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Picturing Marion and Lila Together

posted 5 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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Hitchcock, while trying to promote The Birds(for Oscar reasons, says I) said that the characters in the second half of Psycho "were merely figures" whereas his Birds characters were more in depth.

I get what he was trying to do with The Birds...but I think he missed the boat on the characters of Psycho. Sketchy many of them may be (less Norman Bates), but impactful, all of them are.

Let's add some insults to the mix:

Hitchcock: I don't think people even remember that Vera Miles and John Gavin were in the picture. Its very sad for them.

Critic Robin Wood: The later characters in Psycho (Sam, Lila, Arbogast) , perfunctorily sketched, are merely tools for our exploration of Norman Bates and the house. The characters of Psycho are, ultimately one character, and that character is us.

I will note that in the above Robin Wood quote(from his chapter on Psycho in his 1970 book Hitchcock's Films), his use only ONE time of the name "Arbogast" -- is all he discusses OF Arbogast in the entire chapter. That always bugged me; Wood simply didn't feel that any part of the Arbogast sequence was worth discussing. At least Wood put the guy's name in, though.

Compared to the more richly developed, speechifying great characters of world cinema, I realize that the folks in Psycho(less Norman and, to a lesser extent, Marion) ARE pretty sketchy, and may well BE "mere figures...tools for the exploration." But they have resonance, too. I'd say the characters of Psycho -- even the "second half" characters of Psycho -- are more important than the characters in The Birds because they are in a more classic movie, a more powerful experience, a more UNFORGETTABLE tale.

We got some heavy backstory on Sam -- divorced, alimony, paying off his father's debts, living in a room in his hardware store in Fairvale. On Arbogast? None. But we aren't supposed to have any(he will die horribly, better not to know.)

Lila's a different matter. The book and the first draft of the screenplay give us crucial information: Lila and Marion live together BECAUSE (among other things), their parents are dead. This makes Lila and Marion "adult orphans."

But all scenes with this information are cut from the film of Psycho, and we have to replace the information with guesses: the photo of (likely) Marion's parents on the wall in her room. Marion saying to Sam "We'll have dinner under a picture of my mother."

Now, its not even made clear in the film that Lila and Marion live together, but we can guess that too. Lila keeps tabs on Marion and sends out her own whereabouts:"She'll be in Tucson over the weekend, buying."

So, indeed, sketchy information, characters "perfunctorily sketched."

And yet, if you DO have the backstory on Lila and Marion as adult orphans, the events at the Bates Motel take on more poignancy. And even if you don't, some educated guesses put you roughly in the same place.

Because: one more key line. Marion to Sam: "My sister will help me broil a big steak for three."

The line reinforces the probability that Lila lives with Marion and suggests that...if the steak is to be for THREE...right now Lila doesn't have a regular man in her life.

That "absence of a regular man" issue pays off solidly in the second half of Psycho. Lila goes to Fairvale ALONE to find her sister, and has no help other than her sister's boyfriend to try to find out what happened. I'm guessing if Lila had a man, he would have come along. And of course, the fact that she doesn't quietly leaves open the possibility of Sam(minus Marion) as a future husband (but this is NEVER discussed in the film, just inferred.)

I mention all these character traits and "background guesses" so as to say that -- contrary to what Hitchcock himself or Robin Wood may have said -- these characters AREN'T mere figures, and generate a lot of interest about their other lives "just on the natural."

Which brings me to my heading post: "Picturing Marion and Lila Together."

In Marion's half of the story, we HEAR about Lila at the office("Your sister called...") and also in the imagined conversation that Marion "hears" on her car drive ("Her sister called here...she's just as worried as we are.") So we know there is a sister out there.

In Lila's half of the story, Lila arrives (at Sam's hardware store) and now we have a "visual" on Lila, and now Marion will become the unseen sister who haunts all discussions. The positions have been reversed.

And this: Universal or Paramount or somebody staged production photos for Psycho in which Janet Leigh and Vera Miles were side by side, clutching John Gavin against unseen terrors. This publicity photo gave us the satisfaction that Psycho, the movie, never could: to see the two sisters TOGETHER. It messes with the mind, though. "Marion' is alive here -- in the movie she will be dead and never see Lila again.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Sad: we saw Sam Loomis' last conversation he would ever have with Marion Crane. Retroactively, it adds "closure" to their relationship once Marion is dead. They at least had a lusty final day together(sex? Let's hope.) They had some dramatic conversation. Of course, Sam will forever feel guilty that his resistance fuelled Marion's theft and flight but what could be done about that?

