as well as oddness - to the phrasing of Marion's question to which he's replying:

"Can I trade my car in and take another?"

It's rather like walking into a supermarket and asking, "Can I buy food here?"

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Ha.

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Phrasing it as a question at all is, in itself, odd, and I can assume only that it was done so by Stefano simply to enable Charlie's colorful reply.

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Yes. I think this Psycho script is one where you can see those "set-up" choices being made a lot by Stefano: feed lines for pay off.

Probably the most blatant of them works as a joke:

Caroline: I declare!
Cassidy: I don't. That's how I get to keep it.

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This one's echoed later by Mrs. Chambers - "Norman took a wife?" - and rolls comfortably off the tongue of a small-town, old-fashioned woman of her generation. It sounds less so from a "big city" one of Marion's.

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Its a charming line -- at a point in "Psycho"(Arbogast has just been slaughtered) when the audience NEEDED it. Mrs. Chambers is happy and surprised. She seems to know Norman well enough -- probably brought him pies after his mother died. And a wife is the key to all happiness for a lonely young man.

Her facial surprise on the answer "no, his mother" is a great clue to the revelation that Sheriff Chambers will soon make ("She's been dead for ten years") which is in danger of giving away the twist ending until Stefano saves the day with : "If that woman you saw up in the window is Mrs. Bates...who's that woman buried in Greenlawn Cemetary?" Great writing, not in the Bloch book.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Going back to Charlie's line, it's interesting to note that, among instances of dialogue modernization (inflating the amount stolen to a late-'90s level or changing "aspic" to "Jell-O")

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That change to "jello" rather enraged me. It seemed such a dumbing down of Arbogast. So in 1998, people wouldn't know what aspic is? Look it up! Meanwhile, 400,000 in cash, while right for property values, was wrong for "carrying around." Change a little...change a LOT.

As does a line reading:

Marion's "Sam, lets get married!" is 1960- desperate in Janet Leigh's reading.

But Anne Heche gives it a breezy 1998 tone, like "C'mon, let's get married, whaddya say?"

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that line was left intact. If I recall, James LeGros's Charlie, short on folksy charm and longer on used-car-salesman sleaziness, utters it as more of an aside than directly to Marion's face. It's obvious, at any rate, that Hitchcock and Van Sant were after different things: Hitch made Charlie imposing but likeable; Van Sant, neither.

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The experiment of Van Sant's Psycho -- which I support after all these years -- included: "What if we change the casting TYPE?"

Now, sometimes Van Sant didn't do that -- his cop is a near duplicate of the 1960 model, and Chad Everett's Cassidy is just as sleazy and sexual as Frank Albertson.

But elsewhere, major changes. And the question became rather one of "practicality":

Is Vince Vaughn as Norman -- clearly no Anthony Perkins clone in size or face -- an interesting alternative or simply miscast for the PART? I say the latter; some on these boards disagree. That's why the experiment worked.

I thought the casting of Rita Wilson -- pretty, in a bosom-exposing dresss -- converted Caroline's line "He was flirting with you. He must have noticed my wedding ring" entirely. No longer a joke about a plain woman who is deluding herself -- now the mean line of a pretty and mean girl.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

James LeGros was an actor from other Van Sant films and a friend of Van Sant. So he got the part of California Charlie..and the "Hitchcock tone" went right out the window.

No longer was California Charlie an older man and forbidding father figure(even as John Anderson was only 39 at the time!). Now he was a young, slightly sleazy guy whose interest in Marion(a bony and boyish Anne Heche, in for voluptuous Leigh) didn't seem very flirtatious even. He's just doing his job.

On the DVD commentary, Van Sant pointed out a "skunk like stripe" in LeGros' hair. LeGros was an avid surfer and the sea water put that stripe in his hair. Its perhaps the only notable aspect of this "wasted" version of California Charlie...who conveys no menace or guilt-invoking qualities at all.

[–] Doghouse (447) 7 years ago

I'm grateful for the reminder of Chad Everett's turn as Cassidy. Where LeGros's Charlie doesn't adequately fill the bill, Everett shows that a different actor and interpretation can still be just right. I think you've said before that Robert Forster's Dr. Richman achieves the same result, and I think that's so.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

I'm grateful for the reminder of Chad Everett's turn as Cassidy.

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He probably came the closest to bringing back the feeling of the original. I was personally shocked to see the actor -- once the boyish young star of "Medical Center" -- looking so old.
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I think you've said before that Robert Forster's Dr. Richman achieves the same result, and I think that's so.

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Well, Forster was/is a fine, personable actor who summons up immediate liking and sympathy. He came to "Psycho" a year after his Oscar-nommed great work in "Jackie Brown," so he almost felt like overqualified for the short shrink role.

That said, while Foster was fine in a different way as the shrink(more quiet and understated where Oakland had been loud and overstated)...Van Sant proved that the length of the original scene was just right. Cutting it in half, losing material about Norman's past crimes and the debate about transvestitism...suddenly what the shrink had to say had no weight at all. Also, Forster wasn't allowed to move around the room as Oakland had been.

So: good actor in a worse version of a controversial scene.

[–] Doghouse (447) 7 years ago

So: good actor in a worse version of a controversial scene.

A very good way to put it. While Forster's less emphatic approach was effective, those cuts put him at a disadvantage with, literally, less to work with.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

In other words, people offend (or "offend") one another in big and little ways all the time in real life and also in well written movies, often followed by a period of "making up".

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Incisive point, telegonus!

How often have any of us been talking fast and friendly with a person and suddenly we "say too much," accidentally insult the person, realize they are taking offense. Then we "back pedal" or "walk it back." (I've actually used this term during the conversation: "Oh, wait, I didn't mean that. Please let me back pedal..." In fact, I've said that on this very board, ha.)

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This happens several times in Psycho, one of the many reasons a lot of us like to talk about it. Arbogast was a big offender in this department, with Cali-Charlie small beer by comparison.

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Arbogast: ...you'd know you were being used, wouldn't you? You wouldn't made a fool of --
Norman: -- but I'm NOT a fool!
Arbogast: I'm sorry. I didn't mean it as a slur on your manhood...

Funny, how Arbogast seems to apologize and backpedal..without really doing so. "A slur on your manhood" is almost a new insult.

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Misunderstandings and misinterpretations abound in real life and in movies, and one can argue, and pretty reasonably I imagine, that such things constitute a major subtext in Psycho.

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Well, all the good guys in Psycho figure Marion has disappeared over the money...which proves a MAJOR misunderstanding, filling the film with irony and suspense.

Family Plot would re-visit this as kidnapper Arthur Adamson came to believe that Lumley and Blanche were investigating his criminal actions...not knowing they are trying to contact him to get an inheritance to him...

[–] telegonus (736) 7 years ago

The manhood remark really is a slur, though not likely a conscious one on Arbogast's part. It puts the focus on a central fact of Norman personality, which is that his manhood is continually challenged, put down by his "mother", denied from within by himself: there's little (anything?) of the real man about Norman.

Arbogast nailed it by suggesting that Norman had a manhood to slur, so to speak. That line alone may well have been what doomed him later on when he returned to the property. Norman knew that his manhood was questionable, given his mental state; a bad joke, as we can hear in the "mother remarks" to Marion; and basically a string of abuse coming from what Marion thought really was Mrs Bates.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

The manhood remark really is a slur, though not likely a conscious one on Arbogast's part.

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By the way, I paraphrased that dialogue -- as I often must , here -- and on a re-check, I got it a little backwards:

Its not:

"I'm sorry. Its not a slur on your manhood."

It is:

"Its not a slur on your manhood. I'm sorry."

Which actually allowed Arbogast to show a bit more concern -- I'll note that William H. Macy in the remake says 'I'm sorry" with a bit more conviction than Balsam. Odd I noticed that, but then I follow line readings carefully.

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It puts the focus on a central fact of Norman personality, which is that his manhood is continually challenged, put down by his "mother", denied from within by himself: there's little (anything?) of the real man about Norman.

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This is true. Arbogast is raising the issue OF Norman's manhood is on dangerous ground. Plus, Arbogast's needling here was him at his worst ("You'd know you were being used...you wouldn't be made a fool of.") Arbogast is pushing Norman hard , here sideways insulting him (i.e. saying "You were being used, you were being made a fool") and suggesting that Norman is a nice kid who has been made the dupe of a femme fatale(what a fertile imagination Arbo has -- probably based on life in the "divorce trade " of 1960 PI work.)

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Arbogast nailed it by suggesting that Norman had a manhood to slur, so to speak.

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Yes. Mother wouldn't like that. She sees Norman as a boy, not a man. ("You got the guts boy?" "I'm sorry, boy,but you manage to look ludicrous when you try to give me orders."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

That line alone may well have been what doomed him later on when he returned to the property.

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That one, and "Can I talk to you mother. You know, sometimes sick old women can be pretty sharp."

Its rather a slur on Mother..and Arbo doesn't know HOW sick mother is, and how sharp(her knife, that is.)

