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"Psycho" and Learning to "Read" Hitchcock

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

I think I first came to Hitchcock for the hype of his "brand name" in the 60's. I was very young and very susceptible to how movie studios created an aura around their talents, or even their leaders.

In the 60's, Walt Disney was probably the biggest brand name of them all to a young kid like me. The Sunday TV show(in color, though I had to watch it in b/w and imagine the color). The theatrical movies throughout the year -- advertised weekly on the TV show -- which ranged from minor(The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin) to major(Mary Poppins, The Absent Minded Professor).

But there were other brand names. I recall Rodgers and Hammerstein getting a lot of promotion when their older movies made it to network(The King and I; Carousel). On the spooky side with Hitch -- Rod Serling(and his theme music) and William Castle(and his "logo" -- a negative photo of him in a director's chair, smoking a cigar). Old-time and/or current comedy acts: Abbott and Costello, The Marx Brothers, The Three Stooges...even The Ritz Brothers.

And I recall getting a comic book version of the movie "Hatari" that was "signed" by Howard Hawks across the top -- somehow I knew he was some sort of movie speciality artist too. I also heard a lot about Cecil B. DeMille(though he was dead as I came into youth.)

But eventually ...all roads led to Hitchcock. For reasons I've expressed before.

And I think it was in the 70's...once I finally got to actually see Psycho, and became familiar with North by Northwest and To Catch a Thief and -- before they disappeared -- Rear Window and Vertigo...that I had my "deeper connection" to Hitchcock:

His style. The contemplative and precise way his shots followed each other. His camera angles(so often a little below, or a little above, his actors). His camera movements. And even how his human characters MOVED.

Psycho demonstrated all of the above, in spades. The images and movements were in the service of "peak terror suspense," but they had a quiet precision all their own.

Consider:

Lila's final ascent up the hill -- alternating her moving POV (the house looming closer and bigger as she got closer to it), with shots of Lila moving at US (in the position of the house.) This was a classic Hitchcock technique last seen in NXNW when Cary Grant approached the farmer at the side of the country road.

And a young Hitchcock fan LEARNED this about Hitchcock...almost through "omosis."

Consider:

Arbogast in the foyer. He looks ahead. POV: the staircase. He looks right: POV: the hallway alongside the staircase. He looks left. POV: the ominous cupid statue, arrow pointed -- where?(and casting the shadow of a knife blade on the wall.)

From NXNW the year before: Thornhill by the side of the road on the prairie. He looks ahead. POV: the fields, that way. He looks right. POV: the road that way. He looks left: POV: the road that other way.

Noteable how NXNW and Psycho have these "motif linkages" in a way that The Birds will...not take up. Corollary scenes in The Birds(Melanie smoking at the bench by the school; Lydia exploring the house where the dead farmer will be found), use similar techniques but not exactly the same. More reason to find NXNW and Psycho rather "a matched pair."

Consider:

Detail shots. In Psycho: the uneaten lunch in the hotel room. The money in the envelope on the bed. The money being counted out in the bathroom at California Charlie's. The birds on the parlor wall. A endless accumulation of little bits, little details, that add up to suspense and mood.

Consider:

Camera movements. In Psycho, how as Marion walks down the row of cars, we get the moving POV shot of the cars(when this moving shot reappeared in Van Sant's 1998 version, I honestly felt as if Hitchcock had come back from the grave to direct!) And how the camera sweeps and pans over Phoenix at the beginning...swooping down towards, and then into , a slightly open hotel room window. And how the hanging camera follows Perkins up the stairs "to get mother" and then floats over and above him, twisting in mid-air, to re-assume the position taken over the landing when Arbogast was attacked.

Consider:

Montage. A Hitchcock speciality, never more on display than in the shower scene in Psycho. Different fast moving edits of film, crashing into each other yet smoothly so. (This would REPEAT in The Birds with the bedroom attack on Melanie, except with more special effects difficulty and amazement, but with no death at the end.) Montage could be the 70 or so shots that attend the death of Marion Crane, but montage could also be the mere four shots that attend the death of Arbogast - they still crash and clash and create "visceral excitement."

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I'd like to select out one sequence -- within a larger sequence -- in Psycho that truly feels great to "read" for me.

Its near the end of Arbogast's interrogation of Norman.

The "main talk" in the office is over. Hitchcock "relaxes" to a medium shot of the two men after their tense discussion SEEMS to have concluded. Now, Arbogast knows that Marion was here...but left("Why wouldn't she?" noted Norman.) Norman now invites Arbogast to help him change beds so as to inspect each room. Arbogast laughs -- no he won't be doing that, but he is going to stick around.

