The Bates Place: Is it a House, or a Mansion? - Psycho (1960) Discussion

[–] Shibez (910) 6 years ago

I think it was just a really big house. When I think of mansions, I think of compounds that are so big they usually are named. Like..."Graceland" Neverland Ranch" Or "The Playboy Mansion"..etc....They usually have dedicated things in them that set them apart from regular houses. Like a dedicated movie theater...and no I don't mean making use of a finished basement or a extra room...I mean the mansion was designed with a movie theater in mind...or a bowling Alley...or a night club...maybe a back yard amusement park... possibly a food court in the mansion with dedicated workers on your payroll.

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[–] MizhuB (165) 6 years ago

I've also just thought of it as a semi-big Gothic house. Not large enough to be a mansion.

Forgetting the sequels, Hitch only shows us one room on the right side of the house. Upstairs, Norman's bedroom. Who knows what's in the rest?

The doorway to Arbo's right can't be the staircase to the cellar. That's clearly shown to be a staircase UNDER the main staircase when Lila descends it.

So except for Norman's bedroom, we're only shown the left side of the house. Even from the outside.

Wait a minute. I'm wrong. The kitchen is also shown to be on the right side. So the door next to Arbo might be a dining room? That's about all that would fit.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

I've also just thought of it as a semi-big Gothic house. Not large enough to be a mansion.

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I think that's about right. Although the phrase "semi-big" I think correctly demonstrates that there is something bigger than the average two story above about the house. Perhaps how it is elevated on a hilltop, looming over the motel...

By the way, the one house in my list in my OP that I think IS a mansion is the house in North by Northwest in Glen Cove where Grant is interrogated by Mason and Company. THAT's a mansion...and a real one, among several other Glen Cove mansions shown en route during Grant's cab ride. (And notably, 40 years later, a Glen Cove mansion figures in Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut as the setting for the creepy rich folks orgy sequence.)

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Forgetting the sequels, Hitch only shows us one room on the right side of the house. Upstairs, Norman's bedroom. Who knows what's in the rest?

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And indeed, the sequels SHOULD be forgotten. They do not really include the topography of Psycho,which is the only true work of art of the films, and the true blockbuster. Hitchcock chose to show us (and build) ONLY what he felt was necessary. The foyer. The staircase. Mother's room. Norman's room. The kitchen -- but only partially(it is only in the sequels that we go in and see the entire room.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Part of Hitchcock's gambit in Psycho is to let our imaginations fill in all sorts of blanks about the Bates house. And Hitchcock had a rule: ofttimes he only had his art directors build one part of a room or a house -- the part that would be seen "in frame." Anything beyond the frame, felt Hitchcock, didn't NEED to be built. He made Saboteur cheaply by having built, for instance, only a portion of a mansion ballroom -- the rest , "we saw in our imaginations."

Thus, when Arbogast is in that foyer, all that was really built was the staircase ahead of him and the wall to his right(our left.)

That becomes clear when, much later in the film, Lila runs under the stairs as Norman enters the house. The entire SIDE of the house is built on that side(to our left)....but screen right -- we see nothing. We can figure that screen right was...a whole lotta soundstage to get the shots of the foyer(like Arbogast getting stabbed on the floor).

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

The doorway to Arbo's right can't be the staircase to the cellar. That's clearly shown to be a staircase UNDER the main staircase when Lila descends it.

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Yes...I haven't been able to check my DVD of Psycho, so working from memory...yes...that's where the fruit cellar entrance door is...likely the door near the Cupid statue is in front of the staircase, to the right, and indeed, likely a dining room leading off of the kitchen in the back.

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So except for Norman's bedroom, we're only shown the left side of the house. Even from the outside.

Wait a minute. I'm wrong. The kitchen is also shown to be on the right side. So the door next to Arbo might be a dining room? That's about all that would fit.

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Something else I need to check: where the windows are in the front of the house. Those windows likely "front" rooms.

I think I will.

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[–] MizhuB (165) 6 years ago

Something else for me to check. I'm 99% sure that in Psycho II, characters are seen walking up that staircase to Norman's room. That would indicate a THIRD floor. I know that Norman is seen peering out that middle window which seems to be on a third floor.

In the original, I can't recall anyone walking up that second staircase, but I'm pretty sure it can be seen in some shots. Do they show Lila ascending that staircase before she enters Norman's room? I can't remember.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Something else for me to check. I'm 99% sure that in Psycho II, characters are seen walking up that staircase to Norman's room. That would indicate a THIRD floor.

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Yes, its a short staircase from the landing(where Arbogast is attacked) straight up to a bathroom(which Hitchcock refers to ONLY in the trailer), Norman's room to the right. A bit of a "cheat" -- it is only in the 1960 TRAILER for Psycho that Hitchcock details the bathroom ("...the BAWTHROOM", he intones)... and climbs those short stairs, not in the movie. (I think Lila is seen just having finished that short climb.)

That bathroom figures in Psycho II.

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I know that Norman is seen peering out that middle window which seems to be on a third floor.

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Not sure about that -- he's at the front of the house, right?

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In the original, I can't recall anyone walking up that second staircase, but I'm pretty sure it can be seen in some shots. Do they show Lila ascending that staircase before she enters Norman's room? I can't remember.

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Hitchcock cuts from Sam and Norman in the office to Lila having "just cleared" that small staircase, and heading into Norman's room, as I recall. Some real precision in the cutting here.

You know, if you look at a freeze frame of the overhead shot of Mother running out at Arbogast on the landing, you can see the small steps to Norman's room right in front of Arbogast. The topography is there...

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[–] MizhuB (165) 6 years ago

Not sure about that -- he's at the front of the house, right?

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Yes, the middle window in what I can only describe as the 'tower'. I THINK the camera pans from him in that window, down to the teenagers sneaking into the basement windows for their 'rendezvous'. But I haven't watched Psycho II in years.

Despite the fact that I once bought a DVD set of Psycho II, III, and IV. And haven't watched any of them in a very long time.

As many times as I've seen Psycho, I never noticed that you can see the steps in front of Arbogast in that overhead shot. There's always something new to notice in this movie.

And just for the heck of it, I've always believed that Arbogast wasn't slashed in the face. When you see 'mother' attack him, the knife hits his upper chest.

I remember perusing a book years ago that had almost frame-by-frame pics in it. I don't remember the author, but you may have mentioned it. I remember that in it, you see 2 or 3 frames of the blood spurting up ONTO his face...from his chest.

And Happy Holidays ;)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

And just for the heck of it, I've always believed that Arbogast wasn't slashed in the face. When you see 'mother' attack him, the knife hits his upper chest.

I remember perusing a book years ago that had almost frame-by-frame pics in it. I don't remember the author, but you may have mentioned it.

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I think that was Richard J. Anobile's 1974 frame by frame picture book of Psycho. Years before VHS arrived...it was gold!

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I remember that in it, you see 2 or 3 frames of the blood spurting up ONTO his face...from his chest.

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This is a debate that I have ALMOST conceded on...except, to me, the "logic" of the slash is Mother's downward sweep of the knife hits his forehead first and then his cheek.

Of course, that's not a "fatal stab" -- into his chest would make more sense. But, if you look at the film still, you can see the slash mark on his forehead and the slash mark on his cheek.