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Norman knew that his manhood was questionable, given his mental state; a bad joke, as we can hear in the "mother remarks" to Marion;

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Where even Norman sees himself as a boy: "A boy's best friend is his mother."

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and basically a string of abuse coming from what Marion thought really was Mrs Bates.

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Absolutely. The voice of Norman, the syntax of Mother: "People cluck their thick tongues and suggest oh so very delicately..." Notice that Norman literally works hard to push mother back into himself...staggering back into Norman mode: "I...I...I've suggested it myself."

[–] telegonus (736) 7 years ago

Yes, Arbogast's needling was bad manners and, while he couldn't have known it at the time, a dangerous way to go about trying to get information from Norman. That he was, literally, on Norman's turf, made it far worse than he ever could have realized. Yet he ought to have known better. He was, after all, dissing, as in disrespecting, Norman by treating him that way. Norman was right in assessing Arbogast as a cop. He was acting like one. Bleary with neon his eyes may have been it seems that as his vision cleared he rather swooped down on Norman,--like a hawk!

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Yes, Arbogast's needling was bad manners and, while he couldn't have known it at the time, a dangerous way to go about trying to get information from Norman.

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We're back to the precision thing, here, I think. Arbogast in the early stages of the questioning is friendly and warm and reassuring, only occasionally "thrusting in" with a sharp remark ("You said no one had been here, and here's an old couple..." "Did you spend the night with her?") to throw Norman off. But here, he rather drops the good guy act and comes on strong. (Rather like the Arbogast in Bloch's novel was ALL THE TIME. He's a rather cliché tough guy.)

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That he was, literally, on Norman's turf,

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On the porch, with his back to the house and a possible Mother coming down to knife him right then and there...

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made it far worse than he ever could have realized. Yet he ought to have known better. He was, after all, dissing, as in disrespecting, Norman by treating him that way.

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Just as we get a glimpse of Arbo's nice side when he calls Lila, here we get a glimpse of the tough guy who, after all, has undertaken a cop-LIKE trade in which he has to confront and diss people all the time, no doubt. Its a risk that finally kills him.

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Norman was right in assessing Arbogast as a cop. He was acting like one. Bleary with neon his eyes may have been it seems that as his vision cleared he rather swooped down on Norman,--like a hawk

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Nicely put! And the 'tit for tat," is that a number of critics have said that Mother/Norman swoops down on Arbogast at the top of the stairs.

So one bird of prey bested another...

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

So while the line may sound sexist, to consider it without all that baggage and purely on its own terms from a 21st century perspective, it actually speaks TO female empowerment. It's easy enough to imagine it earning this sort of a response today: "Damn right, buster, and no mere man's gonna tell me different."

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I always like to say that "movie history is history, period." And one can see the shift happening as those movies of the early sixties (especially the Doris Day stuff) start to shift to the movies of the late sixties and seventies(think: Jane Fonda once she stopped being a sixties sexpot.) The people making the movies had changed and they were out to make sure that women were given their due(on SCREEN, behind the scenes, studio execs were still pretty sexist.)

But one has to be frank about male/female relationships, the good and the bad.

As late as Family Plot , Hitchcock has this funny exchange between Bruce Dern(who has just been unable on the phone to get the night off from his cabbie job) and his girlfriend Barbara Harris:

Dern(hanging up phone): Now, Blanche, I have to go to work. Would you please, just PLEASE, just let this go?

Harris(after a great comic pause): Well...you could have tried HARDER.

That exchange got a great laugh when I saw the picture, because folks understood that's just how it goes. I recall feeling that that particular line made "Family Plot" a very smart entertainment, frankly. Also an earlier exchange about Dern having witnessed a key Bishop get swiped:

Harris: Well, if you hadn't lost the bishop...
Dern: I didn't LOSE the bishop, Blanche. He was kidnapped.

Ha. Very real.

Meanwhile an entire late Hitchcock picture -- Frenzy -- is about the difficulties of men living with women. The divorced Blaneys, the sexless Oxfords, the mismatched Porters -- all circling a man(Rusk) who "loves" women by raping and killing them. He really hates them, of course.

[–] Doghouse (447) 7 years ago

Expanding the context as you've done is illustrative and useful. The compendium of analysis and reportage seems to indicate that Hitchcock's attitudes and feelings about women - and by extension, sex and sexuality - were conflicted at best: lustful/fearful; intimidated/controlling; attraction/repulsion; reverence/abuse.

I'm not sure if any one of his films best exemplifies a distillation of those conflicts, but Frenzy probably does as well as any. Beyond all you've mentioned, there are the pub patrons kidding the barmaid about rape being "a silver lining" (pretty retrograde even for '71-'72), the subtly ball-busting Mrs. Davison and the odd juxtaposition of the prim hotel porter - offering to get condoms before his expression of disgust over "the lusts of men" - with the more salacious interests of his colleague Gladys.

Oddly, for all his antisocial and combative tendencies (which make him easy to suspect before the real killer is revealed), Richard Blaney never displays any overt misogyny or sexism; even his remarks about "Vinegar Joe" or the members of Brenda's club ("I bet they're all good at business") are reflections of bitterness directed at whomever is in his line of fire at a given moment; his hostility is indiscriminate. The closest to it is a sense of emasculation that's merely a part of his overall feelings of failure; he may verbally take it out on a woman who happens to be handy, but he doesn't blame her for it. There's no need to go into the ways in which this all contrasts with Bob Rusk.

So I dunno: if Hitchcock wasn't exactly self-exorcising with Frenzy, could trotting those conflicts across the screen have had some sort of liberating effect contributing to the balance of Family Plot, where Arthur's forceful domination of Fran is contrasted with Blanche's passive/aggressive dominance over George? Their contentious and candid relationship is healthier than the crooks' bound-by-perversity one (and they are the good guys after all).

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

The compendium of analysis and reportage seems to indicate that Hitchcock's attitudes and feelings about women - and by extension, sex and sexuality - were conflicted at best: lustful/fearful; intimidated/controlling; attraction/repulsion; reverence/abuse.

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And there's a lot of that, isn't there?

I think one article was called "The Man Who Hated Women." Which I felt was a bit one-sided. Given how many MEN got brutally killed in Hitchcock films (Louis Bernard, Arbogast, the Marnie sailor, Gromek), you could call Hitchcock "The Man Who Hated Everybody." Plus, they are not brutal deaths, but all the deaths in NXNW (five) are of men.

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I'm not sure if any one of his films best exemplifies a distillation of those conflicts, but Frenzy probably does as well as any.

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Well, its the R-rated one with no holds barred about male-female relationships. I still think a lot of its commentary may well have been that of Anthony Shaffer(see: Sleuth, Death on the Nile) as much as Hitch.

Still, Frenzy goes to such extremes (rape-murders; all the victims are female) that it rather throws the Hitchcock canon off. I again reference all the murdered men.

On the other hand, you can go back to Notorious for this gem of conversation:

Ingrid: This is a strange love affair.
Cary: Why?
Ingrid: Maybe because you hate me.

Hell, ain't that Hitchcock in a nutshell on love? At least a lot of the time -- Rebecca, Suspicion, Paradine, Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, Vertigo, part of NXNW, The Birds(Mitch's initial banter with Melanie is mean, angry, cruel.) MARNIE.

--

Beyond all you've mentioned, there are the pub patrons kidding the barmaid about rape being "a silver lining" (pretty retrograde even for '71-'72),

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On purpose, I think. Hitchcock was setting the stage for how bad that one rape-murder was going to be, indicting those of us who joke about such things or "take them in stride" with the horrific reality. Very profound.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

the subtly ball-busting Mrs. Davison and the odd juxtaposition of the prim hotel porter - offering to get condoms before his expression of disgust over "the lusts of men" - with the more salacious interests of his colleague Gladys.

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These are like comic-relief "subplot" stories about men and women together. Its like the whole damn movie is on the subject.

And Hitchcock, having been soundly smacked for the old-fashioned love scenes in Topaz, seemed to be saying goodbye to romance, here. Blaney and Babs have a nice one, basic, no frills, some sex but nothing shown. Nobody else seems to be getting any. Except Rusk.

--
Oddly, for all his antisocial and combative tendencies (which make him easy to suspect before the real killer is revealed), Richard Blaney never displays any overt misogyny or sexism;

---

Blaney is written with -- yep -- precision. The temper is there, the drinking is there, but we can see the nice man he can be and the leader he once was. He's on his way down financial and as a man. But he can certainly be nice enough that Babs wants to be with him, and doesn't fear him as a possible killer.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

even his remarks about "Vinegar Joe" or the members of Brenda's club ("I bet they're all good at business") are reflections of bitterness directed at whomever is in his line of fire at a given moment; his hostility is indiscriminate.

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Indiscriminate. Men on the receiving end include Felix Forsythe(who deserves it), the bartender at the other pub(who doesn't) and Mr. Porter. Blaney is "his own worst enemy."

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The closest to it is a sense of emasculation that's merely a part of his overall feelings of failure; he may verbally take it out on a woman who happens to be handy, but he doesn't blame her for it.

