MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > Check-In at the Bates Motel

Check-In at the Bates Motel

posted 7 years ago by ecarle (14979)
5 replies | jump to latest

There is a dream a lot of us Psycho fans have. It goes like this:

"What if you could see Psycho without knowing ANYTHING about the story?"

I didn't get to. When Psycho entered my consciousness (in 1965 with its first re-release), kids on the block and family members got the word out fast: "Oh, that's the one with the stabbing of Janet Leigh in the shower...and the killer is Tony Perkins in a dress, thinking he's his own mother!"

Wah--WAH (cue sour trumpets.)

Oh, well -- Psycho STILL affected me, excited me, stuck around in my head for a long time.

But what if....you didn't know ANYTHING?

Well, Janet Leigh's check-in to the Bates Motel would sure feel like a different scene, yes? And yet, still...there's something ominous to it.

Let's back up. In one of the great sequences in ANY movie, Marion Crane's frenzied night drive though a driving storm with Herrmann's strings a sawin' away and our blood pressure rising just from the craziness of it...suddenly gives way to utter silence(Herrmann's strings cut off as if the conductor just got stabbed.) We just hear the drizzle of the rain, watch it splash on the windshield as we hear the wiper blades swish and chop and there...it...is:

BATES MOTEL -- VACANCY.

Cinematic greatness on a grand scale. In 1960...mystery and curiosity. What's gonna happen at this motel? Forever after: BATES MOTEL -- VACANCY is as meaningful as movies get.

Marion pulls up, stops the car, gets out by scooting across the passenger seat(to avoid the rain) and examines the premises: a door open to an office that is closed, dark...empty. (How chilling this is TODAY -- that office is like a "stage waiting to be lit," to be INHABITED, by Norman Bates and various guests -- Marion, Arbogast, Sam, and Lila. But for now, it is a space full of nothing, and nobody.)

Marion strolls the porch and looks up at there it is: the Bates mansion, seen for the first time from that classic angle: from down the hill to the left(it had been seen before that, but was very hard to make out, up in the rainy darkness above the motel, its windows like gleaming eyes). And we see the lit window on the upstairs floor. And then the camera goes closer(Marion's eyes are focussing) and there she is: Mother, gliding across the lit window like a ghostly apparition yet solid and of flesh. (The shot by shot classicism of Psycho is astounding to me.)

Marion missed the sign on the outside wall that says "Ring Bell for Service" so she rather brusquely gets back in her car and honks the horn loudly. Its a mark of Marion's pushy forthrightness all through the film. She wants SERVICE. Now. (But oh how lucky she would have been if she just drove away.)

A young, thin male figure appears, runs down the hill, appears before Marion(hey, its ANTHONY PERKINS! What a cute guy; we forgot he was in this movie) and defuses Marion's customer-is-always-right impatience.

"I'm sorry , I didn't hear you in all this rain. Go ahead in, please."

And in Marion goes, following Norman as he turns on the light in the office, and circles round to the service side of the motel office desk. Hitchcock here shows his deft flair for the choreography of human movement; Norman and Marion assume their positions across from each other with crisp moves.

There will be three major sequences set in this motel office: Marion's; Arbogast's, and Sam and Lila's. And each time, Hitchocck films the scene DIFFERENTLY. Here, he relies on back and forth over the shoulder shots of Marion and Norman, from a short distance, edging in for close-ups as the scene goes on. The room is well-lit for night. Later, with Arbogast, the lighting will go all nourish and shadowy; later still, with Sam and Lila in the light of day, the room will be flooded with daylight. This first motel office scene is "in between."

The first line in the office scene is Norman's:

"Dirty night." An interesting choice of words. Not "rainy night" or "stormy night," or "bad night." Dirty night. There's something dirty about the word "Dirty."

Marion responds by getting down to business.

Marion: Do you have a vacancy? (Its what you ask, ever since I learned this line, I use it at any motel or hotel I enter without a reservation.)

Norman: We have twelve vacancies Twelve cabins , twelve vacancies.

Aha! A little joke. This handsome young fellow is witty. But it is a SAD joke, yes. He's telling Marion that this motel doesn't do much business. And it will become a running joke -- he will say it to Arbogast later. And it becomes a SCARY joke. Twelve cabins, twelve vacancies. Marion is ALL ALONE here.

Norman: They moved away the highway.

Now, the sad little joke becomes sadder still. We realize: this business will never recover, NORMAN is all alone.

Marion: I thought I'd gotten off the main road

Norman: Nobody comes here anymore unless they've done that.

Prosaic and profound.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Norman now shows that "extra bit of chattiness" for which he's famous:

Norman: Well, its no use dwelling on our losses. We just go on lighting the lights and following the formalities.

We?