Also if you look at the freeze frame of Martin Balsam's face after being slashed -- you can see the "fake skin" patches on his cheek and on his forehead that are holding the tubes from which the blood spurts.

Recall that Hitchcock told Truffaut that "a string was pulled" -- and a tube released "hemoglobin"(Hitchcock's phrase -- fake blood, I guess...or chocolate syrup) on Balsam's face. Maybe that stuff hit the suit and bounced back up.

On old VHS tapes -- not so much on DVDS -- you can slow down the shot of Balsam's face first spurting blood and actually SEE the string being pulled -- the string is in the freeze frame.

Still...I don't feel this is conclusive. Even if Hitchcock wanted the effect to be "forehead and cheek are slashed," if people SEE the stab being to the chest...that's what they saw. It should be accepted.

Such minutae -- and yet it was important. The splash of blood on Arbogast's face(and who put it there, a deranged mother who turned out to be a man) were the essence of horror in Psycho -- the start of a whole era of "splatter films."

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And Happy Holidays ;)

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And to you! And to everyone here! This is a little part of how I am spending them this morning...

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[–] swanstep (2715) 6 years ago

It's a (for its time) slightly grand house, befitting its position up on a hill. The house in Giant is the same Hopper-ish design but 'mansion-sized':
https://www.carlastewart.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/GIANT-house-false-front.png
In the Giant case too they only built two sides on site/location and shot the interiors in a studio. Depending on how we project the Giant house in our imagination it's at least 4 times the size of the Bates house. Compare Norman's staircase with Leslie's (Liz Taylor's) before she redecorates:
https://tinyurl.com/y7f7uzum
The average US house, let alone the average US mansion, has grown so much since the 1960s, however, that arguably the Giant house isn't considered a full-sized mansion now: e.g., Cher in Clueless has a house about that size with a staircase about that grand and I don't think she'd describe herself as either super-rich or as living in a mansion. E.g. 2. When you visit Graceland these days (something I highly recommend), although the grounds and the whole complex including the aircraft and car museums across the road are large, the main family house movingly seems quite small. We can be sure, however, that it seemed like a mansion to a boy who grew up in a shotgun shack in Tupelo, MS.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

It's a (for its time) slightly grand house, befitting its position up on a hill.

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I rather like the thought processes here. While evidently not big enough to truly be a mansion, there is something 'big,' something slight grand about the Bates House. It is MORE than just a regular house.

And its being on that hill means everything.

In some ways, it looks like the house in Harvey(1950)..from which the cupola was stolen to make the Bates house. But the Harvey house is on a block, with other houses. The Bates house is truly a "House on Haunted Hill"(indeed, it fits that movie title more than the actual House on Haunted Hill in Castle's 1959 movie. THAT house on haunted hill was a weirdly Aztec-looking stone structure up in the Hollywood Hills...)

And this: in North by Northwest, when the drunken Cary Grant crashes his car into a police car near a block of houses(backlot MGM or backlot Universal on loan, I don't know)...one of the houses in the final shot looks quite a bit like the Psycho house. It isn't, but it is a demonstration of the fact that studios built "Psycho-type" houses all the time for their movies. Hitchcock's genius -- as initiated by Robert Bloch -- was to put one of those houses on a hill with no other houses around it, and to put a motel right below it -- twin arenas for plausible terror.

Interesting: in one of the first draft scripts for Psycho, the screenwriter(not Joe Stefano) created the house and motel as CONNECTED...me, I just can't see it. What? A tunnel built between the two structures?

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

The house in Giant is the same Hopper-ish design but 'mansion-sized':
https://www.carlastewart.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/GIANT-house-false-front.png

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I've always felt that the house in Giant(1956) is the next most famous house in movies after the Psycho house. Its bigger...but it operates on the same concept: something opulent and "of the city" inexplicably moved and isolated to the Great Outdoors. The hill in Psycho becomes the vast plains in Giant(shot reminiscent of the plains where the crop duster flies in North by Northwest); the contrast between house and outdoor locale is striking.

Now, Giant came out four years before Psycho, so we can figure the house in Giant inspired Hitchcock. But then he told an interviewer that he was also inspired by a house(hotel) in one of his own movies: the McKittrick Hotel in Vertigo(which has a staircase very reminiscent of the Psycho staircase, but more polished and opulent in Technicolor and VistaVision.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

In the Giant case too they only built two sides on site/location and shot the interiors in a studio.

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Same with the Psycho house. Only the front and the "left side"(our left) were built for Psycho -- and Hitchcock in so doing gave the house a "personality." We don't spend time on the other side of the house, or behind it. We only really see the part of the house that can "see" the motel below, as if watching over it. The house is a character in Psycho -- and we come to view it from a particular POV ("up the hill to the left," looking down on us.) Only when Lila makes her final approach straight up the hill to the house at the end(in classic Hitchcock travelling POV shot motif), do we see the house from a new angle.

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Depending on how we project the Giant house in our imagination it's at least 4 times the size of the Bates house.

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Which I guess makes it much more of a mansion THAN the Psycho house. Of course, Giant was about a very rich family living off of hundreds(thousands?) of acres of land.

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Compare Norman's staircase with Leslie's (Liz Taylor's) before she redecorates:
https://tinyurl.com/y7f7uzum

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Hoo boy.

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The average US house, let alone the average US mansion, has grown so much since the 1960s, however, that arguably the Giant house isn't considered a full-sized mansion now: e.g., Cher in Clueless has a house about that size with a staircase about that grand and I don't think she'd describe herself as either super-rich or as living in a mansion.

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Well, that was a Beverly Hills home owned by a prosperous lawyer. Very expensive. "Location, location, location."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

E.g. 2. When you visit Graceland these days (something I highly recommend),

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I never have -- and I really should I guess this is what the phrase Bucket List was invented for.
(Side-bar; via streaming, I recently found TWO film versions of the same story: When Elvis Met Nixon at the White House; the new one with Kevin Spacey(uh oh) as Nixon and a wrong-faced Michael Shannon as Elvis is fun, but the old one is in some ways better, except the guy playing Nixon is awful.)

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the whole complex including the aircraft and car museums across the road are large, the main family house movingly seems quite small.

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Like some of the Presidential homes...

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We can be sure, however, that it seemed like a mansion to a boy who grew up in a shotgun shack in Tupelo, MS.

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Oh, I'm sure that's how Elvis felt about it.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

I think it was just a really big house. When I think of mansions, I think of compounds that are so big they usually are named. Like..."Graceland" Neverland Ranch" Or "The Playboy Mansion"..etc....

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That's a great point. And those are mansions with "grounds" -- big areas surrounding the home...sometimes a compound with other structures.

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They usually have dedicated things in them that set them apart from regular houses. Like a dedicated movie theater...and no I don't mean making use of a finished basement or a extra room...I mean the mansion was designed with a movie theater in mind...or a bowling Alley...or a night club...maybe a back yard amusement park... possibly a food court in the mansion with dedicated workers on your payroll.

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Yep. I'm reminded that in Robert Bloch's third "Psycho" novel -- "Psycho House," somebody has bought the Bates House and Bates Motel and converted them into a tourist park , with guests visiting the murder locales and the fruit cellar. A creepy concept...but fun.

Which also reminds me...as a young Hitchcock fan, I once imagined(just for fun!) a darker version of Disneyland: Hitchcockland.