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Well, it was a tough deal. For women to advance in the world, men needed to maintain equality with them -- and that's not always possible. Emasculation is an issue, and men have long ago needed to adjust to maybe making less money than the woman, maybe doing the housework, etc.

Blaney was a military hero -- possibly tougher for him. And he reminds Brenda that his attempt to build a roadhouse met with bureaucratic destruction. Brenda replies "some people are good at business and some people aren't."

I would like to point out that all this characterization and theme lifts Frenzy way up and away from the usual slasher/strangler film(Halloween is both.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

There's no need to go into the ways in which this all contrasts with Bob Rusk.

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I won't, except to tie him into Family Plot. One critic noted that with Blaney so sullen and Rusk so cheery, "one's moral compass is thrown right off."

Well, ANOTHER critic wrote of Family Plot, "whereas the good couple are always bickering and at each other's throats, the bad couple treat each other with love and respect."

Uh...not exactly. As Dr. Richman might say.

Again, we're talking surfaces here. Lumley proves quite loving of Blanche(carrying her from the crashed car; coming to rescue her at the end.) Adamson is quite dominating of Fran, especially near the end when he practically forces her to join him in murder(having pushed her into high-risk kidnapping).

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So I dunno: if Hitchcock wasn't exactly self-exorcising with Frenzy,

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A little maybe. He made some remarks about the chains of marriage while promoting Frenzy and how "food replaces sex in a marriage" after awhile.

--

could trotting those conflicts across the screen have had some sort of liberating effect contributing to the balance of Family Plot, where Arthur's forceful domination of Fran is contrasted with Blanche's passive/aggressive dominance over George? Their contentious and candid relationship is healthier than the crooks' bound-by-perversity one (and they are the good guys after all).

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All agreed. As above.

[–] Doghouse (447) 7 years ago

One critic noted that with Blaney so sullen and Rusk so cheery, "one's moral compass is thrown right off."

Takes us back to Notorious, doesn't it? Other than for their brief, mutually romantic period (which lasts, what, an afternoon and early evening?), Dev treats Alicia pretty badly (a lot to unpack there, but beside the point), while Alex, although a little creepy at first, is truly solicitous and caring...until he and mom start poisoning her (only after which Dev's attitude becomes overtly caring and concerned). And Hitch had already done his share of charming villains (Otto Kruger in Saboteur, for instance), but never one drawn in such stark contrast to the hero (and went on to equally match them in the charm department in NBNW).

And that critic's analysis of the Blaney/Rusk dynamic is rather the character embodiment of Hitchcock's theoretical editing illustration: closeup of a man; closeup of a gurgling baby; closeup of the man smiling. He's benign; swap the baby for a nude woman, and he's a leering letch.

Ergo, Rusk's geniality takes on a suddenly different dimension next time we see him after learning he's the killer. Context makes all the difference in either case. And of course, Hitch had also thrown off "one's moral compass" when Marion's car momentarily stopped sinking into the swamp.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

One critic noted that with Blaney so sullen and Rusk so cheery, "one's moral compass is thrown right off."

Takes us back to Notorious, doesn't it?

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Indeed. Devlin has that brief time of romantic/sexual warmth with Bergman early on but for the rest of the picture, Alex seems the nicer, kinder man..even as he eventually consents (with Mother!) to poison Bergman and is part of a plot to kill thousands(milliions) with nuclear weapons.

Devlin comes to his romantic senses and rescues Bergman at the end, but I've always found Devlin's final gesture to Alex(locking him out of the escape car and leaving him behind for execution) to be a return to cruelty. But it ISN'T...Alex was trying to kill Bergman.

Man, Hitchcock could work on the loyalties of audiences. When you think about it, Hitchcock on a few occasions actually had us feeling sorry for men and women who were the "bad guys": I'd list Alex, Mrs. Danvers, Lars Thorwald("What do you want from me? Money? I have no money"), Norman Bates, Gromek, even Marnie Edgar.

That said, he does NOT have us feeling sorry for Uncle Charlie(tormented as he may be), Bruno Anthony, or Bob Rusk. With those three, Hitchcock shows them doing cruel, heartless, mean things and their only charm is in how they comport themselves "in the meantime."

And I'm reminded of two "villainess ladies" who are more victim than villain by film's end: the villain's wife in Man '56 and Fran in Family Plot.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

And Hitch had already done his share of charming villains (Otto Kruger in Saboteur, for instance),

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I do so love Otto Kruger in Saboteur as Tobin (even as Hitchcock did not, he wanted Harry Carey Sr for the part and felt Kruger was a conventional heavy.)

Its Kruger's smiling, practically confidence that at once allures and chills us. Versus Bob Cummings Regular Joe of a hero, Kruger seems to have all the good lines and pragmatic thoughts. The Nazis will be good for business and everything will be efficient. And if they lose...well, off to the Caribbean for Kruger. He DOES get away.

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but never one drawn in such stark contrast to the hero (and went on to equally match them in the charm department in NBNW).

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The Grant-Bergman-Rains triangle is matched by the Grant-Saint-Mason triangle, but Mason is simply a cooler dude than Rains. He matches Grant in great voice, in masculine authority, and he's handsome ENOUGH in a more manly way than Rains. After all, Eve fel in love with Vandamm on her own ("I met Philip and saw only his charm.")

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I've always felt that a key scene in Notorious is where Grant and Bergman kiss to distract Rains from their real plan at the party. It feels like the Homecoming Queen and the BMOC pulling down the pants of the Class Nerd. Its very sad for Rains.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

And that critic's analysis of the Blaney/Rusk dynamic is rather the character embodiment of Hitchcock's theoretical editing illustration: closeup of a man; closeup of a gurgling baby; closeup of the man smiling. He's benign; swap the baby for a nude woman, and he's a leering letch.

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Absolutely. Audience identification can be switched on a dime.

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Ergo, Rusk's geniality takes on a suddenly different dimension next time we see him after learning he's the killer. Context makes all the difference in either case.

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Yep.

One reason I like Frenzy is that it proved that Hitchcock "still had it" almost at the very end of his career. Its not the landmark classic that Psycho was...but it IS (as Time magazine said) "smooth and shrewd and dextrous, proof than anyone who makes a suspense film is an apprentice to the Master."

Case in point: Rusk is first introduced in Frenzy by a "right to left" camera move as Blaney walks up to him and he suddenly appears.

After Rusk has committed the horrible rape-murder, he disappears from the movie for about 20 minutes.

Then comes a pub scene, and the camera AGAIN moves "right to left" and AGAIN suddenly finds Rusk, and THIS time: we hate him. We fear him. We are repulsed by him. But Hitchcock uses the "cinema" of the right to left camera move to "encompass" Rusk as a cinematic figure as much as a person.

Oh, and on this second time, Rusk is now wearing a big, bright, purple necktie. You can't miss it.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

And of course, Hitch had also thrown off "one's moral compass" when Marion's car momentarily stopped sinking into the swamp.

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Such a classic Hitchcock scene(at the end of a classic Hitchcock sequence -- the murder/body clean-up.) I suppose the audience is being teased as to its rooting interest in Norman and complicity in the crime, but it is also a wonderful deadpan comedy scene...Norman's quietly panicked reactions, his chewing of the Kandy Korn...with the VISCERAL impact of seeing that white car sink beneath the gray fecal mud as the soundtrack slurp, slurp, SLURPS away(how'd they get those perfect sounds?)

Given the anger that Hitchcock could get going against Uncle Charlie, Bruno Anthony, and Bob Rusk as the psychos in their films, it remains amazing how sympathetic Norman remains.

I think this is because Uncle Charlie actively tries to kill Young Charlie AND threatens her mother/his sister; because Bruno delights in tormenting Guy's fiancée Ann about his frame-up of Guy; and because we see the sadistic cruelty towards a woman that Rusk enacts (not to mention HIS framing of Blaney.)

In short, Uncle Charlie, Bruno, and Rusk do villainous things, whereas Norman Bates is rather benign and nice when he isn't killing people. He's not out to frame anybody or ruin anybody's life or career. He's a nice guy played by a handsome young actor.

On the surface. Norman's murderous evil is there all along, just never 'active."

[–] Doghouse (447) 7 years ago

I've always felt that a key scene in Notorious is where Grant and Bergman kiss to distract Rains from their real plan at the party. It feels like the Homecoming Queen and the BMOC pulling down the pants of the Class Nerd. Its very sad for Rains.

And he isn't even allowed the dignity of suffering in private: it's an especially poignant touch to have the loyal Joseph there at his side to witness his humiliation. Alex Minotis does a beautiful job of conveying subtext - embarrassment; sympathy; shock and outrage on his boss's behalf - in one uncomfortable expression and then, as befits his place, betraying no hint of acknowledgment of what they've both just seen, allowing Alex what minimal face-saving there is to be mustered.

And it adds a further dimension, that of suspicion having now officially expanded beyond the family to the staff, so Alicia's jeopardy is multiplied.

