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A "Psycho" List: Icons from the Movie, From Most to Least Most

posted 7 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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I sort of "buried" a list I've been working on, in another very fun thread of Psycho commercials posted by Gubbio.

I figured I would "lift and move" the list as a separate post here, just to put it out as food for thought:

Icons of Psycho in importance, from most to "least most":

The shower murder
The screeching violins(in general)
The Bates House
The Bates Motel
The Bates House AND the Bates Motel(together as a unit)
Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates
Janet Leigh as Marion Crane(in the shower)
Janet Leigh as Marion Crane(for the first 47 minutes)
The staircase murder
The fruit cellar climax
Bernard Herrmann's entire score
The parlor talk twixt Norman and Marion
Mrs. Bates...seen killing people
Mrs. Bates...heard berating Norman
Mrs. Bates...revealed as a skull-face in a chair
Mrs. Bates..revealed as Norman
The clean-up of the shower murder (to the swamp)
The burial at swamp of Marion's car(and how it gets stuck)
Marion and Sam in the hotel room post-tryst
Arbogast questions Norman(on the porch, in the office, on the porch again)
Sam and Lila(all their scenes as "the forgotten players in Psycho")
The psychiatrist scene(Its either very good or very bad)

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There are other scenes, characters, and elements in the movie, to be sure, but those strike me as the famous ones.

I'd say that the shower murder, the screeching violins, the House and the motel, and Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates are the BIG iconic takeaways from the film.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

I find myself interested in my own list up there -- of Psycho iconography -- for my own, personal reasons, but it resonates with me. Psycho has THAT many things in it that have lived on THAT strongly for decades -- and perhaps REALLY did in the 70s and 80s. Time is taking its toll on the pool of people alive for whom Psycho was "a big deal."

Anyway, to complete this thought, I decided to try to run North by Northwest(my other favorite Hitchcock) through the same regimen and...damn...it doesn't yield nearly as many icons. But here they are, top to bottom:

The crop duster scene
The Mount Rushmore climax
Cary Grant as Roger Thornhill(his most famous role? His James Bond/Indy Jones?)
The UN murder of Lester Townsend
Cary and Eva Marie on the train in the dining car(landmark sexy talk)
Cary and Eva Marie on the train in the sleeping car(landmark sexy kissing)
The auction scene(Cary's crazy bidding but also how Thornhill, Eve, and Vandamm all come together for the first time in the movie; Vandamm gets the great lines)
The drunken car drive(somewhat less memorable than the other two action set-pieces in the film.)
The Glen Cove Library Scene(Grant vs Mason in a battle of smooth voices; the noose tightens around the Wrong Man's neck.)
"You men aren't REALLY trying to kill my son, are you?" (Mrs. Thornhill, distilled.)

... and that's about it, and I don't think this group of icons quite has/had the staying power of the ones in Psycho. I'd say the crop duster, Rushmore and Grant in his "Rooster Cogburn" career summary role are the big iconic takeaways here.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

...Though a lot of essayists have taken on the sexual directness of the Grant/Saint train dialogue as paving the way for a lot of "the sexual sixties and seventies" at the movies. You might say that the sexual side of Bond starts here, as does the more adolescent sexual fantasy of Matt Helm, with his assistant "Lovey Kravzit" giving him a bath. And away from the spy genre, NXNW's frank sexual talk and interaction between a man and a woman perhaps even paves the way for later sexual films like Belle de Jour, The Graduate, Klute, and even Last Tango in Paris. (Not to mention, Leigh and Gavin with more clothes off than Grant and Saint one film later in Psycho.)

For me, NXNW has more than enough iconic scenes and people and moments that it is right up there with Psycho as being "overstuffed with movie magic." They are sometimes tied at Number One on my list, are sometimes one rises above the other(usually right after I watch it.)

But they both gave us a lot, so much -- almost too much -- to remember for the rest of our lives.