The two men emerge from the motel office(it is now dark and night outside). Norman goes right -- expecting Arbogast to follow him down the row of rooms. But Arbogast goes LEFT -- to the edge of the porch following what I have called "the magnetic porch" -- a walk to behold the old house on the hill -- and Mother in the window -- that gripped Marion, Norman himself, and now Arbogast (but not Sam or Lila -- important? Only those who will die or be destroyed -- Norman -- follow the magnetic porch.)

Close medium shot on Arbogast at the edge of the porch. He looks up to the hill. POV: the house on the hill(always great to see) Mother in the window, sitting in chair whose planks we can SEE. Now Arbogast turns to look back where Norman went.

POV: Norman approaches Cabin One, reaches to open the door, thinks not to, and keeps moving down the row of rooms. Plot point: now Arbogast can tell Lila, "I even know what Cabin she stayed in -- it was cabin one.

But also(on the same POV shot), we get: mood and atmosphere and character. This POV shot of Norman walking away from Arbogast down the row of rooms shows Norman -- as bathed in the lights of the various cabins -- to be a spectral, ghostly presence. He moves weirdly(rather like Mother will, running out of her room at Arbogast.) He also seems rather...feminine. ("A clue is the feminine nature of the character," Hitch told some interviewers.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

For his part, Arbogast looks shrewd and suspicious. He has some more questions.

Norman turns at the other end of the porch and tries to "stay nice": "Uh...change your mind?" (As if Arbo was really going to help change sheets.)

Norman rapidly walks the length of the porch back to Arbogast at its end, it is a "satisfying" piece of human choreography as the two men meet -- almost colliding -- at the end of the porch and Norman offers the witty and plaintive: "I must have one of those faces you just can't help believing." (An odd use of that colloquial term, which became the name of a BJ Thomas song over a decade later. Hah.)

Now, Norman and Arbogast fall into a pretty standard shot pattern: alternating over the shoulder shots. This is standard issue on TV a lot(keeps both actors in the frame cheaply) and in movies . Hitchcock uses this technique at key dramatic moments. One film earlier(NXNW, natch), Hitch did TWO sequential over the shoulders to show Thornhill talking to the Professor on the airport tarmac -- including his famous line about a job, secretary, ex-wives and bartenders depending on you.

Here, the over-the-shoulders are crucial because Arbogast reveals he Knows Too Much("Who is that woman in the window?") thinking it might be Marion, intrigued to learn about a mother he hadn't heard about(and yes, I will note again that Arbogast's back is to the darkness and the house; Mother could creep up behind him at any moment and stab him in front of Norman -- it adds suspense to a scene with conflict.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

We all know the dialogue here, but there is the great exchange near the end:

Arbogast: You'd know you were being used, wouldn't you? You wouldn't be made a fool of..
Norman: But I'm not a fool! And I'm not capable of BEING fooled. Not even by a woman.
Arbogast: Its not a slur on your manhood. I'm sorry.
Norman: Let's put it this way..she may have fooled me(cold smile) but she didn't fool my mother.
Arbogast: (Sharp as a tack, eyes gleaming in triumph) Then your mother met her! Can I meet your mother?

In the history of great movie dialogue scenes(and I know what I've loved, from Casablanca to Psycho to Butch Cassidy to Jackie Brown to Charlie Wilson's War) this Arbogast/Norman bit is one of the best. The facial expressions(especially Perkins), the line readings(so natural and ahead of their time), the move to conflict WITHOUT yelling.

And then Norman forcefully but politely tells Arbogast to leave. Arbogast does leave, and Hitchcock plays one final stylistic trick: lingering on Norman's face as the light from Arbogast's headlghts illuminates him and drives away. And we watch as Norman's grim, angry determined face...slowly gives way to a little smile, then a bigger smile, then a giggle.

What gives? Who is laughing here?(Norman or Mother?) and why?

I'm pretty well "self taught" about how Hitchcock movies are organized, image by image. And the incomparable pleasure of this Norman-Arbogast scene has played out for me for DECADES now. I sparingly watch the scene -- can't gorge on it.

But it is really a sequence about "how to direct" when you're Hitchcock. The travelling camera. The POV shots. The house on the hill. The sudden mild shock("Who's that woman in the window?") The mounting suspense. But always...the sense of style, of precision, of masterly control.