Giving thought to it brings the realization of how often films of the era employed household staff such as maids, butlers, cooks and so on as emotional surrogates for both protagonists and antagonists (maybe that's one of the reasons so many films about rich people were made).

Champion Hitchcock stalwart Leo G. Carroll's very first screen appearance was as just such a character: in 1934's Sadie McKee, Carroll is head butler to fabulously wealthy and hard-drinking Edward Arnold, who has become infatuated with - and married - poor girl Joan Crawford, who sets out to reform her new husband.

The enabling Carroll, knowing where his bread is buttered, malevolently sabotages Crawford's efforts by slipping his employer fifths of Scotch while Arnold pretends to be on the wagon, but manages the transformation from sinister to sympathetic when Arnold's very life hangs in the balance and, convinced she's not the golddigger he'd suspected, commits himself to Crawford's endeavor.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

A line from Cali Charlie that always got hisses from revival house audiences:

You can do anything you want. (Pause) And being a woman, you will.

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I've always wondered if that line was as offensive to 1960 audiences(or at least the females) as in later years.

I can't get an answer, but I'm guessing it DID bug them. I don't think that Women's Liberation sprung up in the 70's without some resentment over things like that line. Still, the 60's was a real shock to the system on gender and race, and the movies were always a bit behind the times back then.

I'm reminded of Connery's Bond, early in Goldfinger, telling his sexy female masseuse to leave while he talks to a CIA man. Connery slaps the woman on her tush and says:

"Run along, now. Man talk."

Yikes. And that's 1964.

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Yes, Charlie may be an old fashioned MCP, but it's a great line both in recalling what's already happened and foreshadowing what's about to happen:

If a woman wants to steal $40,000 and run off with her boyfriend... she will.

If a woman wants to hack up young women to keep them away from her son...she will (even if she happens to be dead!)

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Those interpretations are exactly why I love coming here. Never thought of it that way. Works!

[–] Doghouse (447) 7 years ago

Yikes. And that's 1964.

Yeah, but it's also James Bond. And a salient comparison.

Charlie comes out and, after we and Marion have recovered from his disarming greeting (which turns out to be only his little joke), he launches into full-on, ingratiating charm. Then that line: all of a sudden, some edginess has re-entered both the scene and his personality.

Right about the time of Goldfinger, there was an episode of The Dick Van Dyke show in which he calls a local observatory to satisfy his curiosity about something (what, I can't recall). He begins with, "Yes, miss, I have a question. Is there a scientist I can talk to?" A pause for her answer (which we don't hear), and he then says, "Oh, you are. Well, uh, is there a man scientist there I can talk to?"

The discomfort in the audience's subdued laughter was discernible. So my takeaway is this: we like Rob Petrie, so we're a little disappointed in him. We like James Bond too, although we already knew he's a sexist pig. Maybe some like him in spite of it; others because of it, but it's part of a character we've come to accept, warts and all.

Charlie, we don't know at all. First, he's scary; within seconds, he's charming. Then, seconds later, maybe he disappoints us a little.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Yeah, but it's also James Bond. And a salient comparison.

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True. Though I tell you the truth: maybe in 1964, that line was MEANT to be a bit over the top sexist. As if to mock Bond a bit. Maybe. But maybe not.

And I'm not crazy about the fact that the Bonds since, oh, about Pierce Brosnan, have been bossed around by a female M (Judi Dench) hassling them about their chauvinism. I don't mind the female boss -- its her constant undercutting of Bond's basic original persona that seemed wrong. And now he's a fairly courtly gentleman who beds very few women per film.

In short, he's not REALLY James Bond, and maybe Bond should really be left back where he began. An anachronism.

[–] Doghouse (447) 7 years ago

I buy that about the mocking. I really do. I mark Goldfinger as the point at which, having realized what he had (before they started calling movies franchises), Cubby Broccoli decided the way to go was bigger, badder and with plenty of self-satire.

It wasn't much more than a decade later that a TV megahit could have a villain (for whom sexism and lechery were the least of his sins) as its hero. And that's how they got away with it: "Hey, he's the villain; it's not our fault you love him!"

Come the more sensitive and enlightened '90s and a new Bond could be made to atone for past sins not only by having a female boss, but by being called by her "a sexist, misogynist dinosaur; a relic of the Cold War." 'Cause he's still, to repeat myself from upthread, the good guy.

I've wondered more than once if it ever crossed Van Sant's mind to make his Psycho a period piece and leave Marion in 1960. Nobody asks me about such things, but it would help reignite my interest in Bond (I never got around to seeing the last two) if they reanimated the anachronism and made him a period piece; hell, they could put him back in the '50s where Fleming first dreamed him up, and have their glamorous, international, big-budget CGI action and eat their chauvinist cake too.

I don't know if it would seem too quaint, but doesn't Tarantino make hit movies about pre-computer/smartphone eras like WWII and the old west?

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

I buy that about the mocking. I really do.

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Yes, me too. Given other movies of 1964 and their sophistication, it seems a little too "on the nose" about Bond's chauvinism. (Not to mention, he's having "man talk" with a rather mousy and rumpled looking middle-aged CIA guy, not quite "manly.")

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I mark Goldfinger as the point at which, having realized what he had (before they started calling movies franchises), Cubby Broccoli decided the way to go was bigger, badder and with plenty of self-satire.

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Yep. Dr No and From Russia With Love(the most Hitchcockian of the Bonds, but with that great savage fight scene with Robert Shaw) are the "warm ups" to Goldfinger and the decision to "take Bond all the way up to 11."

BTW, Goldfinger is also the movie where Connery's Bond says The Beatles should be listened to "with earmuffs on." Suggesting that James Bond was 50's old school guy and rather, again...an anachronism. This was odd, given that Bond and the Beatles were largely a twin 1964 declaration of British power.

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It wasn't much more than a decade later that a TV megahit could have a villain (for whom sexism and lechery were the least of his sins) as its hero. And that's how they got away with it: "Hey, he's the villain; it's not our fault you love him!"

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I pondered this a bit, and then it hit me: JR Ewing? Dallas? Larry Hagman's grinning devil.

I've always felt that JR Ewing begat Tony Soprano and all the other "good baddies"(Ian McShane on Deadwood, the Breaking Bad lead, even Don Draper a little bit.)

In real life, when I meet the real JR Ewings(in type if not at that level), I have a little rule if I try to take them on: "I cannot allow myself to become Cliff Barnes"...the sorta good guy who always fails at foiling JR.

[–] Doghouse (447) 7 years ago

Goldfinger is also the movie where Connery's Bond says The Beatles should be listened to "with earmuffs on." Suggesting that James Bond was 50's old school guy and rather, again...an anachronism. This was odd, given that Bond and the Beatles were largely a twin 1964 declaration of British power.

As of the start of Goldfinger's production, The Beatles' arrival in the U.S. and Sullivan appearance were a month away. Although they'd been U.K. chart-toppers for two years by then, "grownup culture" (and that's treading a fine line when invoking Bond) still regarded them as a fad at best; a joke at worst...something that would soon pass. Fair to say? And before ten years had passed, Paul McCartney would perform a Bond title song.

Reminds me of a story about Boris Karloff's first trip home in 1933, having left over 20 years earlier. One of his older, diplomatic service brothers (as all four were) pulled him aside amidst the celebratory hoopla and said, "I hope you're saving every farthing, Billy, as this can't last."

My first videocassette copy of Goldfinger had the line edited out, leaving off after Bond tells Jill, "My dear girl, there are certain things that just aren't done, such as drinking Dom Perignon '53 over temperatures 38 degrees fahrenheit." By the time I heard it again on later releases, I'd completely forgotten he'd added, "That's as bad as listening to The Beatles without earmuffs."

[–] Doghouse (447) 7 years ago

Yes, J.R. it is! Speaking of things nobody was certain would last, the first Dallas incarnation was a five-part mini-series; approval of a weekly one was contingent upon CBS's level of satisfaction with its ratings.

I'm sure you're right about J.R. priming the pump for the other "good baddies" (Deadwood was the only one I watched). In the Dallas reboot of a few years back, there's a scene in which Bobby's wife berates him for yet again causing trouble for the family with his underhanded ways. The now-older J.R. petulantly whines, "I don't understand why you blame me for all this."

Bobby's wife barks, "I know you don't; that's because you're a sociopath."

J.R. barks back, "What's THAT got to do with anything," as he stalks out of the room.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Come the more sensitive and enlightened '90s and a new Bond could be made to atone for past sins not only by having a female boss, but by being called by her "a sexist, misogynist dinosaur; a relic of the Cold War." 'Cause he's still, to repeat myself from upthread, the good guy.

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Yes, he's the good guy and I suppose Dench's lines about his being a dinosaur and about the Cold War were meant to put that whole period "to bed." I mean, when the James Bond movies hit in the 60's, a "spy craze" hit big: The Man From UNCLE, The Wild Wild West, I Spy, The Avengers (on TV); Matt Helm and Derek Flint(spoof American Bonds, in theaters.) And then suddenly the "spy craze" collapsed EXCEPT for Bond, and he had to be "re-tooled for new times." (I mean, the Russians are our FRIENDS now...or are they?)