Why not? You could have the Psycho Haunted House, and fly crop duster planes(like the rocket planes at Disneyland), and pattern the Mount Rushmore roller coaster after the Matterhorn; you could take the Foreign Correspondent plane crash into the sea ride, or ride on the Strangers on a Train berserk carousel....or enter Birds Land to endure attack....

Some of this was incorporated into an indoor show at Universal Studios where folks got to re-enact the shower scene and the Saboteur fall from the Statue of Liberty...but I think that show is closed now.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

...so I decided to look at some frame captures of the house from the 1960 film, and these "clues" showed up:

Looking at the house from the outside: (Marion's view; Arbogast's view): Top floor left front: Mother's front window("THE" window); top floor left side: Mother's room side window; Bottom floor left front: window to left of door (unseen living room?) , Bottom floor left side: Side window of living room?

Interesting: behind the house, but part of it, is yet another part of it -- smaller in width than the main building -- and IT has a window: unseen back room in house? Laundry area?

Looking at the house from the outside: Top floor right front: no view available; camera angle prevents seeing there. Same with bottom floor. Only the "cupola windows" on the second floor are visible. So: either there ARE rooms over there..or no rooms.

Inside the house: Only rooms to be seen: Mother's room upstairs, Norman's room upstairs, kitchen downstairs, rear hall to kitchen downstairs(an interesting "space"); Door to upstairs bathroom(next to Norman's room) is visible; but only in trailer is it identified as such.

AND: When Arbogast climbs the stairs, he has a solid wall to his right(our left) so...no rooms there?
BUT POV of small staircase to Norman's room suggests that there might be a room "above the staircase, in front of Normans room, forward on the second floor.)

AND: When Mother runs out at Arbogast, to her immediate right is a landing that heads to the front of the house: Mother's room has the front window but...anything on the other side?

Its a mystery. As well Hitchcock intended it to be. And I think that "attached rear structure" of the Bates House likely increases its size.

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[–] Doghouse (447) 6 years ago

"And this: in North by Northwest, when the drunken Cary Grant crashes his car into a police car near a block of houses(backlot MGM or backlot Universal on loan, I don't know)...one of the houses in the final shot looks quite a bit like the Psycho house. It isn't, but it is a demonstration of the fact that studios built "Psycho-type" houses all the time for their movies."

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That's actually the "Smith House" used in Meet Me In St. Louis (and later in Cheaper By the Dozen, which was a 20th-Fox production that rented usage of the standing exterior set on MGM's Lot 2).

As for the "Bates House," some people have really given the matter a lot of thought, to the point of drafting theoretical floor plans. Here's one of the best (which I find completely plausible), encompassing even the main portion of the motel.

https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-fantasy-floor-plans-psycho-bates-motel-ever-wanted-to-build-a-house-34226667.html

Laid out like an architect's blueprint, you'll note it's even labeled "Home Of: Mr. Norman Bates" in the lower right.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

That's actually the "Smith House" used in Meet Me In St. Louis (and later in Cheaper By the Dozen, which was a 20th-Fox production that rented usage of the standing exterior set on MGM's Lot 2).

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Aha. I've always felt the bustling Meet Me in St. Louis house gives us a taste of how the Bates House COULD have functioned with more people -- a larger bustling family -- living in the house during its early years of existence. One man's cozy big house for a family is another man's brooding empty house for...one mother and one son "living as if there was no one else in the world."

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As for the "Bates House," some people have really given the matter a lot of thought, to the point of drafting theoretical floor plans. Here's one of the best (which I find completely plausible), encompassing even the main portion of the motel.

https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-fantasy-floor-plans-psycho-bates-motel-ever-wanted-to-build-a-house-34226667.html

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A bit difficult to understand...but ...precise and real. Its fun picking stuff out. One can make out the motel parlor and the bathroom of Cabin One. As for the house, a dining room to the right of the foyer as one comes in(and connected to the kitchen in the back) makes sense. (And figures in the climax of the TV series Bates Motel.) It looks like Mother DOES have a whole side of the house for her room. etc.

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Laid out like an architect's blueprint, you'll note it's even labeled "Home Of: Mr. Norman Bates" in the lower right

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Well, actually, it was Home Of: Mr. Norman Bates FATHER. David Thomson(film critic) imagined that the man's name was Henry Bates. A builder of homes who built his own home to stand out and loom over the landscape. But that was just "fan fiction." (In the book: Suspects -- about famous movie characters given backstories.)

PS. Hello, doghouse!

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[–] Doghouse (447) 6 years ago

By the early 1970s, when the photo linked below of the MMISL Smith home was taken, it had become nearly as forlorn and forbidding as the Bates house.

http://hookedonhouses.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Meet-Me-in-St.-Louis-house-on-backlot-in-1970s.jpg

Meanwhile, over on the Universal lot, a fresh coat of paint, a spiffy wraparound porch and some greenery rendered the Bates house considerably more welcoming for Captains and the Kings..

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BOxMFsojAAg/T_XhyhJUB1I/AAAAAAAACE0/p7fXgsn-EIk/s1600/univ_psycho_house_captains_and_the_kings_1976_450.jpg

It rather reminds me of the difference between artistic renderings of the original Disneyland haunted mansion...

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/af/90/5a/af905a0fa81de6d99823b1c4530112fd--dark-disney-disney-art.jpg

...and its realization.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lUc59XJbXuM/VjO-ypxw3NI/AAAAAAAAJuQ/AposiCA-ixI/s1600/Disney11172_mm.JPG

After five or so years of adolescent anticipation, I felt rather let down by the tidy antebellum facade its 1969 opening presented.

And speaking of which, regardez s'il vous plait, the form that the attraction takes at Disneyland Paris:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MXZSICCcErs/VjO-TBM10qI/AAAAAAAAJuA/vNL0gP_0jds/s1600/Paris_Disneyland_HauntedMansion.JPG

A little taller, a little grander, but decidedly familiar, right down to the sandstone steps.

P.S. Happy new year!

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[–] swanstep (2715) 6 years ago

In the early '80s a band called Landscape had a single called 'Norman Bates'. The vid restaged central bits of Psycho:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajnLs4NQ3ek
Perhaps testifying to how easy it is inflate the Bates home in one's mind, the vid. uses a huge stately home - closer to a palace or chateau than a mansion - for its main location. I'm pretty sure that they in fact used Wykehurst Place:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wykehurst_Place
which was featured in Legend of Hell House (1973).

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

And speaking of which, regardez s'il vous plait, the form that the attraction takes at Disneyland Paris:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MXZSICCcErs/VjO-TBM10qI/AAAAAAAAJuA/vNL0gP_0jds/s1600/Paris_Disneyland_HauntedMansion.JPG

A little taller, a little grander, but decidedly familiar, right down to the sandstone steps.

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Well, whattya know -- the Disney Haunted Mansion in Paris is the Psycho house on steroids. Well...the French always liked Hitchcock best. And those sandstone steps are part of the allure of the Psycho house....Norman climbs them and Arbogast climbs them in the best individual shot in the picture, IMHO.

Looking through that collection of houses, I'm reminded of what a great iconic trope ANY haunted house is, and how many movies and TV shows have been powered by same. Don't forget the homes of the Munsters and the Addams Family on TV.