---

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

And you know, I think Hitchcock maintained his style right to his last movie - Family Plot. It may have been overlong in some scenes and not written well enough, but the style was still there. Some bonehead critic wrote of Family Plot, that if you didn't read Hitchcock's directorial credit at the beginning...you'd never know it was a Hitchcock movie. Balderdash! (Strong words, but I can't help myself.)

Hitchcock's command of style, of camera movement, of precise accumulation of shots was wonderfully -- and for the last time, alas -- on view in Family Plot, belying the weaknesses of the movie as a story to give us the satisfaction of a movie nonetheless directed by Hitchcock.

Back up one film -- to Frenzy -- and you get another example of how to "read" Hitchcock, and to enjoy the read:

Its the scene at the Globe pub, long after the murder of Brenda Blaney. Tempermental bar manager Felix Forsythe(Bernard Cribbens), is the focal point. He's working at his bar, polishing glasses, but looking around and mainly at the entry door to his pub. We get the usual: Forsythe looks. POV. What he sees (who he sees).

Forsythe looks up. POV: a man we've never seen before, in a blue peacoat(sp?) and a cap. He's distinctive, and by lingering on him, Hitchcock tells us: remember this guy -- he will be important later.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Forsythe continues his work at the bar...and now the camera moves away from him, right to left and comes to rest on: Bob Rusk, chatting away with a potato vendor over beers. Its a jolt -- this is the first time we've seen Bob Rusk since he was revealed as the vicious rapist-strangler, the Necktie Killer, and the suspense is immediate. PEOPLE! There's the necktie killer, right there among you! But we can tell no one. (This "right to left" camera movement to find Rusk matches how he first appears in the movie, when Blaney first encounters him at his fruit stand -- this is a "Hitchcock visual rhyme.") And we are also aware by now that the police are chasing "the wrong man," Rusk's "best pal" Richard Blaney. So the suspense intensifies further.

Back to Forsythe at the bar, polishing glasses. He looks up at the doorway. POV: Babs Milligan, his barmaid enters.
Bingo! Forsythe is at once relieved(he was worried that Blaney might have killed Babs by now, he likes her) and enraged -- and they have a "ding dong"(an argument) that ends with Babs angrily quitting her job and marching out into the street ...and into one of the great sound-and-sight cinematic statements in all of Hitchcock (it begins with Rusk's "Got a place to stay?" and goes on from there.)

This Frenzy sequence -- an accumulation of POV shots, camera moves(right to left to Rusk) and various tricks(the sound cutting off before "Got a place to stay?") allows a true Hitchcock buff the true pleasure of enjoying HOW Hitchcock tells a tale. But wait, there's more: it turns out that the potato vendor talking to Rusk was a plot point, too: now Rusk knows how to get Babs body out of town(in a potato truck going out that night) , and soon we learn who that man in the peacoat and cap was(he's the potato truck DRIVER, and he will be vital in the potato truck scene in which Rusk is hiding in the back of the man's truck as he drives.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

This collection of Hitchcock scenes -- I think I got us from NXNW to Psycho to The Birds to Family Plot and then back to Frenzy -- is a collection of "living proof" (as far as I'm concerned) about just how great Hitchcock was..and how much pleasure he gave so many people, both as audiences and, in many cases, as film directors who "learned on Hitchcock" and converted his style into their own(let's count Coppola, Friedkin, Bogdanovich -- Scorsese, Spielberg...QT....).

I consider it to have been a personal privilege to enjoy those scenes in those movies above...a part of my formative years that never really left and that, in its own way, made me a bit more intelligent about how to watch other people's movies and...I hope...a bit organized in my own mental processes(Hitchcock taught me how.)

Why I even made a few Super 8 films using his techniques...you really must see "South by Southwest" some day.

But seeing as you likely WON"T be seeing that...the great films of Mr. Hitchcock will have to suffice.

LOL.

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

Interesting, very thorough.

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Some very nice examples of 'Reading Hitchcock' in this conversational article on 'Minor Hitchcocks' focussing on Rope and To Catch A Thief:
https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/the-conversations-minor-hitchcock/
The article has a few typos (actually Malaprops) where it refers to Psycho when it clearly means Rope. Otherwise, it's a great article! Recommended.

---

At'sa big "oops" when Rope is referred to as Psycho(one feels one's brain needing to "change gears" to put the right movie in there) but...

...its a great article.

More for the To Catch a Thief part than the Rope part, I think. But that's because while I like Rope, I LOVE To Catch a Thief.