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I've wondered more than once if it ever crossed Van Sant's mind to make his Psycho a period piece and leave Marion in 1960.

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I'll bet he did, and it kind of ended up that way anyway, what with Arbogast wearing a hat( a really LOUSY hat) and Sheriff Chambers asking Nellie the switchboard operator to put him in touch with the Bates Motel(her name wasn't Nellie, I'm just making that up.)

The "experiment" of staging the 1960 Psycho script in 1998 was rather fascinating. Van Sant made some changes($400,000) but elsewhere he did not(Joe Stefano touched up his own script and said that Van Sant wouldn't let Arbogast have a cell phone to call Lila, for instance.)

And of course, the whole issue of Marion Crane being desperate to marry seemed retrograde in '98. (Though I can assure you, those feelings still course through many women and men I have met over the years; look at the rise of internet dating.)

Van Sant joked that he would actually like to remake Psycho one more time..to complete the experiment by trying yet ANOTHER cast in the piece. Maybe someone should take a shot at a "pure" 1960 period piece...

[–] Doghouse (447) 7 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Doghouse (447) 7 years ago

I suppose Dench's lines about his being a dinosaur and about the Cold War were meant to put that whole period "to bed." I mean, when the James Bond movies hit in the 60's, a "spy craze" hit big: The Man From UNCLE, The Wild Wild West, I Spy, The Avengers (on TV); Matt Helm and Derek Flint(spoof American Bonds, in theaters.) And then suddenly the "spy craze" collapsed EXCEPT for Bond, and he had to be "re-tooled for new times."

Wasn't it right about the time of the Brosnan/Dench retooling that Ringo Starr was doing his "This is not your father's Oldsmobile" commercials? And this was not that generation's fathers' James Bond. On a personal note, I rate Pierce Brosnan #2 on my favoritism scale for Bond incarnations.

I'm not sure when The Avengers arrived on U.S. TV, but it premiered in Britain in Jan '61, one year and two days before Dr. No began production. Still, there can be no doubt Bond kicked the whole thing into international high gear.

And both Honor Blackman and her Avengers replacement Diana Rigg would leave the series and become Bond Girls.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Wasn't it right about the time of the Brosnan/Dench retooling that Ringo Starr was doing his "This is not your father's Oldsmobile" commercials? And this was not that generation's fathers' James Bond.
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I think you're right, and I agree. I've seen all the Bond movies, so its not like I turned my back on the new incarnation. But he was really meant to stand for something of a certain "forbidden" nature in the 60's. The series was never too serious, but in the Connery incarnation, I think we were meant to see Bond as a solitary killer who bonded sexually with women as a self-reward for his savagery.

That said, the most serious Bond for awhile was the one with Lazenby, where Bond gets married and loses his bride to violence on the same day. On to have had Connery instead. But we got him in the next movie(Diamonds Are Forever) seeking revenge...for the opening pre-credits sequence only.

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On a personal note, I rate Pierce Brosnan #2 on my favoritism scale for Bond incarnations.

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Me, too. Though its really "Sean Connery and the other guys" to me. Whatever dough the Bond movies are making today, the series was both a blockbuster event AND something shocking (like Psycho, frankly) back in the 60s'.

Also, only Connery was really able to carry movies as a star outside of Bond. Only Sean Connery seems to have had the chops to be a true "superstar."

Next in line was/is Brosnan, though. Daniel Craig's non-Bond movies have flopped, I think. But its also a matter of the actor, his charisma , how he "projects" Bond. Brosnan was very good.

.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

I'm not sure when The Avengers arrived on U.S. TV, but it premiered in Britain in Jan '61, one year and two days before Dr. No began production.

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True, dat.

But I think the United States didn't get The Avengers till around 65/66, and only the episodes with Diana Rigg, and eventually the color episodes. The show was rather produced for England AND for the US in those later years, and one more woman replaced Rigg.

Amidst all the spy TV series of the mid-late-sixties, TV's Batman was there, too. It wasn't a spy show, but it had gadgets and supervillains and henchmen and sexy henchwomen. It was "Bond-inspired."

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And both Honor Blackman and her Avengers replacement Diana Rigg would leave the series and become Bond Girls

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Yep. Pussy Galore and Mrs. Bond. Notable Bond er, "Girls." Oh yes they are!

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Nobody asks me about such things,

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I will. I'm asking! (Ha.)

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but it would help reignite my interest in Bond (I never got around to seeing the last two)

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Which are, evidently even without inflation, the biggest hits and which to me, alas...aren't really Bond movies at all...

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if they reanimated the anachronism and made him a period piece; hell, they could put him back in the '50s where Fleming first dreamed him up, and have their glamorous, international, big-budget CGI action and eat their chauvinist cake too.

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Truly so. Its a great idea, and it was done on a small scale a couple of years ago with the film of "The Man From UNCLE." I love that movie BECAUSE it is a stylish 60s period piece(by Guy Ritchie). I expect it failed because they just couldn't get big modern movie stars to play Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuraykin. Though Henry Cavill did a good Robert Vaughn impression....

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I don't know if it would seem too quaint, but doesn't Tarantino make hit movies about pre-computer/smartphone eras like WWII and the old west?

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Yes, he does. And they're great. QT's modern period seems to end with "Kill Bill"(for now.) Even Deathproof was meant to invoke the 70s.

QT has asked the Bond producers if he could make one of their movies. Decades ago, Spielberg asked, too. The producers said no to both star directors, but the new Bond films have had name directors and stars (including QT fave Chris Walz) so...maybe, someday, QT would get his chance....except:

Bond's gotta stay at PG-13. Can QT write that?

[–] Doghouse (447) 7 years ago

Its a great idea, and it was done on a small scale a couple of years ago with the film of "The Man From UNCLE." I love that movie BECAUSE it is a stylish 60s period piece(by Guy Ritchie). I expect it failed because they just couldn't get big modern movie stars to play Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuraykin. Though Henry Cavill did a good Robert Vaughn impression....

Oops, my curmudgeonly snobbishness is showing. I never even considered giving it a look ("Just another action-and-effects-heavy retread by producers devoid of original ideas," thought I), having been burned by new, big-screen versions of Maverick and The Wild, Wild West. Now my appetite, as Insp. Oxford would say, is whetted.

Such an exercise presents all sorts of possibilities for ironic social commentary vis a vis the "then" and the "now" while satisfying tastes for the sensational, rather like C.B. DeMille used to do in the silent days by wrapping salacious scenes up in the mantle of an historical morality tale.

There's a long-running Canadian show called The Murdoch Mysteries (known in U.S. broadcasts as The Artful Detective) depicting a turn-of-the-century (the last one) Toronto police inspector with a bent for science that has all sorts of fun making supposedly-prescient commentary on the present day by way of cultural or technological issues of gender, race or politics of the time, and Murdoch's experimental crime-fighting inventions like The Pneumograph (polygraph), The Weaponized Capacitor (taser) and bulletproof vest ("Based on principles followed by Mongol warriors of the 13th century"), of which his colleagues are always skeptical. In one episode, street vendors popularize something they call "Pisa Pie." In some, various historical figures turn up: Nicola Tesla; an elderly Sam Clements; a young Winston Churchill.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Oops, my curmudgeonly snobbishness is showing. I never even considered giving it a look ("Just another action-and-effects-heavy retread by producers devoid of original ideas," thought I),

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Well, I was ready to take the punishment. They'd made bad movies of I Spy(with Eddie Murphy), The Avengers(with Sean Connery as the BAD GUY) and The Wild Wild West(the worst of them for the grown-up boy who loved the show; here, West and Artemis HATED each other for the whole movie; they were best of friends on the show.) Might as well complete the set of disappointments.

Perhaps because a big star wasn't in The Man from UNCLE, Ritchie and his writers could "scale down." The film has a very mid-60's Euro feel, like Modesty Blaise or Funeral in Berlin(the Wall plays a big part early in the film), with a bit of the high art fashion feel of La Dolce Vita thrown in.

And I LIKED the two stars. Henry Cavill, known as a dour Superman, was a cool and witty Solo(the Vaughn homage is great); Armie Hammer was surprisingly big and strapping as Illya -- the idea being that he's The Rock hidden in a quiet Soviet's persona.

A great movie? No. A stylish one? Yes. Right on point. And the climax is refreshingly low-key and 60's style.

Fun sidebar: the only real name in the cast is Hugh Grant, the cheeky young stutterer/stammerer of yesteryear, now old enough to play Leo G Carroll's role of spy boss Waverly. I like Grant a lot better now than as he was then.

[–] Doghouse (447) 7 years ago

Fun sidebar: the only real name in the cast is Hugh Grant, the cheeky young stutterer/stammerer of yesteryear, now old enough to play Leo G Carroll's role of spy boss Waverly. I like Grant a lot better now than as he was then.

Remember when some were calling this Grant the new Cary? Although a career trajectory can never really be predicted, who could have guessed he'd actually become the new "Professor."