But also this, specifically about Psycho:

"Haunted houses" are often, in the movies, very ephemeral concepts. The haunted hotel in The Shining MAY be populated by ghosts(SOMEBODY unlocks the pantry door to let Jack out); but it may also be filled with hallucinations from Jack's mind, or apparitions that never really manifest in a concrete fashion.

The house in Robert Wise's "The Haunting" definitely seems to be haunted but by what...sound effects? Doors that breathe in an out? When a big scare arrives at the end of the film, it is a human being lost in the house(somebody's wife). Still, the film "mixes and matches" the supernatural and the real.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Psycho? Not so much. Hitchcock -- ever the realist(well, except in The Birds) -- shows us that the Bates House is haunted by the most direct and menacing "ghost" imaginable: a living human being, with a big knife, who stabs repeatedly to death any stranger who enters the house. Now, that's scary...that made the HOUSE scary (pure terror watching Arbogast climb the stairs and Lila investigate the entire house.) But it rather drops out of the "haunted house" genre in favor being the first slasher movie.

With a bonus: the monster that haunts the Bates House comes on down and haunts the Bates Motel, unforgettably stabbing to death a pretty female customer in her shower. The entire Bates property is haunted...and yet not...by a killer who is not a ghost at all. I think the plausibility and literalness of the killer in Psycho made it a blockbuster. Here was a "haunted house" that paid off in terror.

And yet, at a "thematic" level, Norman Bates IS haunted, isn't he? By his own mother, in his mind. One 1960 review I read was interestingly prescient, it said "Perkins doesn't get enough exorcize -- repeat, exorcize -- of his inner Mother." (The review was one of several that spoiled the twist -- and of course, cited a classic superthriller yet to come: The Exorcist. Is Norman as possessed by Mrs. Bates as the girl is possessed by the Devil? Are these "one and the same?)

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[–] Otter (24464) 6 years ago

It's a slightly grand house, a house that's intended to show the owner has some wealth. But as I said below, the size makes it a house and not a mansion.

It seems to have been built in the late 19th or early 20th century, during the era when the middle classes had servants and the upper classes had a LOT of servants (because servants were paid little but their "keep"). A mansion of that era would require rooms for at least ten live-in servants, plus guest rooms because a mansion was for entertaining, and the Bates house probably has a couple of crappy little maids' rooms in the attic. So yeah, the took of the Bates house makes it obvious it intended to house a family with more than two children and a few servants, while a mansion of that era would be built to house more servants and guests than family members.

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[–] Otter (24464) 6 years ago

We've discussed this before, and I'm going to say the same thing as I did on the previous thread: It's a house, not a mansion.

I live near the area in question, and what you have there is a very nice house from the late 19th or early 20th century. A house that's nicer than the other houses in town, a house built with people who thought that they were better than their neighbors and wanted to show it, a house that was expensive by local standards when it was built... but it's still the size of a regular family house. It's not a mansion, it's not big enough.

It's a beautiful piece of production design, it speaks of better days, past prosperity, and of social isolation. And the latter impression is strong, the house is set on a hill with no neighbors in sight, plus as I said it was built by people who thought they were better than their neighbors and who wanted to show it, and which implies a family that holds itself away from the trashy neighbors even after the money is gone. That's what production design is supposed to do, a movie character's home can fill you in on their personality, likes and dislikes, social status, etc. The "Psycho" house does all that without a word, it sits there on its bluff, and without a word it tells you about Norman's background, his family's past glories, and their isolation and dysfunction.

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[–] swanstep (2715) 6 years ago

@Otter. Well-expressed. I completely agree.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

I agree, too.

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. That's what production design is supposed to do, a movie character's home can fill you in on their personality, likes and dislikes, social status, etc. The "Psycho" house does all that without a word, it sits there on its bluff, and without a word it tells you about Norman's background, his family's past glories, and their isolation and dysfunction.

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Yes, I've always felt that Psycho drives an almost obsessive desire to think about the story "backwards and forwards in time." We very much wonder about how Norman Bates became ...Norman Bates. That's why(to me) the psychiatrist scene is pretty fascinating, and why they made Psycho IV: The Beginning. But we also think about the family from which Norman came. The father (dead when Norman was five) and his "family money"; the mother(aging through time and -- was she REALLY bad, or was Norman the evil one all along?) The distance of the house from town. The point that the house likely stood there alone for DECADES before Mrs. Bates decided to build the motel below it(and thus create a "trap" for passing female drivers....)

I've always contended that the present-day horrors we witness in Psycho(the killings of Marion and Arbogast) are surrounded by the horrors of the Bates Motel's PAST....Norman's murder and stuffing of Mother; a swamp with other victims...and whatever circumstances turned a "regular American family" into a madman's launching pad. Marion and later Arbogast pretty much enter "a world of horror," decades in the making...with no realization at all of what they have entered. Until it is way too late.

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[–] ultravioletx (10237) 6 years ago

They are not mutually exclusive. A mansion is a type of house. A house is a house, but a mansion is both.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

True enough!

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[–] [deleted] 6 years ago

You bring up an interesting discrepancy I never noticed before. From the hotel we see mother standing at her bedroom window at the front of the house. But when we enter the house we must move up the staircase to the landing which is obviously in the rear of the house. From there we know the two doors are to mothers room and Normans room. We can briefly see that along the hallway there are two doors at the end. And when Lila enters mothers room there is a full length wall that the door obviously is against when its opened. So my point is mother must have been standing at the window of the room at the end of the hall, NOT her OWN bedroom window. I hope you can understand this as Im trying to explain it. Also, wasn't there a door opposite the top of the stairs at the landing? Where would this lead to? It doesn't appear that this type of house has an attic.
The layout of that house always confused me. And don't even get me started on the basement with an additional basement acting as a fruit cellar.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

You bring up an interesting discrepancy I never noticed before. From the hotel we see mother standing at her bedroom window at the front of the house. But when we enter the house we must move up the staircase to the landing which is obviously in the rear of the house. From there we know the two doors are to mothers room and Normans room. We can briefly see that along the hallway there are two doors at the end. And when Lila enters mothers room there is a full length wall that the door obviously is against when its opened. So my point is mother must have been standing at the window of the room at the end of the hall, NOT her OWN bedroom window.

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I try to interpret this NOT using the rooms as shown in the sequels(Psycho AS Psycho must stand alone), but it seems to me that the entire upstairs floor to the left of the staircase --with a hallway in between -- IS Mother's room. A big room that takes up the whole upper side of the house, so that indeed, she is seen in the front window of her bedroom.

If one walked down the hallway from Mother's visible door to the front of the house(upstairs), I assume no room at the front of the house, just the area within the cupola(a cheat: Norman is shown taking this route in Psycho II.) Is there a room across the floor from Mother's room, near the front? Maybe. Norman's room faces Mother's room IN THE BACK(and is pretty clearly a "nook" room, intended for a child -- hey wait, don't we get a view of window? It might look forwards towards the motel or off from the other side of the house.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

I hope you can understand this as Im trying to explain it.

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I do, and I'm not so much rejecting your view as offering a different one: Mother would be first seen (by Marion) through the window of Mother's room. Though I suppose, given that Mother is moving on that first glimpse that maybe there is a front sitting room we never saw; a place for Mother to hang out "away from her bedroom."