And its interesting: To Catch a Thief stands rather in total opposition to Psycho -- its in Oscar-winning, gorgeous Technicolor and filmed on the French Riviera(Psycho is filmed in cheapjack TV style b/w and filmed on the Universal backlot); the characters range from upper class to the idle wealthy (Psycho features people on the lower middle class edge of poverty in workaday jobs) ; the emphasis is on love and romance, rather than suspense(Psycho dispenses with love and romance after the first scene in the movie, and never returns to the subject.)

And Psycho is a sick horror movie whereas To Catch a Thief is a light romantic comedy with a suspense background.

Still, To Catch a Thief and Psycho are very much from the same over-riding artist(Hitchcock), and very much "read-able" as in his style.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I have so many places I love to jump in to To Catch a Thief, but I'll leap to the ending:

Grant and Kelly in the open air of his Riveria villa. Yes, its a soundstage set with a process shot -- but its all very well done, we can imagine we are there.

Grant is all in black, with a cool black overcoat(The Matrix, decades early), upraised collar, and shot along Grant's preferred facial angle(his left side). Kelly, screen right, is still in that dazzling gold gown from the masked ball climax -- she looks rather overdressed for daylight, but still...she's a goddess.

I think the dialogue is wonderfully wry boy-girl stuff(para-phrased):

Kelly: Admit it...you're just not the lone wolf that you say you are.
Grant: Francie, I admit it...I guess I'm just not the lone wolf that I say I am.

Something about Grant's lightly mocking tone is delightful here, but also -- he's giving in. And as black-clad Grant pulls gold-clad Kelly to him for that final kiss...the feeling is "happy kiss" not "sad kiss"(see Vertigo in the hotel room) until we get that little bit of comedy:

Kelly: Mother will love it up here.

And...

Grant's arched eyebrow and eye peeping up over Kelly's shoulder. A comedy end.

Here's the thing: I've read that To Catch a Thief was scripted with several, bigger, brasher final scenes(like Grant and Kelly hanging from their car over a Riviera cliff), and Hitchcock instead went for this very witty ending with perhaps his two greatest matched stars(Grant/Kelly to me slightly win out over Grant/Bergman in Notorious, and over James Stewart/anybody). Its the "lone wolf" line I've always loved. So many men think they ARE; so many women prove they are NOT.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

The two men discussing Howard Hawks rule about a good movie ("Three good scenes, no bad scenes") find that To Catch a Thief fails the test. They think it has bad scenes. Not me. I think it just has...scenes. The weirdness of the film's opening scenes -- the quiet of them, the weird angles of them, the lack of things really happening in them -- feel like Hitchcock to me. He didn't operate like other storytellers. He took his time, set up his own weird world.

I certainly agree that the movie doesn't really kick in until Grace shows up(22 minutes?) and Hitchcock then "teases us" by having her almost(ALMOST) silent for another ten minutes -- until the big sexy and funny showstopper where she lays a big one on Cary at her hotel room doorway(notice how the back of Grant's head here is used for comedy roughly as the back of John Belushi's head will be used for comedy when he peeps on sorority girls through their window in Animal House -- the back of a man's head can be FUNNY.)

I think one of the greatest shots in Hitchcock is that overhead shot of Cary Grant at the edge of the roof with the cops down below...at the climax. Its "precision process," with Cary so close to the edge that you worry he'll fall, and the danger of his being shot down there, too. But its a great shot to LOOK AT.

The fireworks scene is great on so many levels one can lose track. The colors in the sky out the window(hello, Oscar.) The darkness of the room and how Grant and Kelly are lit IN that darkness(a specialized "dark green" that Hitchcock ordered up for the film's filters.) Grant's one-liners to Kelly's come ons (why, its Bill Murray versus Signorney Weaver in Ghostbusters.) Overall, how Grant feigns grumpiness and "fed-up ness" with Kelly, but lets her just keep a comin' at him right up to the clinch.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Rope toys with the usual "reading" of Hitchcock because he largely eliminated two arrows from his quiver:

Montage(shots are cut together and colliding, ala the shower scene.)

Detail close-ups -- ah, but HERE, Hitchcock can't help himself and sometimes has the camera "dolly in close" for a "stolen close-up" of an object. His old rules still get to apply even with the stunt of the camera always moving.

I think Rope is great BECAUSE of that stunt -- you have to know the stunt to properly watch and marvel at the movie -- but also because the story is gripping and, in certain ways, just as shocking and ground-breaking as Psycho.