Not that I'd ever have recommended such a thing, nor would Cary have stooped to it, but in a hypothetical NBNW remake, I could easily imagine him, circa 1970-80, making quite a droll and effective Professor himself.

Picture his delivery of lines like, "That HIS problem," or, "I DEW wish you'd hurry, Mr. Thornhill."

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Remember when some were calling this Grant the new Cary?

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Oh, yes. When he was not even close. Though we weren't ever really going to get another Cary Grant(as some agent said, "a movie star is unique,, there is only one Blue Boy painting, there is only one Cary Grant), I'd say Sean Connery, Burt Reynolds, and Robert Redford(in different ways) came closer to Grant than...Hugh Grant.

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Although a career trajectory can never really be predicted, who could have guessed he'd actually become the new "Professor."

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Ha. Great point. And frankly, I was surprised at how old Hugh Grant looks in UNCLE.

BTW, when he first appears, just glancing at Solo and walking away there's a jolt: in a sea of little known actors in UNCLE, we think: "Hey, wait...that's HUGH GRANT." A modicum of stardom, he has.

For dating purposes, I saw a LOT of early Hugh Grant films, and his incessant fluttering of eyelids and overdone stammer drove me nuts. I suppose that was his "British stardom." Soon, Hollywood ironed those tics out, and he became much more charismatic, nowhere more as back in Britain in my favorite movie of the 2000's, "Love Actually." (How I laugh at that given "Psycho" as my favorite of the 60's.)

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Not that I'd ever have recommended such a thing, nor would Cary have stooped to it, but in a hypothetical NBNW remake, I could easily imagine him, circa 1970-80, making quite a droll and effective Professor himself.

Picture his delivery of lines like, "That HIS problem," or, "I DEW wish you'd hurry, Mr. Thornhill."

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A charming idea. This was rather the role proposed to him in Warren Beatty's 1978 remake of Here Comes Mr. Jordan..Heaven Can Wait. It was literally the Claude Rains role. Grant elected not to come back from retirement doing a supporting role.

[–] Doghouse (447) 7 years ago

BTW, when he first appears, just glancing at Solo and walking away there's a jolt: in a sea of little known actors in UNCLE, we think: "Hey, wait...that's HUGH GRANT." A modicum of stardom, he has.

At this point, I should probably walk back my statement about career trajectories. Some decided for themselves: once a star, always a star. For Gable, Tracy, Bogart and Wayne (and Cary Grant), for instance, it was top billing or nothing to the end. For others like Edward G. Robinson, Fred Astaire and up through Connery and Reynolds (and Hugh Grant), they either willingly or by necessity slipped into supporting roles.

Tom Cruise is 55 in a couple weeks. I wonder what his thinking currently is on that topic.

I vaguely recall hearing that about Cary Grant and Heaven Can Wait. And of all people, who should end up in the role but Vandamm himself? And if NBNW had been made 10 - 20 years earlier, wouldn't Rains have made a fine Vandamm?

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

At this point, I should probably walk back my statement about career trajectories. Some decided for themselves: once a star, always a star. For Gable, Tracy, Bogart and Wayne (and Cary Grant), for instance, it was top billing or nothing to the end.

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Absolutely. In fact, I believe that Spencer Tracy dropped out of The Desperate Hours over top billing versus Bogart. Fredric March took the role. (Tracy famously said why he ungallantly took top billing over the woman in his Kate Hepburn movies -- "This is a movie, not a lifeboat, chowderhead.")

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For others like Edward G. Robinson, Fred Astaire and up through Connery and Reynolds (and Hugh Grant), they either willingly or by necessity slipped into supporting roles.

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That "by necessity" element is key. The now-retired Connery was a superstar to the end, often billed over his younger co-stars. But for The Untouchables, he took a supporting role(of sorts) with the "and Sean Connery as Malone" billing.

Burt Reynolds has long "needed the money" and worked support, but usually with that face saving "and Burt Reynolds" billing, too.

And then there is George Segal, who had a brief, very handsome and glorious period of stardom in the 70's and has in recent years plied his trade in supporting roles...on sitcoms.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Tom Cruise is 55 in a couple weeks. I wonder what his thinking currently is on that topic.

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Here's a clue. The posters for The Mummy are like this:

TOM CRUISE
The Mummy

Only Tom's name up top, even though Best Actor Oscar winner Russell Crowe is in the film, too. Cruise's rule: No one shares the over the title billing. When Gene Hackman worked on "The Firm," and was told that, he simply had his name removed from the ads.

And yet, I can name two times where Cruise was the biggest star but took a smaller role in an ensemble: Magnolia and Rock of Ages. And both times, he proved his stardom by choosing to "go small."

I say that even as I'm STILL not convinced that Tom Cruise has the true persona of a true star. Which is kind of ridiculous, but then, no real Oscar action...

My take remains: "Tom Cruise is the Mickey Rooney of our time." Diminuitive, energetic, a Number One star but...something's missing.

I think Cruise will go out like Cary Grant, over the title. But then, I haven't gone back to check the ads for Magnolia and Rock of Ages.

An aged Dustin Hoffman recently said "in the beginning I was the young leading man of the picture. Now I play the older man who mentors the young leading man of the picture."

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

I vaguely recall hearing that about Cary Grant and Heaven Can Wait.

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He was offered a lot of roles after his retirement, but that one got ballyhooed the most, because Warren Beatty -- as a matter of HIS ego -- was promising that he could make it happen. Top billing to Grant. More money to Grant.

And Peter Bogdanovich tried to broker the deal, suggesting that Grant be bathed in a white light and fade in and out DURING his dialogue as the heavenly Mr. Jordan(this, to allay Grant's fears about looking old.)

But Grant said no. And Beatty fumed. Later , Beatty DID coax Kate Hepburn out of retirement for "Love Affair," but after a few hours of Beatty's incessant demand for more takes, Hepburn walked off the set until she got a different short take policy instilled for her scenes. (And Beatty's charms in wooing Kate out of retirement evidently dissolved as soon as Kate was signed and on set; Cary did the right thing.)

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And of all people, who should end up in the role but Vandamm himself?

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I always considered that Beatty's nod to Mason's great value as Grant's "doppelganger" IN NXNW. Two of the greatest voices in screen history.

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And if NBNW had been made 10 - 20 years earlier, wouldn't Rains have made a fine Vandamm?

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Absolutely, if perhaps a little less virile than Mason, who seemed more Grant's equal with the ladies. But Rains would still have been commanding. At various times in their careers, I could see George Sanders or Ray Milland as Vandamm, too. Its a "type" thing.

BTW, the original vision, if not choice, for Vandamm was...Yul Brynner! But that's when the character was called "Mendoza" in the script, and pictured as a more swarthy Latin American type. With script changes, he became the more Anglo Vandamm.

Brynner would have made for a more exotic and tougher opponent to Cary Grant; I'm intrigued by the idea. James Mason ended up being, again, rather a Grant doppelganger.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

"Yes, miss, I have a question. Is there a scientist I can talk to?" A pause for her answer (which we don't hear), and he then says, "Oh, you are. Well, uh, is there a man scientist there I can talk to?"

The discomfort in the audience's subdued laughter was discernible. So my takeaway is this: we like Rob Petrie, so we're a little disappointed in him.

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The DVD show had that famous episode where they thought their baby was switched at the hospital but the other couple turned out to be black. Big laughs on the sound track. Perhaps with both of these episodes, attempts were being made to break down barriers and confront prejudices. After all, the producer was Carl Reiner...Meathead's dad.

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We like James Bond too, although we already knew he's a sexist pig. Maybe some like him in spite of it; others because of it, but it's part of a character we've come to accept, warts and all.

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Well, he was rather The Hero That Psycho Made. Honestly. With Psycho opening doors on violence, sex, nudity(partial) , heroes and heroines dying and a certain sadistic content...

...Bond stepped right in. He was an incredible fantasy figure: kills unarmed people with impunity, beds more than one woman per film and does NOT end up married at the end(or the woman with child); and, as evidenced by Sean Connery, possessed of a certain sadistic pleasure in both his killing and his lovemaking.

Connery's Bond was a fantasy figure for males(freedom from husband/fatherhood, all those babes), but he may well have been one for women, too. Connery was a stud and the whole domination angle of female fantasy is, well, you know..

Came the seventies, Bond was Roger Moore -- duly noted as a major Bond with his passing a few weeks ago, but decidedly more cute, cheeky and "un-sadistic."

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Charlie, we don't know at all. First, he's scary; within seconds, he's charming. Then, seconds later, maybe he disappoints us a little.

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This precision of detail in acting and writing is the specific way in which Hitchcock evidenced "genius" in his best films. Or something close.

A critic might speak in general of "Hitchcock creating a mood of paranoia," but Charlie's every line and look are built up carefully to make the effect.

I select(as I have in the past) these two examples:

When Marion immediately agrees to $700, Charlie's smile fades down to grim suspicion. She didn't haggle. Its too high. "I suppose you can prove this car is yours, out of state license and all."