But I think the sequels (especially Psycho III), show Norman looking down from Mother's Room's window directly down at the motel.

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The layout of that house always confused me.

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I've been watching a "Making of" DVD doc on The Shining this week, and (coincidentally) one of the art directors on the film says "the interiors shown of the hotel don't really match the exterior set. It would be impossible to fit all those rooms and halls in that structure." So, whether Overlook Hotel or Bates House.....the interior evidently doesn't match the exterior. "Movie magic...or movie cheating?"

And recall this: to "fit" the screen for the best framing, Hitchcock had the Bates House built, I think, about only 3/4 of its actual intended size. You can see this when Arbogast is on the porch of the house; Mother's upstairs window is rather too close to the ground.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Also, wasn't there a door opposite the top of the stairs at the landing? Where would this lead to? It doesn't appear that this type of house has an attic.

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The answer is given by Hitchcock in the 1960 trailer. He opens that door and intones, "The bathroom." (Actually , he says "the BAWTH-room." But we don't see it. Well, we see it in Psycho II, Meg Tilly has a shower scene in there, and there is an homage to the "bloody bath towels stuffed in the toilet" scene from The Conversation.

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And don't even get me started on the basement with an additional basement acting as a fruit cellar.

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Financing Psycho out of his own pocket(figuratively), for cost reasons, Hitchcock fought building any room or structure he felt irrelevant. Example: - he fought against building a rear to the Bates Motel to be shown when Lila leaves the motel for the house, but scenarist Joe Stefano persuaded him it was necessary -- "the exact topography" was important(I suppose linking motel and house, and not just starting on a close-up of Lila with no context.)

But evidently Hitchcock went along with building that "extra" basement passage to the fruit cellar. It was in the novel, I think, so that was reason enough, but also this: Lila's crossing that extra room first gave Norman more time to get dressed to kill, AND allowed the finale to "play" deeper down in the house; Norman didn't come running in from the foyer down to the fruit cellar immediately.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

A "side bar" thought:

I think Psycho has "made its bones" as a movie that creates obsession in its many fans. Its ironic that two years after Hitchcock made a movie ABOUT obsession(Vertigo), he made a movie that became an object OF obsession(Psycho.) Though Vertigo has its obsessives, too -- obsessives about a movie about obsession.

But Psycho...man, its something else how it worms its way into the mind.

And I think the house is one of the ways it does so.

Hitchcock creates in the house a place of strong mystery. We in the audience at once have a strong desire to see MORE of the house, and yet a dread about what we will see. Or who will be in there. And what they will do -- not only to the characters who enter(Arbogast, Lila), but to US as their surrogates. Arbogast dies but WE are terrorized.

Anyway, Hitchcock rather carefully doles out visual information about the rooms and layouts of the house.

When first seen, in a driving rainstorm and by Marion -- the house is "exterior only" -- its "up there on the hill," and Mother, first seen by Marion, is a distant spectral figure. Instinctively, we realize that we probably would prefer it if Mother DID stay up there. She's scary on first viewing...gliding past the window with that same inhuman vibe that she will have when she comes out at Arbogast on the stairs.

A bit later, we HEAR mother yelling up at the house("You won't be offering her my supper...or my son!") and the house -- now framed by floating clouds -- is STILL at a distance, as is the woman(now represented not as a spectral figure, but as a mean, mad old crone.) Mother's edict means that Marion Crane -- whom Norman invited up to have dinner at the house -- will now NEVER see inside of the house. It is an arena that can only be invaded by characters yet to come(Arbogast, Lila.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

But before then...and right after Norman's peeping on the nude Marion....Norman goes up to the house, and Hitchcock lets us inside for the first time. Hitchcock skips giving us a lingering shot of Norman on the porch of the house(as he will with "invader" Arbogast); Norman walks right in.

And we get our first view of the foyer that will be so important in later scenes -- principally with Arbogast(he stands in the foyer and sizes up his situation; moments later, he dies on the foyer carpet), but also with Lila(running to elude the entering Norman at the last second as he enters the foyer.)

For now, we get a good glimpse of the foyer as Norman enters. We see the fern. We are more off to the side than we will be with Arbogast, less "in the grip of the room." The angle reverses to show Norman START to go up the stairs...but he hesitates, and "deflates" from the anger we saw moments before. (This is actually a most mysterious moment -- we can't be sure what's going on here -- Norman was going to "defy" Mother, confront her over her control over his life and his connection to Marion? But decided against it? - in reality, Norman is in the process of BECOMING mother.)

So Norman doesn't go up the stairs, and we are deprived of the world up there. Later, Arbogast will get farther up the stairs -- but not far enough: he is attacked and sent reeling backwards down the stairs before he can enter mother's room. LATER, Lila finally WILL make it up the stairs, and she will get into Mother's room, and Hitchcock "rewards us" with all manner of creepy Victorian revelations in that room (plus some mystery -- why is there that identation in the bed?)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

When Norman stops himself from climbing the stairs, he instead goes to the back of the house, and the art directors give us both an interesting hallway to the kitchen, and a view of a small part of the kitchen itself, as Norman(hands in pockets) sits down at the distant table and...and WHAT?

I'll bet that penny-pincher (on Psycho) Hitchcock didn't even have the entire kitchen built -- probably just the area with the table, that the camera would see.

And the effect continues: Hitchcock will show us only so much of this most mysterious house. Seeing PART of any room is a gift...but Hitchcock is sparing in what we get to see.

The interior of the house is seen first when Norman goes up there; later when Arbogast does(and his visit is restricted to the foyer, staircase, and "fatal landing" only); and then later still when Lila gets the most extensive view of the place in the whole movie: Mother's room(and its secrets and guide to the past). Norman's room(and ITS secrets and guide to the past.) And finally, "the dark dank fruit cellar"(and the weird basement room before and above it.)

Between the visit of Arbogast and the visit of Lila to the house, Norman goes in there one more time and Hitchcock basically takes the elements of the Arbogast staircase scene and uses them in a new way. The death of Arbogast haunts Norman's climb and the camera's return to the high bird's eye view shot -- but this time, the camera is BEHIND Norman as he climbs(it climbed WITH victim Arbogast) , and the camera floats up and over Norman until it can return us to the view of the landing where Arbogast was attacked. Little do we know: Hitchocck is again returning us to this high angle to again return us to a POV where we can't see Mother's face. "The game is afoot."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

So that's how many times we go inside the Bates house, and that's how little we are shown. The foyer and the staircase - a lot. The landing(from an overhead view): twice. The kitchen and the hallway to it: once. Mother's room: once(unforgettably.) Norman's room: once(unforgettably.)

I'm not keen on bringing the sequels into the mix, but I will say that one problem I had with Psycho II in particular was how the Meg Tilly character pretty much got the run of the house, and treated it like -- a house. She even showers up there. And she sleeps there. Hitchcock in the original made the house at all times distant, and mysterious and dangerous. If you aren't Norman Bates...you enter that house at your peril. And death is the outcome(for Arbogast -- and it would have been, for Lila.)

There are other "dangerous places" on the Bates property in Psycho. The motel certainly, with the shower in Cabin One the worst of it. The swamp -- as a locus for body burial.

Its one of the reasons Hitchocck made that particular "tour of the property" trailer. He KNEW how Psycho depended on the suspenseful and terrifying use of the rooms, buildings, and spaces of the Bates property for its power. All he had to do was show the audience around and hint at what they would see if they came to the movie.