We never saw the final conversation that Marion had with Lila. If they lived together, there were probably some "morning niceties" to be said, and then one or the other left the house for their work first. We surmise through the film that, when Marion takes the money home on Friday afternoon to put it in her suitcase and leave town -- Lila is somewhere else(Tucson). The fact that we can't even tell that Marion's room is IN a house(rather than an apartment) is another "backstory gap" for Hitchcock here. He doesn't care where Lila is; he cares about showing Marion half-decide/half-not decide" to take the money .

All this "lack of specific information" could be tiring but...Hitchcock didn't feel we needed it (and he COULD have given it to us, with dialogue if nothing else, at the hotel room: Sam: your sister lives with you, right? Marion: That's right, we rent a house together -- our parents have been dead for five years, first dad went, then mom...") As it is, Joe Stefano's original screenplay has that very good scene --late in the picture, on the drive to the Bates Motel -- in which Lila gives Sam all this background about Marion. But it was never filmed.

So, again...Hitchcock didn't WANT us to have this backstory on Marion and Lila, he didn't think it was necessary to have it.

Fair enough, Hitch...but people CRAVE backstory, they seek it out, they make it up.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I think even if the movie doesn't give us the information to know that the sisters live together, we can guess that they do -- or that they live near each other. I think we can GUESS there are no living parents...Marion's line about Mother's picture; the picture of parents in her room (it looks "in memory of" ish), the fact that no parents are mentioned or on screen during the hunt for Marion(you can be sure if Marion's mom or dad were alive -- they'd be in Fairvale on the hunt! Unless Lila didn't want them to know.)

And, most of all, we can GUESS that Lila and Marion were very close. We can guess it by how forceful and angry Lila is in her quest to "find out what happened to Marion." In her bravery exploring the Bates House alone. In her mad death-risking decision to go down into the fruit cellar even now that Norman is in the house.

And so yeah, I wonder and sometimes think about: Marion and Lila together. Did they watch TV shows together at the house in Phoenix? Listen to radio shows together? Go shopping? Meet for lunch? The film is sketchy about how much Lila knew about Sam -- as to vice versa we just know that Sam knows there is a sister(the hotel conversation) and , when he sees her in Fairvale, that he remembers her name is Lila ("I'm Marion's sister," "Yeah-- Lila!").

But figure that Lila knew SOMETHING about Sam. Of course she did -- she went right to him in Fairvale. I think the novel spoke to the addresses on love letters(and Sam and Marion probably wrote a LOT of love letters to each other; this was pre-internet) Anyway, the movie skips HOW Lila knows how to go to Sam in Fairvale, she just goes.

So again, figure that Marion "spilled" from time to time with Lila on "the Sam situation." He lives at distance. He's divorced. He's broke. But he's a handsome hunk! And he's single! And he does run a viable small business.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

We can also figure that Marion prodded Lila on her love life. We never see a warm-hearted loving Lila Crane. We don't know if she was capable of "love love" or "lust love"(Marion's kind) or what. All we have is evidence that she doesn't have a man, and while that mattered to a lot of women in 1960, it surely didn't matter to all. Lila Crane may well be the take-charge, I'll-be-my-own-woman that many women were "even back then."

Ultimately, there is this: the characters of Psycho are important because they are IN Psycho. They are in a formative, blockbuster horror film that scared the world.

But if Marion never went to the Bates Motel -- ALL the characters in Psycho, save one(Norman Bates, THE psycho) would be what they are: ordinary, workaday people. With work struggles, love life struggles and the overall issue of dealing with the boredom of life. (I often feel that about the characters in Psycho: their lives must be so BORING. Compared to what we know of the careers of Jeff Jeffries, Lisa Fremont...Roger Thornhill...John Robie)

Marion and Lila Crane had all the possibility in the world of leading boring, but eventually productive lives. They both had jobs(Marion HAD her job for ten years already; that's boring but maybe it was a good base of operations for her love life); one was connecting with a man; the 60's lay ahead with a fair amount of financial promise. Marriage and babies might well have been on the agenda.

Murder cut all that short. And that's another lesson of Psycho....value the boring life.....