And when Marion asks where the ladies room is, Charlie is anything but friendly. He says "over there" with throwaway meanness. A regular customer would leave the lot.

Again, the word I'm liking and running into the ground is "precision." One doesn't even know how these lines and looks and camera angles are working on our nerves until maybe a third or fourth viewing of the film. Its worthy of study because Hitchcock put so much care INTO it: script, casting, direction.

[–] telegonus (736) 7 years ago

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Lots of great dialogue and just plain lines in The Godfather, whether it's the (apparently semi-improvised) Luca Brasi's rehearsal of his words for Don Vito: "may your first child be a masculine child"

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An interesting take on the macho culture of the mob, ruefully viewed through 1972 eyes, as is this later line from Don Vito to Michael:

"Men cannot be careless. Women and children can be careless, but not men."

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to Virgil "the Turk" Sollozzo's faux naif "I'm the hunted one now".

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Ha, faux naif indeed. And Michael's doing the same thing. BOTH men are faking "peace" while plotting war. Sollozzo just doesn't guess right on Michael's willingness to kill(and a gun in a bathroom that eluded a frisk...)

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The Godfather has famous lines:

"I'll make him an offer he can't refuse."

"Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes."

"Take the gun, leave the cannoli."

But it has great non-famous lines, too. Here's some I love.

(After Woltz says no to giving Fontaine the job.) Hagen: I have to leave . Don Corleone prefers to hear bad news immediately.

Hagen: So Tessio's the traitor. I always thought it would be Clemenza.
Michael: No. Tessio's always been smarter than Clemenza. It was the smart move.

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And for fun, from Moe Greene to Michael, about slapping Fredo:

Moe: I've got a business to run! He was banging cocktail waitresses, two at a time. People couldn't get a drink!

What's great about that line is that suddenly weak sad Fredo can be pictured as a stud -- but also as still WEAK. In Vegas, Michael TURNS DOWN hookers and sex(as proffered by...Fredo!)

Aw, don't get me started. The Godfather is its own kind of great film, but those lines, those dialogues...

And the "pure cinema" of Psycho has 'em too.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Also worthy of honorable mention: the banter at California Charlie's, right from his (ominous for the viewer and for Marion) opening line "I'm in no mood for trouble", which after a beat or so becomes "first customer of the day is always trouble".

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A great scene of interesting importance, I think, because Hitchcock and his players give it their intense ALL, even as the film is nowhere near turning into a horror shocker yet(that will wait for the Bates Motel.)

Marion's already in a paranoid state(the cop encounter) and now here's this car salesman starting right off by throwing her off guard with those first lines.

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A great actor John Anderson may not have been,

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Oh, perhaps "great" in his way -- a dependable and hard-working character guy who managed to cadge a few "roles for the ages" remembered today. I'd say California Charlie is THE role(ironic as it is in Psycho but not the "scary part"), and he's known in Peckinpah circles as the murderous dad of a clan of murderous backwoods oafs who go toe to toe with Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott at the gunfight finale of "Ride the High Country" (1962, two years after Psycho.)

"Ride the High Country" reminds me that Anderson worked a LOT in Westerns, and back then, there were a lot OF Westerns. On TV and at the movies. And yet, you can also see in some Hitchcock episodes -- one was written by Robert Bloch, in which Anderson's stern and stoic visage was used to tell a tale of a man digging a hole in his basement -- his wife thinks he's gonna kill her, so she kills HIM, and finds out he was gifting her with a new furnace, hence the hole. (Idea being: the poor guy had such a menacing face and manner that his wife was SCARED of him.)

Anderson is also a vengeful gangster out to kill Hugh O'Brien in another Hitchcock, "Ride the Whirlwind"("Ride the..." seems to have been a key John Anderson title choice.)

[–] telegonus (736) 7 years ago

Yes, and Ride The Whirlwind was a rugged episode for a Hitch hour. Hugh O'Brian was quite good and, surprisingly, to me, sympathetic (I never found him likable when I was growing up). John Anderson had an unenviable role, made the best of it. I wish the ending had tied the loose ends together more effectively: as I recall, O'Brian left Anderson to die in a forest fire. A case can be made for Anderson deserving such a fate, but still...

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

but could any other actor you can think of top him for his Cali-Charlie?

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No, not really.

Which reminds me: Psycho is one of those movies that is famous in film history for being perfectly cast. (The Godfather is another one, as are the TV series The Sopranos and Mad Men.) Its as if each and every role, top to bottom , has exactly the RIGHT person in it.

For instance, John McIntire probably could have played Cal Charlie, but he was a bit more handsome and sympathetic looking than granite-visaged John Anderson. The right guys are in the right parts.

Similarly, Martin Balsam and Simon Oakland(the shrink) could have switched roles. Balsam would have been fine as the shrink, but I think Oakland was too big and blustery to have been quite so good an Arbogast.

Only a few players in Psycho were not Hitchcock's first choices:

John Gavin. (Over Stuart Whitman.) Hitchcock could have vetoed Gavin, but he acquiesed in Lew Wasserman's cajolings. As we've discussed, some of us think Gavin is just fine...his height, his oddly nervous manner, his visual match-up with Perkins(a 'lost brother"?)

Vera Miles. Imdb says that Hitch offered Lila to Method Actress Kim Stanley first. An odd idea...but Miles had The Wrong Man and even Vertigo behind her (as Hitchcock's unused first choice) and gave Psycho some "Hitchcock continuity."

Frank Albertson(Cassidy.) Hitch wanted ugly overweight Alan Reed(the voice of Fred Flinstsone.) He got a perfectly cast older guy with the air of a once-handsome virile guy gone to sordid, drunken seed.

Everybody else seems to have been first choices, and great choices. John Anderson made for a great "stern father figure" and even had a Lincolnesque visage that further conveyed honesty vs Marion's dishonesty.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

And a thought:

While one can clearly tell the magnitude of stars in a fifties movie versus their character guys (James Stewart in Rear Window is a star; Wendell Corey is a character guy)...when comparing character guys, are some bigger than others?

In other words, was Martin Balsam a bigger star than John Anderson in Hollywood circles when Psycho was made?

Certainly Balsam was AFTER Psycho hit big...but I'm not sure in the casting books he was ranked much higher than John Anderson "going in." No, the luck of the draw for Balsam was that the role of Arbogast was "near star level"(20 minutes of screen time as the near-center of attention) and Hitchcock couldn't/wouldn't cast a star(like Sinatra, for instance.)

The characters of Psycho split between a "main five"(Norman, Marion, Lila, Sam, Arbogast) and the rest of them. Balsam was lucky to get moved from "the rest of them" to the Big Five.

[–] movieghoul (213) 7 years ago

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

A perusal of Balsam's credits shows as I suspected a lot of TV work both before and after Psycho, in the 50s a lot of live TV drama. Not many movies, notably 12 Angry Men before, Breakfast at Tiffany's after, then nothin much till his Oscar for A THousand Clowns.

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I think I did a little "career review thread" on Balsam at the old imdb board which has perhaps travelled here to moviechat(bless 'em when they do), and that's about right, with the proviso that after Psycho, Balsam got steady movie supporting work, year after year, til about 1976 and All the President's Men. He was one of the main character guys of the 60's(as Thomas Mitchell had been to the 30's and John Goodman is today.)

Psycho and Breakfast at Tiffany's are classics(the former more than the latter) but then Balsam got Cape Fear, Seven Days in May, The Bedford Incident(I recall a scene where villainous sub captain Richard Widmark reminds a wincing Balsam that as a submarine Navy doctor, he's not considered very good by the Navy). After Thousand Clowns, he gets that starrish billing in Hombre: "And Martin Balsam as Mendez."

Thereafter, he just sort of hung in there, and always did TV guest shots, too(The Untouchables, The Fugitive, The Name of the Game.)

One of the tougher truths about Martin Balsam is that while he is fairly trim(his suit jacket is always buttoned) and handsome as Arbogast at 40, as the years went on, he gained weight and his looks faded a bit, and soon, he really didn't look like a movie actor...he looked like a regular middle-aged guy.

As a "Balsam follower," I recall reading an interview with him in the early 70s where he said he almost quit the business due to a lack of roles...but was saved by some Italian films. Fitting? -- he died IN Italy, alone in a hotel room. Heart attack, I believe. Better than Arbogast did, and a lot older.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

On The Mike Douglas Show, Balsam told of doing a lot of live TV dramas in the fifties. On one drama, his character jumped out a window to his death -- except when he hit the mattress on the other side of the window, he bounced up back into view out the window!

On that same Mike Douglas show, Balsam said nothing of Psycho....

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

That Oscar didn't do much for his career either. It cam a year before Matthau won his for Fortune Cookie, which was a big star making role.

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Yes. It shows you how Oscar can play out. Balsam was Best Supporting Actor of 1965...and stayed a character actor. Matthau was Best Supporting Actor of 1966...and immediately became a star.