Funny: in the trailer, Hitchcock shows us Mother's room. He gives it away a bit. But he won't let us know what's in mother's closet....

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

I return to tie the Psycho house into a "linked domicile" to the only other psycho to grace a Hitchcock movie after Psycho: Bob Rusk, in Frenzy.

Hitchcock had a lot less to work with in terms of Rusk's home in Frenzy, it would seem.

But not necessarily.

Whereas Norman lives in a house, Rusk lives in an apartment. Well, that's what we call it in America. In London, they call it a flat. (Though sometimes I've seen it called a "flat" in America, too, such as in the 1961 movie "Bachelor Flat.")

Hitchcock makes Rusk's flat work for him. Whereas Norman's house has a staircase IN it; Rusk's flat has a staircase leading TO it; and Hitchcock turns that staircase into the setting for a different kind of profound terror in Frenzy. Whereas Psycho gave us a shock murder on a staircase and a later vertiginous camera climb up and above that staircase; Frenzy famously gives us the killer Rusk leading his next unsuspecting victim(Babs) up the staircase and into the flat -- and then has the camera retreat backwards down the staircase into the noise and bustle of Covent Garden. No one will hear Babs scream, she will be raped and strangled in agony as the daytime world passes outside her window(just as Brenda Blaney was, earlier in the picture.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

With Psycho and Frenzy linked by their villains' staircases, we get to the actual domiciles themselves.

Norman has a house with rooms, some of which we see: the foyer, the kitchen(partially), Mother's room(big and opulent , if rotting) and his room(cramped and a mix of childhood and adulthood.)

Rusk has: a flat. And pretty much a one-room flat. What we in America would call a "studio." There is a bathroom, but I don't think there is a kitchen. Rusk lives rather modestly, in one small room. This suggests that his fruit salesman job isn't all that lucrative. But it also suggests the realities of bachelor living in expensive cities...the flat is only a block or so away from Rusk's place of business. He can walk to his job from his home. It is CONVENIENT, and in being so close to his place of business, rather likens to the Bates house being adjacent to Norman's business, the Bates Motel.

With Rusk's flat being right in the center of the Covent Garden business district, we are also reminded of how, whereas Norman lives AWAY from everyone, Rusk lives NEAR everyone, surrounded by them -- hidden by them. Rusk is a monster hiding in plain sight, and his flat is his base of operations.

And also, his base of murder. While Rusk kills Brenda at her office, Rusk kills Babs and the unknown woman at film's end in his flat. One supposes that most of the murders have taken place there, and thus that Rusk sleeps in a bed upon which he has murdered many a victim.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

About that bed. In Psycho, when we finally see Norman's bed, it is shockingly SMALL -- the bed he slept in as a child, unmade, rumpled, tucked in a corner.

Rusk's bed is larger, more comfortable, the "centerpiece of his flat." Really the main attraction. The flat is where the basic things are done: sleep, shower, go to the bathroom. (One assumes that Rusk uses the many local pubs for his meals.) There are drink bottles set up; Rusk recommends them to Blaney and drinks a brandy himself to celebrate the murder of Babs and disposal of her body(he's wrong on that one.)

Which brings us to the décor of Rusk's flat itself. Does it suggest the home of a sexual psychopath?

Oh, maybe a little. The curtains to the window overlooking Covent Garden are very thick, all the better to block off the sights and sounds of his sex murders. The paintings on the wall are rather "foreign and exotic and flamboyant" for the home of a London greengrocer. There is one painting of a bullfight (murder, in its own way); and Rusk stands between two matching paintings of Asian women in traditional attire.

The color scheme of the paintings is orange, and orange is the color of the curtains and other decorations in the flat. But the main color of the room is GREEN -- the color of the wallpaper that dominates the flat. And thus we get a décor of "green and orange" that, again, seems a bit flamboyant and more than a little strange.

As I think I've noted before, while the interiors of the house in 1960s' Psycho are in black and white, by the time Psycho II was made in color in 1983, we ended up with Psycho house interiors that were largely -- green and orange. Yep, the Psycho II art directors used the colors of Bob Rusk's flat to produce Norman Bates's house. This was confirmed by the Psycho II director.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

The fact that the Bates House is so damn famous -- especially from the outside - is yet another reason that Psycho is a greater film that Frenzy. But Hitchcock still saw Rusk's flat as the only opportunity to really "illustrate the character," so he went to town showing it. And it is where the film's climax occurs, too. Rusk(the right man), Blaney(the wrong man) and Inspector Oxford(the investigator) all come together in that flat. Along with the naked strangled most recent victim.

And there are Rusk's comments about the flat: "Its my home...my nest...you know what they say about home, don't you? Home is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in."

I also believe, given the age of London as a city, that Rusk's flat is very old(the 1800s?) and that the original was inhabited by some famous English personage(Clarence Dane?), and that the flat is a floor above "the Duckworth Publishing Company" a detail neither here nor there but one that gives the story some flavor.

As a matter of Hitchcock psycho predecessors to Norman, Uncle Charlie didn't have his own place(which meant his time as a house guest in his sister's home made him an "invading menace"), and Bruno Anthony lived with his very rich parents in a very big house -- pretty much a mansion.

But I rather cotton to Bob Rusk as "the psycho who came after Norman," and hence -- Rusk's living quarters are the most important in Hitchcock AFTER those in Psycho.

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[–] swanstep (2715) 6 years ago

It does seem that most of the key apartment buildings and pubs from Frenzy are relatively unchanged (the Covent Garden markets themselves - one of Hitch's main reasons for doing the movie! - disappeared shortly after Frenzy shot):
http://www.movie-locations.com/movies/f/Frenzy.php

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

That's a nifty tour of the area, the pubs ...and Rusk's building. Thanks.

One is reminded that Hitchcock made a great decision on Frenzy: to set most of it in Covent Garden, and thus to give the entire story a "world" within which the scary thriller could operate.

The pubs (and its true, there is practically a pub per block in London.) The constant flow of "worker bee" workers, carrying fruits and vegatables in boxes and sacks(Rusk will disguise himself as one of them; their noise and bustle covers up the screams of murder victims.) And the building within which Rusk's lair is kept.

And for "in the know" Hitchocck buffs, we know that Hitchcock's father was a buyer of Covent Garden goods himself; Frenzy allowed Hitchcock to LITERALLY go home again and to communicate to his fans his own roots.

Indeed the marketplace bustle itself is gone(and Frenzy recorded it just in time; it was gone in 1973), but it looks like enough remains of the Frenzy locales to summon up the movie for fans.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

A bit of comparision -- at Frenzy's expense -- of the staircase scenes in Frenzy and Psycho.

Something that's always disturbed me a bit about Frenzy is how modern day pieces on the film seem to really salute and linger on the film's powerful staircase scene, in which , to our horror, Rusk manages to coax Babs up the stairs to his flat and into it, intoning "You may not know this Babs, but you're my kind of woman" to her before entering with her and closing the door behind themselves.

We then get the camera retreating down the stairs into the marketplace.

What disturbs me about the raves for the "Farewell to Babs" sequence is that it is often cited as a great Hitchcock set-piece and yet: it is rather a knockoff of a far more difficult to film staircase set-piece in Psycho, that isn't even the MAIN staircase set-piece in Psycho.

