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The Scratch Spots On Arbogast's Murder

posted 5 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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This one may be for the "technical folks" around here.

Psycho as we have it today on Blu-Ray and in other modes is all restored and cleaned-up visually(digitally?) and MASSIVELY buffed up in terms of the clarity of sound. I guess black and white movies don't require the restoration effort of color films, but "Psycho" as we have it today looks a lot better than the somewhat tattered prints that used to play on TV in the 70's and 80's.

There's a clip on You Tube of a 1972 Dick Cavett Show in which Alfred Hitchcock came on to promote Frenzy and discuss his career. The show opened with the clip of Arbogast entering the house and foyer...and...at a distance of only 12 years after Psycho came out ...the clip looked OLD. Scratchy, dusty, fuzzy...run through a projector 100 times. In 1972, that 1960 Psycho clip looked like it was from 1930.

Amazingly, if you look at that Arbogast scene on DVD today, it is as if it was filmed last WEEK.

Meanwhile: the digitilzation of "Psycho" seems to have erased -- forever -- two specific flaws in the Arbogast murder scene which will never be seen again. So here is a quick run down on them, and their historical importance:

ONE: The scratch spot at the upper right of the screen. Those of us of a certain age recall when, sometimes at theaters, definitely on TV, the "end of a reel" was marked by a scratch spot at the upper right of the screen. The spot would "flash" maybe three or four times, quickly and then with a slight "jump" on the screen, the next reel would begin.

In North by Northwest, one of those "end of reel scratch spots" appears during the Mount Rushmore climax...it happens right before a low angle shot of Jefferson's head with Grant and Saint scurrying alongside of it. That "end of reel scratch shot" is now gone from my digitalized version of NXNW.

In Psycho, one of those "end of reel scratch spots" appears as Arbogast falls backwards after being slashed in the face. As I recall,the "jump cut" to the start of the next reel happens EXACTLY on the final shot in the murder sequence of the knife coming down into Arbogast on the floor(out of frame.)

And I've always wondered: did Hitchcock plan those "scratch spots" to happen where they did there...on PURPOSE?

We know Hitchcock was expert on where reels change given his experience on Rope -- making sure to have the camera dolly in on the back of people so the reall could change, etc.

Well what if: Hitchcock KNEW that if the reel change happened just as the final knife blows rained down on Arbogast....the "jump" of the reel change would create the idea that MRS BATES WAS SLASHING THE FILM ITSELF, cutting into the film and damaging it.

Joe Stefano had given EXACTLY this instruction for the shower murder(without all the shots described in the final product):

Begin:

THE SLASHING

An impression of a knife slashing, as if tearing at the very screen, ripping the film.

END

With Stefano offering that "suggestion"(not quite achieved) for the shower scene, Hitchcock seems to have pulled it off for the staircase murder --at the reel change.

But wait, there's more:

I once saw Psycho projected in a local library(I would track it down wherever I could find it in those days.) The amateur projectionist had to show it on two projectors, switching from projector to projector as each reel changed.

Well, when the reel change came at the end of Arbogast's murder,and mother's hand plunged the knife down....the projectionist dropped the reel he was trying to run for the next scene(Sam and Lila at the hardware store) so...it was as if Mother "murdered" the reel. There was a huge CRASH, everybody jumped, and the movie "ended" abruptly until the projectionist could pick the new reel off the floor and run it. Pretty funny -- "participatory thrills". As Arbogast died..the movie died with him.

But wait, there's more:

Some book on Psyhco opens with people reminiscing about "the first time I saw Psycho." But one of the stories is from a movie theater projectionist(in Ohio, I believe) who was assigned to project Psycho first run.

He said (paraphrased): "I never got to see the detective get killed anytime I projected that film. Because I would always see the spots on the film telling me to change reels. And as I changed reels up in the booth, I could always hear the audience screaming at the murder. Every night, every time I showed that scene, I never got to see it because I was too busy changing the reel. But I ALWAYS heard the screaming while I changed the reel."

But today...alas..Universal has ERASED those spots on the screen when Arbogast falls and dies. Its all digital.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

NEXT: another "long erased" aspect to the footage of the Arbogast murder.

For a few years in the 70's and 80's, Universal must have been shipping to local TV stations prints of Psycho made off of a "defective" original.

Because everytime Arbogast reached the top of the stairs and the landing(from high above), the film demonstrated a HUGE SLASH across the entire screen, that lasted for a few frames until Arbogast started falling from the first slash.

My guess: some local TV station got a print of Psycho and CUT the attack on Arbogast("edited for content") and then spliced it back in and shipped it back to Universal. A master print was made FROM this print...and that's what got shipped to TV stations across the country until it could be "fixed."

I am here to tell you that when, during the AFI Life Achievement Award for Hitchcock in 1979, they showed the Arbogast murder clip, that big slash across the screen when he was attacked WAS visible. Its like even for the "crème de la crème" of Hollywood present at that event(Hitch, Grant, Stewart, Bergman, Perkins)....they couldn't come up with a print better than that one with the slash across the screen.

The digital DVD version of Psycho no longer has that slash across the screen, but I do recall slowing the scene down once and making out (I thought) where somebody had "filled in the slash and covered it up" . But I may have IMAGINED that.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

If there is a "moral" to this story, it is that major theatrical movies used to "lose their perfection" -- after being run through various projectors and/or chopped up by unscrupulous or censorious projectionists and their managers -- they were pretty banged up and were shown that way(even to superstars at a Salute to Hitchcock.)

But in the modern age of DVD and HD and everything else, these tattered old movies are restored to the look of their youth, and probably made more "perfect" than they may have been from second release on.

Still, the scratch spots and jumps and slashes that used to occur during the Arbogast murder were special unto themselves.

...for they gave a "visceral" additive to the slashing and stabbing of the detective: the "very film itself" was slashed and stabbed and "killed" right along with him!