A few reasons for that. As a big Matthau fan(AND a big Balsam fan) I offer these:

Matthau was tall and thin. Balsam was short and stocky. Audiences respond better to tall and thin in their leading men.

Matthau had a good head of hair -- in fact when the 70's came, Matthau grew that hair long and fluffy and it made him look even MORE like a movie star(see: A New Leaf, Pete n Tillie, Charley Varrick.) Balsam was balding heading to bald.

With height and hair and "good enough looks," Matthau parlayed a knack for comedy (that great VOICE, that deadpan manner) into a string of star comedy leads, and then "backtracked to thrillers" for the trio of Varrick/Laughing Policemen, and The Taking of Pelham 123 where...

...at the end, Matthau and Balsam face off(good guy and villain) and one can see the differences in star power, even as Matthau was looking pretty wrinkly.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

. An interesting parellel: a year befor Fortune Cookie, Matthau appeared in Mirage

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Matthau himself said that while he won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Fortune Cookie -- "It was really a lead role." Fair enough, but it won him the Oscar. Mirage is thus, his last "true supporting role" -- but he gets that special billing "and Walter Matthau as Ted Caselle" that tells us he is now a REVERED supporting guy.

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in a role very similar to Arbogast: a private eye who enters midway in the film and is killed off before he can solve the case.

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Yep. Both private eyes add the same great flavor to the film, and are both likeable enough to regret their passing.

They added some sad characterization to Matthau's private eye, though: Pecks was Matthau's very first case as a PI , and Matthau used to be a refrigerator repairman. The concept is "anybody can try to be a private eye." Like Arbogast, Casselle does his job so well he gets killed for it. On his first case!

Matthau doesn't get a violent shock murder. In fact, there's some controversy about the clarity of that murder. Peck finds Matthau lying dead on his desk(a phone cord wrapped round his neck) and in the medium shot camera angle, you can't even tell if it is really Matthau(maybe, maybe not I say) "Mirage" co-star Diane Baker was asked about this in interview on YouTube, and has no idea(she wasn't there for that scene.)

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And like Arbogast, he gets some of the best lines in the film.

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William H. Macy, who played Arbogast in the remake(and revealed himself in interviews to be "not a fan" of Hitchcock) said "Arbogast is the best written role in Psycho." Maybe so. A lot of great one-liners.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Matthau's amiable PI is so nice compared to Peck's furious, frustrated hero that it IS sad when Matthau dies, but the effect is to leave Peck all alone for the third act versus the bad guys. As I've noted, Matthau himself told the producers, "if you kill me off, you'll lose box office." They did.

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I have a great childhood relationship with Mirage.

My parents took me to it on release in Spring 1965. I already loved thrillers. The co-feature was Charade, which they had seen and I had not, so walked in on the last ten minutes of Charade and I learned that Matthau was the killer in that! (I was already a Matthau fan by then. Never underestimate "a kid who likes movie people.")

Then we watched Mirage, which isn't as violent as Psycho, but which very much frightened me given how nobody believes Peck and everybody who tries to help him gets killed. I CLUNG to Matthau as a character and I was sad when he was found dead (my father laughed and said, "he's probably just sleeping...no, wait, he's DEAD. This made him mad.)

A few month later. Summer of 1965. I'm at a kiddie matinee with a sibling and they show a preview for the next double bill: Mirage and...Psycho!

As I've reported in the past, when that Psycho trailer came up, I grabbed my siblings hand and ran out to the lobby, waiting for it to end(everybody had told me it had a bloody shower murder.) I thought the trailer was over, walked back in to the theater...to see the shower curtain ripped open and find my hairs standing on end.

My "dark romance" with Psycho began that summer...courtesy of Mirage. And a double bill about murdered private eyes.

Bonus: in the 1993 film "The Firm," Tom Cruise hires private eye Gary Busey in a scene. In the VERY NEXT SCENE, the bad guys kill Busey at his office(they had followed Cruise.) That's the quickest "private eye takes case and gets murdered" sequence in thrillers.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Back to Balsam, it occurs to me that in 12 Angry Men,

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Screenwriter Joe Stefano recommended Balsam for Arbogast(fair enough, he re-wrote the character from Bloch's tall, tan Texan), and Hitchcock watched 12 Angry Men to decide. A risk for Balsam: all those other possible Arbogasts in that character guy cast: Jack Warden, Jack Klugman, Ed Binns(who would be a cop in NXNW), Lee J. Cobb. But Hitch went for Balsam.

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his character stands out from the rest in that by the end of the film, we still know almost nothing about him; as the foreman of the jury, he's playing a role in the jury room, so very little of who he is comes out, maybe a brief moment when he exaperatedly offers to give up his leader role to anyone who thinks he can do a better job. But mostly he's a true everyman in the film, while the others are all specific types

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Some lucky breaks here for Balsam. He's alphabetically early in the cast list(and facial shots at the end), and I think he's Juror Number One. Also, as the foreman, he is the focal point and decision maker for all the other men. Indeed, he finally explodes when someone criticizes his work("You think this is easy...YOU do it!"). Still trim, Balsam plays the role in a tight short sleeved shirt and reveals during a break(to Fonda?) that he's a little league baseball coach, maybe for a living. So he's a "jock" in the casting. But that's about all.

I've always figured that Hitchcock cast Balsam for that bald head(easier for the knife blade to hit home) and for how Balsam WASN'T brawny like Jack Warden or tall like Walter Matthau. Balsam was short enough to be "taken by an old lady" but tough enough to believably play a PI. And likely Hitch liked his everyman quality. And likely Hitchcock DID respect Joe Stefano wanting Balsam for the part(as Stefano wanted Simon Oakland for the psychiatrist.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Also outstanding: Martin Balsam's performance and line readings from the pay phone when speaking to Lila, his calm, reassuring manner,--isn't this truly the only time in the movie in which Arbogast is truly wholly sympathetic?--and Balsam sells it. Marion mentions this later on to Sam when she heard sympathy, even empathy in his voice.

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Lila: He liked me, Sam. Or he felt sorry for me. And he was beginning to feel the same way about you.

Yet another example of Stefano's concise, meaningful writing. "He liked me" -- then another think and Lila refines the thought: 'or he felt sorry for me." And he was beginning to feel the same way about you -- which ties into Arbogast's important line "You'll be happy to know what I think -- I think our friend Sam Loomis DIDN'T know Marion was here" -- which is "plot clearance" for Lila to bond with Sam for future investigations.

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I think it was critic Raymond Durgnat who said that in the phone booth scene, "we realize that Arbogast is completely, admirably honest." And not somebody "working his own angles"(as Sheriff Chambers later opines.)

Arbogast didn't have to make that call, but he decided, I'm guessing, that he better make it. Because he KNOWS he's decided to return to the motel where a woman disappeared. He'd better share his discoveries with Lila. Its smart ..and also gallant.

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Something was off, and Arbogast sensed it, and repeat viewers,--like us--can relish this retroactively, as it were inasmuch as it feels almost like a presentiment on Arbogast's part, on the true fate of Marion,--but how could he have known, was he psychic?--and yet these "truth epiphanies" do happen a lot in life, don't they?

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Yes, they do. And I think what's notable here is that Arbogast HAS to realize that if something happened to Marion...something could happen to him. But he has every confidence in his tough guy abilities..and no idea of what's waiting for him.

[–] telegonus (736) 7 years ago

Yes, EC, but what exactly was off with Norman? Or was it Marion? Maybe both. Norman came off as, I would imagine, clueless, even innocent, and yet something was wrong with him.

I'm guessing that Arbogast was guessing right about Norman being a young man who knows more than he lets on, yet his reasons were mostly likely "innocent", with no real criminal intent. Norman didn't know the score, which in Arbogast's line of work, is "off".

The tragedy for Milton Arbogast is that he didn't know just how off Norman was. More misunderstanding in Psycho; and more misreading, not in the screenplay but in the drama central to the film, which is to say that people are guessing about others, not knowing.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

The tragedy for Milton Arbogast

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I'm always oddly disheartened when reading the name "Milton Arbogast." Its like the movie deserved his full name, its like ARBOGAST deserved his full name. He died horribly, we deserved to know his full name. And its funny how it drives me nuts that he's only named as such outside of the movie (well, the Van Sant finally billed William H. Macy as Milton Arbogast at the end, but..no he's not.)

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is that he didn't know just how off Norman was. More misunderstanding in Psycho; and more misreading, not in the screenplay but in the drama central to the film, which is to say that people are guessing about others, not knowing

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I'm referred back to Hitchcock's own line in his Psycho trailer : "The victim...or should I say victims...had no idea of the kind of people they were dealing with."

Marion in the first round, and Arbogast in the second, sense some trouble around the Bates property and sense something off in Norman. But they simply cannot conceive of what's waiting for them with that Mother. She truly is a monster, capable of the most horrific murder, and "Psycho" shoecked the world in giving us that KIND of screen villain. She's beyond the pale.

All of which makes the moment when Mother actually strikes -- pulling the shower curtain, rushing out at Arbogast -- stunningly ironic: the victims simply cannot believe what is happening to them.