The main staircase set-piece in Psycho is, of course, Arbogast's murder, which is usually counted with the earlier shower murder and the later fruit cellar climax as among "the three set-pieces" in Psycho. And yet -- almost forgetten, it seems - we get, in Psycho, the LATER set-piece in which the camera follows Norman up the stairs, floats above him, twists in mid-air, and comes to rest excactly where it had been to film the initial attack on Arbogast.

This Psycho staircase set-piece barely gets mentioned. The Frenzy staircase set-piece is always noted as "one of the big three set-pieces in Frenzy"(Brenda's murder, and the potato truck scene being the two others.)

It rather feels that the Frenzy staircase set-piece has been promoted beyond its value, and the Psycho staircase set piece(the second one) has been demoted beneath its value (and Hitchcock said in one interview that the Psycho staircase shot with Norman influenced the Frenzy staircase shot with Rusk and Babs.)

Such minutae.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

But here's a point:

In the summer of 1971 while Hitchcock was filming Frenzy in London, Time Magazine in its "People" section ran a few items over the months promoting Hitchcock working on Frenzy. One issue had a shot of Hitchcock in Covent Garden. Another issue had Hitchcock holding the head of the "Hitchcock dummy" to be used for the film's trailer(though the Time writer suggested Hitchcock would be playing a murder victim in the film. Huh?)

But one issue had: a detailed description of the "Farewell to Babs" staircase shot as a preview of Hitchcock's genius. I could picture that shot, and I was ready for it for the entire year between the filming of Frenzy and its release in 1972. A BIG deal was made about that shot, in the press.

Which was heartening. It was as if Time(and other magazines) had forgetten about Topaz, Torn Curtain, Marnie. Alfred Hitchcock at work on a new movie was An Event. And he was to be photographed and described as a Film Icon.

Still....Psycho had its own "Farewell to Babs" shot(perhaps to be called "Norman Carries Mother")...and it was taken for granted. It didn't get a Time article at all.

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[–] MizhuB (165) 6 years ago

I'm hesitant to say this, but when I saw 'Frenzy' in the theater upon its first release, when Rusk took Babs to the apartment and said, 'You know, you're my kind of woman' and then the camera just panned down to the outside, I heard people saying 'Oh man! We didn't even get to SEE it!'

Likewise, with 'Family Plot', Hitch's final film. Even though the audience seemed to enjoy it (especially laughing hysterically at the car without brakes scene), when I left the theater, I heard several people mention, 'I expected at least ONE gory murder!'

With both films, they were disappointed it wasn't violent enough. For some reason, they wanted shocks and gore over suspense from Hitchcock. Which he was never really about, but most likely, they were remembering Psycho and The Birds. When he did 'go there'.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

I'm hesitant to say this, but when I saw 'Frenzy' in the theater upon its first release, when Rusk took Babs to the apartment and said, 'You know, you're my kind of woman' and then the camera just panned down to the outside, I heard people saying 'Oh man! We didn't even get to SEE it!'

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A very interesting crowd(or some of the crowd) reaction and...I must admit I kind of shared it at the time, in that Psycho followed the spectacular shower murder with the spectacular staircase murder and thus we felt "the goods were being delivered" with Psycho, shocks-wise.

But it is pretty clear why Hitchcock(on advice of screenwriter Anthony Shaffer) didn't give us the second murder in Frenzy in detail. It was a woman again (Arbogast dying gave Psycho an "equal opportunity slasher" element); it would be rape again (once is enough for THAT) , it would be a lingering strangulation again(whereas the knife attacks in Psycho had that "boo!" factor.)

We DID get the murder of Babs as a fairly shocking flashback, re-lived by Rusk as he remembered that she grabbed the tie-pin, but that was fairly abstract and only "the end of the crime"(the final moments of strangulation and tie-pin grab.)

Still, Universal likely made a mistake in one of its ad-lines for Frenzy: "From the master of shock! A shocking masterpiece!" The shock in Frenzy is one, great big agonizing early on sex crime, its never really a shocker in the traditional (again "boo") sense.

Still, gorehounds were lured into Frenzy expecting, at least, Psycho(two graphic murders) and didn't quite get that experience.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Indeed, it is interesting that Hitchcock made the AESTHETIC decision to only show one murder. That's an artist's decision, not a shocker-maker's decision.

Because the novel had a fair amount of description of Babs murder(we go inside the flat), Hitchcock was originally intending to film it. Then Shaffer said "you can't"; then Hitchcock said "why not?" then Shaffer said, "because its disgusting"(to show a second sex killing of a woman.) So we got...the very great (swanstep has re-convinced me) "Farewell to Babs" shot.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Likewise, with 'Family Plot', Hitch's final film. Even though the audience seemed to enjoy it (especially laughing hysterically at the car without brakes scene), when I left the theater, I heard several people mention, 'I expected at least ONE gory murder!'

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Ha. Well, live by Psycho, die by Psycho. Hitchcock after that film ended up with a horror reputation he never quite wanted to fulfill. The Birds has the farmer with the pecked out eyes, but it rather pulls its punches on the other killings(and no children are killed.) Marnie and Torn Curtain have bloody killings, but the first one (Marnie) is rather bungled(as it plays out, it is laughable in the reaction shots) and the second one(Torn Curtain) is classic realism and no fun at all. And the killings take place not in horror movies, but in what are best called "dramas." No haunted houses here.

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With both films, they were disappointed it wasn't violent enough. For some reason, they wanted shocks and gore over suspense from Hitchcock. Which he was never really about, but most likely, they were remembering Psycho and The Birds. When he did 'go there'.

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Yes. I do think that Hitchcock, having made his most "intimately violent" film with Frenzy, wanted to make one that was non-violent, light-hearted, FUN...but in the old way. Hitchcock swore that he would make a movie after Family Plot, but I think in his sick old bones, he knew this might be the last one, and he wanted to leave them with a "nice one." Not with Frenzy.

SPOILERS for Family Plot:

In Family Plot, only one character dies, and pretty much by accident. And in the novel, the Blanche, Fran and Adamson characters(some under different names) all die, and Lumley is marked for death at the end. Hitchcock took a book in which almost all the characters die and made a movie in which almost all the characters LIVE.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Hitchcock's hiring Ernest Lehman to write Family Plot was a nod to the past: Lehman wrote the bigger but equally light-hearted "North by Northwest" and Hitchcock seemed to be saying "You see, folks -- thrills can be generated by chases and hair-breadth escapes; gory murders aren't the only thrill."

But Family Plot was a swan song in more ways that one. Ultra-Violence would soon be a requirement of any thriller; Psycho HAD set the template. And there was no turning back the clock(I love me my mixed metaphors!)

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[–] swanstep (2715) 6 years ago

It rather feels that the Frenzy staircase set-piece has been promoted beyond its value, and the Psycho staircase set piece(the second one) has been demoted beneath its value (and Hitchcock said in one interview that the Psycho staircase shot with Norman influenced the Frenzy staircase shot with Rusk and Babs.)

All that may be right, but still I think that the Frenzy scene has a number of unique can-you-top-this features that explain why it's always drawn so much attention.