Stefano's flair with words; the alliteration of "lighting the lights and following the formalities." This sentence will be echoed later with Arbogast when Norman says "I shouldn't even bother with guests signing in anymore, but old habits die hard." These sentences across two disparate scenes demonstrate the sense of "rhyme and unity" that the best Hitchcock films have, effortlessly. And with Arbogast, "lighting the lights" proves bad for Norman(when he turns on the motel sign he blows his lie about no one being here for a couple of weeks) and "following the formalities" proves bad for Norman too(the formality of letting Marion sign in ...nails him with Arbogast, too.)

Norman: Would you sign in, please...just the town will do.

Nice, concise. No reason for Marion to have to scribble away and eat up screen time.

But then we get the weird, big moment of the entire scene:

The DOUBLING UP and linking of:

Marion saying "Los Angeles" JUST AS

Norman , his back to Marion, searching for just the right key, chooses the key for Cabin One.

"The second time around," this moment stings. Norman hesitates, almost picks another key, then makes his decision. Cabin One. The cabin that guarantees Marion will die. For it is "right next to the office in case you need anything" and thus it is right next to the peephole that Norman will use to watch the naked Marion, get aroused, trigger Mother, and seek to kill the woman whose only crime was to be naked before him (without knowing it!)

But Marion saying "Los Angeles" seems profound, too. She does it while looking at the Los Angeles paper sticking out of her purse(bought at California Charlie's, this prop proves EXTREMELY important -- the money is going in there, and it gives Marion a "fake town to hail from." An intricate camera move out of the bathroom after Marion's death will stop at the paper with the money, later.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Weird: the linkage of Norman choosing the key to Cabin One (after hesitating) at precisely the moment that Marion lies about "Los Angeles" almost seems to suggest that by lying, Marion sealed her doom, too. I don't think that's really what happened, but Hitchcock's insistence on Norman choosing that key AND Marion saying Los Angeles being given such special weight suggests, well...something.

Norman: Cabin One. Its closer in case you need anything. Right next to the office.

Norman is, in a weird way, giving Marion some fair warning here. He has put her right next to his office. HIS office. Not way down the row. There's a slight suggestion of "stalker" here. Marion maybe should have caught that.

Marion: I want sleep more than anything

(A reminder of how long and tiring this trip has been)

....except maybe, food.

The "food" comment triggers a lot -- a revelation about Fairvale, and a later invitation to supper in the parlor. Both very important items.

Norman: Well, there's a diner about ten miles up the road, outside of Fairvale.

Marion: Am I that close to Fairvale?

Norman: Fifteen miles.

The impact of this revelation cannot be overstated. 15 miles. 15 miles! Marion is ONLY 15 miles away from Fairvale, and her lover, and the end of her story after driving maybe 1000 miles and...she elects to stay. She's tired. She needs sleep. and maybe...she wants time to consider the gravity of actually telling Sam about the cash.

And once Marion is dead and her story is over, those "15 miles"(or portions thereof to a gas station) will be profoundly driven by Arbogast; by Sam alone(at night to find Arbogast); by Sheriff Chambers(to question Norman), by Sam and Lila(to confront the Bates Motel).

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Norman: I'll get your bags.

How courtly. Its not every motel manager who gets your bags. But if you look like Marion Crane and there's twelve cabins, twelve vacancies...you do. Again, perhaps Marion should be more suspicious of this guy, more "on guard" about being alone with him and with him being so solicitous of her.

But its 1960...times are more innocent, sexual harassment isn't a big deal, and Norman Bates is unthreatening in every way: handsome, shy, polite, well-spoken.

"Do you have a vacancy?" opens the check-in process. "I'll get your bags" closes it. This "scene within a sequence" is over and more dialogues of importance between Norman and Marion lie ahead.

But just this ONE scene -- a very basic business discussion turned into something with a lot more plot information and power -- gives us yet another insight into why Psycho is one of the greatest films ever made.

[–] movieghoul (213) 7 years ago

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Typically when a driver accidentally gets off the main road and would wind up at the Bates motel, wouldn't that define their movement from east to west, as in Marion's case. So wouldn't Norman be suspicious on some level of Marion saying she's from LA (so going west to east)?

---

Possibly...Marion starting in Arizona and ending up in California Charlie's home state definitely makes the route east to west....

...but, in reality, once Marion got to where she slept in her car overnight(near the real two-building "town" of Gorman, California), she was about 70 miles NORTH of Los Angeles(having come west to Los Angeles from Phoenix) and kept driving north, to Bakersfield (to buy the car) and then hundreds of miles north to Shasta County, California (less than 200 miles from the Oregon border.) (In the movie, second unit work gives us a road sign for Gorman, and a city limits sign for Bakersfield. Shasta County is revealed by the map on the DA's wall during the shrink scene, and on shoulder patchs on the cop who takes Norman a blanket.)

So Norman might -- at first -- take Marion for someone driving north from Southern California.

What may have amazed him more is that she was from Phoenix...hundreds of miles more away than Los Angeles.