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Loomis Hardware

posted 5 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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Psycho was nominated for four Oscars in 1960(for the 1961 broadcast):

Best Director(Hitch)
Best Supporting Actress(Janet Leigh)

and then two "fish in a barrel" black and white nominations:

Best Cinematography
Best Art Direction

Janet Leigh lost to Shirley Jones(Elmer Gantry.) Psycho lost in the other three categories to Billy Wilder's "The Apartment." And should not have, but oh well.

What was the art direction in The Apartment? Principally, the apartment itself(in certain dingy, aged ways, reminiscent of the Gothic rooms in mother's house in Psycho), and the huge room in the company skyscraper, filled with insurance company drones as far as the eye could see. Impressive, but more a trick of perspective than Art Direction.

Now the Art Direction in Psycho is fairly "minimal" in places: we see a lot of blank anonymous rooms.

But when the art direction NEEDS to be great in Psycho, its great. The house from the outside(a huge part of the draw in 1960 and famous forever after; probably the most famous house in movies.) The house inside, which is to say, key rooms: the foyer; the stairwell; the hall to the kitchen; the tiny bit visible OF the kitchen and the Big Ones: Mother's Room and Norman's room.

These rooms in the house are great art direction, but they are also great set decoration. All sorts of details, just so. The crossed-hands statue in mother's room and the statuary therein. The sad/scary rabbit doll in Norman's room. Details that create two lives.

Meanwhile, down at the motel, three compelling rooms: the office, the parlor(decorated with stuffed birds and paintings of rape and things) and Cabin One and its bathroom (I'd say the flower wallpaper, which looks like eyeballs, is the key component here.)

Yes, that Oscar nomination for Art Direction was pretty solid.

But wait, there's more:

The real estate office. The office practically screams of 1960 in its modern design and distribution of outside desks for the ladies and inside office for the boss. The big giant photograph of empty desert behind Marion's desk suggests, at once, the desert of her existence and the desert that will lure her to California and Sam with that money.

But let's get to my heading:

Loomis Hardware. Oh, I don't recall seeing a sign that says that, but it rather rhymes with "Bates Motel" to me, so I'll keep it.

We first see Loomis Hardware after the fade out on Marion's car sinking in the swamp. Fade in: a close-up on a letter being written: it isn't too long before we can guess who's writing it: "..this tiny room DOES look big enough for both of us. So what if we're cramped, at least we'll be happy."

A brief cut and we are in a medium shot, clearly seeing that this is Sam Loomis, writing one of the saddest letters in movie history(Hitch could be almost mean in his sadness; see also The Wrong Man): a proposal of marriage to a dead woman, a "too late" gesture.

The camera pulls back from Sam and the cramped room we have heard so much about(yes, it IS, but yes, Marion could have been happy there, for awhile). The camera keeps backing away and, I suggest, this is really rather a "Hitchcockian camera flourish" because what he wants to do is to at once bring in plot(the letter) and theme(the woman buying bug spray who says "death should always be painless" -- more mean sadness) but perhaps above all: SPACE.

Hitch is really showing off one of the best sets in his movie, here. Loomis Hardware is presented to us as rather a "tunnel" in shape -- Sam's room is way back there and the overall room leads to him. The strong perspective mimics the one that Stanley Kubrick would soon be famous for , in film after film: a center with everything extending out from it in all directions.

But I am also impressed by the set decoration here. The paint cans that line one side of the store(these cans will "frame" Lila when she enters to speak.) The sacks of peat moss, the cans of bug spray, an array of hardware store items that I'll bet Hitchcock had made up from a REAL hardware store. Sam keeps his store VERY well stocked; all the right products and implements are right there for the people of Fairvale to stock.

A key decoration can be seen high on the wall, screen left, above the counter: a group of knives, all pointed at each other in a big circle, with some additional knives "pointing down." When Arbogast enters and takes up "screen left," he eventually stands right under those knives. The knives at once remind us of Marion's terrible death and foreshadow(though we can't know it yet); Arbogast's terrible death.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

The counter that runs along the left side of the store , parallel to its tunnel effect, is used to distinction by Hitch. First for the conversation between Sam(out in the middle of the store) and his male clerk(at the cash register.)

Then, Arbogast sidles over to the counter, and leans back against it for the "controlling medium shot" that will be his shot for much of the scene. The low angle makes him look "cool," and he watches in a detached manner as Sam and Lila get progressively more anxious.

You could say that Lila is controlled by the paint cans behind her; Arbogast is controlled by the counter he leans on, and Sam "splits the middle" between them.

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Later in the film, in the dark dead of night, we see Sam and Lila trying to use the hardware store as a "base of operations" but the place is decidedly too dark(most lights are off) and has none of the warmth of a real home...its a clue as to how lonely Sam's life is, sleeping here at night, and how grim his life with Marion WOULD have been , sleeping here at night (though I expect Marion would have pushed for a move to an apartment or rental home soon.)

Among the two scenes in the " dead of night" hardware store, we get the compelling one where Sam leaves Lila alone there(he's going out to the Bates Motel to look for Arbogast.) Two effects: a wind enters the dark store as Sam opens the door and leaves(off screen) and Lila backs up under a group of rakes that surround her head like big inhuman claws.

So..Loomis hardware is a compelling set in Psycho: dynamic , filmed in the "Kubrick perspective" at times, detailed in the set direction and spooky in its late, "dead of night" creation.

Its' part of that Psycho Art Direction nomination, and should have been part of a win.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I'll close with a comparison to Van Sant's Psycho...that poor old thing that he seems to have made so Hitchocck's version could wipe the floor with it.

Van Sant did not have a hardware store interior built for his Psycho. Rather, he filmed in a REAL hardware store (in Santa Monica, CA, a coastal part of LA). The resultant scene has no sense of a "tunnel"; no Kubrickian perspective, and is somewhat lacking in the décor(there are no knives above Arbogast's head.) No paint cans. And though Arbogast(William H. Macy) again leans against the counter, its not much of a counter, and again, the "tunnel" effect is gone.

What we get with the "real" hardware store scene in Van Sant's Psycho is a scene set in a hardware store -- but with no sense of the dynamic composition, detail, and thought of "Hitchcock's Loomis Hardware."

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

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