Consider: Psycho was NOT banned from release in a lot of cities, as far as I know. Rope was -- or it was shown for awhile and then removed. (It was also removed from US military base showings.) Articles of the time seemed unsure why it was pulled, but I'm guessing the pretty clear gay themes were part of the problem (on the one hand), and the cruel savagery of the murder in the film was another. Here is a murder that STARTS the movie and that is more cruel than anything Norman Bates ever did -- these two guys strangle their "friend" just for the fun of trying to get away with it...and then throw a party with his corpse in the room(with his ever-more-worried father as a guest.) It was likely all too much for 1948 censors. The likely gay men. The obviously cruel murder and its cruel aftermath.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I'm with the writers in this article that James Stewart, for all his righteous fury at the killers at the end ("I NEVER wanted my words to have that meaning!!") is likely angry because he DID mean his words to have that meaning, and he will forever pay for inspiring young(crazed?) minds to murder with his smug support of "superiority." Cary Grant pulled out of this role(Stewart was a "lesser" replacement in the minds of the money men) but Stewart sure had more talent for rage than Grant did...and looked better playing smug and lugubrious than Grant did.

To Catch a Thief is in my Top Ten Hitchcocks(but ah, I have 9 and a "floating tenth" that allows for up to 20 in the top ten, hah.) Rope is way up there, too.

A key thing about Rope and To Catch a Thief: they were made BEFORE Psycho.

I've always felt that Hitchcock's career splits into "before Psycho" and "after Psycho." I think the poor guy felt that way , too. From Psycho on he knew he could never "top" Psycho(though he tried with The Birds) and from Psycho on, some element OF Psycho was in his films(whehter the brutality of Torn Curtain/Frenzy or the workaday protagonists of Family Plot, so the frothy romance of To Catch a Thief was gone for ever)

Because Rope and To Catch a Thief were made before Psycho -- they anticipate it in certain ways. The killers in Rope may well be psychopaths like Norman(and one stammers like Norman, and Norman's sexual orientation is ambiguous too), and John Robie has killed far more victims than Norman(all in war; but still, all those killings should leave a mark on a man's psyche)....Rope and To Catch a Thief anticipate Psycho in ways that take awhile to see, but they are there.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

SPOILERS FOR THE UNTOUCHABLES

Back to Howard Hawks "good movie equals three good scenes, no bad scenes."

See, I feel that at least two Hitchcock movies have ALL good scenes, no bad scenes -- North by Northwest and Psycho. With those two movies, every scene is interesting, every scene perfectly follows the one before it, every scene is just the right length, every scene has its own quality(shock, action, great talk, romance.) I don't feel that perfection with the scenes in The Birds, Marnie, Torn Curtain...though it ALMOST came back with Frenzy(all of Rusk's scenes are great, by the way.)

I'm not sure these movies got "every scene a great scene," but here is one of my favorite movies for scene structure:

The Untouchables

(start around the middle of the movie at:)
At the Canadian border: The Untouchables ride on horseback to foil a liquor buy at the (big outdoor action scene)
The Untouchables find out "the bookkeeper can nail Al Capone"(while questioning a suspect at the Canadian border)
Back to Chicago: An extended "Rope-like" single take bonds Connery and Costner in a long walk around police HQ while setting up an innocent untouchable to be killed in an elevator with his witness.
Outraged over his friend's death, Costner confronts Al Capone(DeNiro) at his hotel, with Connery holding him back.
Costner(Elliott Ness) calls off the investigation.
Connery doesn't want the investigation ended -- heconfronts the crooked police chief ("I'll rat you out for all you did")
Connery gets killed brutally in his home, intercut with Capone enjoying opera in opulence.
The two surviving Untouchables take on Capone's men -- and grab the bookkeeper -- at the Chicago train station. Big shootout, lots of satisfying vengeance for Connery's death.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I recall the thrill of each of those scenes leading to the next in a rather perfect "rising curve of interest" that lost key characters to death along the way(ala Psycho) but redoubled the righteous vengeance of the surviving Untouchables(Costner and his quiet sharpshooter, Andy Garcia.) The movie rather peaks with the train station shootout, but has one more pretty good set-piece before reaching a perfect end(Costner avenges Connery's death by giving henchman Frank Nitti a "Vertigo" fall off a rooftop -- "Did he scream like THAT?")

While I feel that The Untouchables hit a "stretch" of great scenes, one after the other, and then retreated a bit at the end -- I feel that NXNW and Psycho were great scenes, all the way (even the Sam and Lila scenes in Psycho, which keep the suspense tight and expose us to small town Fairvale in contrast to the horrors of the Bates Motel.)