"And the WAY he Died"
This post is, perhaps, an offshoot of our ongoing argument about the lengthy "psychiatrist explanation scene" at the end of Psycho...with a reminder from me that a fair amount that the doc discusses is "the solution of a mystery" that Hitchcock has been working for the entire movie. The shrink isn't ONLY teaching us about the split personality of Norman Bates.
Back up to the parlor scene between Marion and Norman. Though some have seen this scene as establishing a touching "human connection" between the two that is so poignant the shower murder seems to betray it, there can be no doubt that Norman comes off as pretty weird and hostile during the conversation too(notably, near the end, when its really Mother speaking through him -- "People cluck their thick tongues and suggest, oh so very delicately...."
Though Psycho doesn't become a shocker(THE shocker) until the shower scene at the 47 minute mark, I contend it becomes a horror movie at about the 30 minute mark: when the Bates house first appears on screen in all its reptilian Gothic glory(in the rain, yet.) Mother glides past that window and we just FEEL a horror movie coming on.
And this continues on into the parlor scene. The stuffed birds. Norman's comment about how if he left his mother "It would be cold and damp, like the grave."
But also this: Norman tells Marion how after his father died and some years passed, "Mother met a man." He's the man who convinced her to build this motel ("He could have convinced her to do anything.")
"And then he died....and the WAY he died...its not really something you should discuss while you're eating," says Norman.
An interesting element enters the story. This "ordinary motel keeper" and his mother up in the house, have a man in their past, a man who died in some...horrible way. Hitchcock is laying groundwork here: we want to know MORE about the past of Norman Bates, we sense he is holding back some secrets. And if a man died in a horrible way...
Marion puts up with all this weirdness, and a discussion of horrible death because, well, because Norman seems so harmless and she's so tired and just wants the night to think things over.
But soon, MARION will die a death -- the way SHE dies, its not something to discuss while you're eating. She was actually being prepared for her own death, in a weird way.
The plot point of the "man who died a horrible death" is left alone -- pretty much forgotten -- until Sheriff Chambers spells out to Sam and Lila What Happened Ten Years Ago: Mother poisoned this fellow she was involved with, and took a helping of the same stuff herself. Strychine. Ugly way to die.
So now the audience "gets it" but is confused. "And the WAY he died" -- the boyfriend -- WAS horrible. Strychnine. But Norman said that Mother was still ALIVE.
At this point folks may be guessing that Mother is dead and that Norman is Murdering Mom. Hitch and Stefano give Chambers that great red herring line "Then who's that woman buried in Greenlawn Cemetary?" to throw us off track("Oh, Mother killed another woman and had her buried in her place") but...how could that be if the cops found mother dead with her boyfriend? The way I figure it, audiences simply couldn't think that quickly to see the glaring contradiction here. Hitch keeps the story moving.
And thus of course, ONLY at the end , ONLY in the shrink's speech, does the mystery which has been planted once one way(with Marion in the parlor -- the man died) and once by the sheriff(with Sam and Lila -- Mother poisoned the man and herself) FINALLY get explained(No, NORMAN poisoned the man AND his mother -- matricide, the most unbearable crime of all.)
Psycho has always gotten positive points for the utter suspense simplicity of the plot: woman gets killed, detective tracing her gets killed, loved ones tracing the detective capture the killer; but complex plotlines(almost all of them from the past) thread through the entire movie and keep us in a different kind OF suspense: What DID happen to that man(the boyfriend)? How DID he die? Did Mother REALLY die?
The shrink tells all...and a few things more...