First, the overall scene begins with a spooky drop out of audio (a trick Nolan lifted to start the central Joker attack scene in The Dark Knight) - just a moment's urban ennui or does Babs have a sixth sense that something is about to happen to her? - and then "Got a place to stay?", the plot-bomb drops, *Rusk knows Babs* and may be hunting her (he knows that her boyfriend will be the prime suspect if she is killed, and as the walk we fill with dread as the framing angle of the story comes into focus for us - Rusk isn't just a beast and an Alfie-style charmer he's also also an Elster-style schemer).
Second, the camera tracks back in front of them across the market as they walk to his apartment - pretty virtuosic - and lots of dialogue detail from Rusk, he's up to a lot (wants to know where Babs's boyfriend is hiding out) is morbidly witty ("You've got your whole life ahead of you"). Babs is cautious ('All men are that kind of guy'), unflappable, smart, a tough-as nails survivor. We, however, know her number's up. This hurts.
Third, we finally hit the stairwell and the official virtuoso shot: after the final 'You're my kind of girl' punch-line, the camera backs away down the stairs and out into the street leaving us to film Babs's end in our heads (using Brenda's graphically awful death as our imaginative raw materials). The back-away down the stairs starts in silence reminding us of how the overall sequence began with Babs's collapsed audio perspective (a premonition?).

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[–] swanstep (2715) 6 years ago

Then the sounds of the market place re-enter. The rest of life goes heedlessly on while inside another life is being snuffed out.

The whole thing's just stunning beginning to end. It's audio tricks, it's camera movement and blocking, it's plotting ingenuity & malevolence, it's snappy but character-building dialogue, it's deep characterization, it's a strong sense of place and reality (this is the pinnacle of the film's you-are-right-there-in-Covent-Garden-markets location). Much as I love Psycho's second-time-up-the-staircase shot, Frenzy's famous scene is bigger, has got it *all*, and feels almost like a movie within the movie (comparable to Psycho's shower scene inclusively considered). It's a complete statement of Hitchcock's craft.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

The whole thing's just stunning beginning to end. It's audio tricks, it's camera movement and blocking, it's plotting ingenuity & malevolence, it's snappy but character-building dialogue, it's deep characterization, it's a strong sense of place and reality (this is the pinnacle of the film's you-are-right-there-in-Covent-Garden-markets location). Much as I love Psycho's second-time-up-the-staircase shot, Frenzy's famous scene is bigger, has got it *all*, and feels almost like a movie within the movie (comparable to Psycho's shower scene inclusively considered). It's a complete statement of Hitchcock's craft.

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Well, you've convinced me, swanstep. Hitchcock certainly poured about every technique he knew, and every inventive element he could conjure, into that one sequence.

And it IS a sequence, that begins not when Rusk and Babs enter Rusk's apartment building, but way earlier with "Got a place to stay?" and the silence on the soundtrack(suddenly) before Rusk appears, and HOW he appears, and the gut-dropping "Oh, NO!" the audience feels. Its a pretty brutal surprise Hitchcock has here -- he's killing the REAL HEROINE. Its as if Ruth Roman had been killed after Miriam was killed in Strangers on a Train.

I like the rhymes "within and without" the sequence:

It begins with a overdone silent soundtrack, and ends with an overdone noisy soundtrack.

We think about what Rusk is doing up behind the window to Babs even as we remember being "up there" with Brenda while the world below kept moving on.

A scary "rhyming" opening dialogue:

At the marriage bureau:

Brenda: Oh, its you, Mr. Robinson.
Rusk: Yes, I'm afraid so.

Babs: Oh, its you, Bob.
Rusk: (with a slight knowing sigh) Yeah.

And the chilling final catchphrase: "You're my type of woman."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

I've always liked the long walk through the marketplace, from outside to inside a large "hangar" , with the lighting changes handled, and Rusk and Babs moving along together in a single moving camera shot. Now Rusk's tie is very big and very bright purple(it had been a subdued tweed for the Brenda murder), it stands out as a symbol of his sexual madness. And Rusk's purple tie is matched in color brightness by Babs' orange suitdress(which we will see later, off her body, in Rusk's drawers and in Blaney's suitcase as planted by Rusk.) Some wag wrote that in Covent Garden's fruit and vegetable market, Rusk's tie is the grape and Babs' suitdress is the orange.

That just tragic near-final line:

"After all, you've got your whole life ahead of you!"(which drives home the true tragedy of murder: a life cut short by DECADES.)

And how Rusk's smile fades a bit into grimness once Babs mounts the stairs ahead of him and she can't see his face behind her.

Yes, great. A great shot. And while I won't devalue Psycho's second staircase shot, this one certainly has a lot more going on, technically, dialogue, etc.

The outpouring of critical love for Frenzy in 1972 reflected, I think, the sense that Hitchcock here was not only back on form, but delivering all sorts of the scenes and "Hitchcock touches" that made him famous.Lurking behind the joy was the knowledge that Hitchcock would not make many more movies, would not really capitalize on his comeback. And worst of all -- that these great ideas would die with him.

Which they did. New filmmakers rose up , but they didn't have the inclination to do what Hitchcock did: to turn his films into little "treasure hunts for great ideas of sight and sound."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

"After all, you've got your whole life ahead of you!"(which drives home the true tragedy of murder: a life cut short by DECADES.)

And how Rusk's smile fades a bit into grimness once Babs mounts the stairs ahead of him and she can't see his face behind her.

Yes, great. A great shot. And while I won't devalue Psycho's second staircase shot, this one certainly has a lot more going on, technically, dialogue, etc.

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I return after thinking about it, with this observation about the "Farewell to Babs" staircase shot.

Hitchcock was very proud of the critical love expressed towards that shot, and in interviews he made sure to explain how he got it as a matter of the technical: The camera backed away down a staircase on a Pinewood soundstage, and as it backed all the way out the door into the street....

....Hitchcock cut to the ACtUAL outdoor Covent Garden location outside of the REAL doorway to the REAL apartment building. The jump from soundstage to location was "covered" by one of those ever-present "Frenzy workmen" passing the doorway with a potato sack that blocks our view for the milli-second necessary to cut from soundstage to location.

Thus an expression of Hitchcock's Greatness; first, he comes up with an IDEA of "profound vision"(we are "backing away" from the murder to the noisy outside world that knows nothing of its occurrence) to the "technical task"(to ACHIEVE this story point, a soundstage set had to be mixed with a location shot.)

Hitchcock kept coming up with great ideas all the time(sometimes his, sometimes his writer's , approved by him.) Hitchcock kept figuring out how to execute these great ideas all the time(soundstage/location.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

And as I've mentioned time and again, modernly, the technical side would be no problem at all. Our friends in Silicon Valley can produce any effect, complete any shot. It rather removes the "pioneer inventive spirit" that Hitchcock exemplified. If Hitchcock were working today, he would likely still come up with profound visual ideas, but he would no longer experience the fun and sense of accomplishment of figuring out how to do the shot(CGI would take care of everything.)

In certain ways, CGI has just taken the place of the matte paintings and process work that Hitchcock used all the time in his films. But CGI is also there to "solve all technical problems." I think Hitchcock would say "Not very sporting, using CGI."

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[–] kwestmo (4385) 6 years ago

I would say it's a house. I grew up in an 1880's farm house that had a similar design. If it sat on a hill and was photographed at certain angles it would look bigger than it was (i.e. mansion-like).

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