MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > Deleted Scenes From Psycho (and Other Hi...

Deleted Scenes From Psycho (and Other Hitchcocks)

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

Quentin Tarantino is this weekend(October 24, 2019) re-releasing his "Once Upon a Time In Hollywood" to theaters with ten minutes of "deleted scenes" attached, that didn't appear in the July release. I'd assume that some of those will make it to the yet-not-done DVD release; though maybe not. He might be that mean.

It got me thinking about a rarity: the deleted scenes in Hitchcock movies.

Given that Hitchcock made 53 films, I neither know all his deleted scenes, nor can discuss them here. But I think I can discuss a few...yes...including Psycho.

Here they are:

TORN CURTAIN The scene: after Paul Newman has gorily killed his East German spy/bodyguard Herrmann Gromek(Wolfgang Kieling) and left the "farmer and wife spy team" to bury him, Newman reunites with Julie Andrews and eventually they are given a tour of a sausage factory. Surprise! Working there is Gromek's BROTHER (also played by Kieling, his dark hair covered in a blond wig with a big blond moustache as well), The brother uses a great big butcher knife(such a knife was ONE of the weapons used to kill Gromek) to cut off a string of sausage and to give it to Newman ("Please give this to my brother when you see him again.")

This scene was filmed, and Hitchcock in their interview book promised he would give the clip to Truffaut to take to a Paris film museum.

Color photographs of the scene remain and have been published. Kieling looks rather funny as the Blond Brother(as Hitch pointed out, he was so well disguised that crew couldn't tell it was the same actor) and it looks, frankly, like a rather boring scene...too much time to make a rather banal point with a rather coincidental character. Newman and Andrews together pretty much look in this scene like they do all the time in this movie; they were quite a "unit."

THE BIRDS: This scene would have been placed between Mrs. Brenner discovering the body of the farmer with the pecked out eyes and her driving crazily up to her house, where Mitch and Melanie(Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedren) are standing outside near the water. The scene was a long dialogue between Mitch and Melanie with a little humor(Mitch imagining the birds listening to a speech from their military leader), a little pathos(more about Melanie's background)...and a fairly long kiss.

The scene seems like a appropriate loss to me -- there's already been so MUCH talk in The Birds(less interesting than the lots of talk in Psycho), and it breaks the momentum of Lydia's frenzied drive back to the house.

However: by losing this scene, we lost the passionate kiss between Mitch and Melanie and thus lost some of that classic Hitchcock "romantic eroticism." The Birds as we have it has Mitch and Melanie kiss only once, in the kitchen of the Bodega Bay house, in a stolen moment that is almost like a "peck" not a kiss(appropriate, yes?)

It remains an indictment of The Birds that, after the erotic kiss sequences of Vertigo, North by Northwest, and Psycho...The Birds has none of that, and barely any true romance between Mitch and Melanie. This is also likely why Tippi Hedren seems "less" than the blondes who came before her. She's lacking lust. (And then in Marnie, she's frigid, though Hitch gives us a huge mouth close-up of Connery kissing her almost forcibly.)

Color photographs exist of this Mitch/Melanie scene by the water, and script pages. Its too bad they couldn't have left the kiss in.

FRENZY: Two cut scenes:

ONE: This cut scene makes no sense at all, and whats a wonder is that it was scripted in the first place.

At some point , I believe after his murder of Babs, Rusk is seen chasing a half-clad woman out of the front door of his apartment building -- right into the arms of a uniformed policeman. The woman runs on and Rusk explains to the cop something like this:

Rusk: "I don't understand. The second I took off my tie, she started running."

Cop: "Oh, the ladies are a bit tense over this necktie business, I think."

Or something like that.

It makes no sense. Was this meant to be another murder victim and she got away? Or does Rusk actually manage to have sexual dates with women and not kill(or even beat) them?

There is a photo of the woman running from Rusk. Was it staged, and the scene not shot?

Who knows?

TWO: A photo exists of Richard Blaney, the "wrong man" cleared of Rusk's murders, sitting down to dinner with the Oxfords. I suppose that makes for a "nice" ending, and brings together some characters who don't meet in the film as we have it: Blaney and Mrs. Oxford.

But the movie as we have it ends with that perfect curtain line ("Mr. Rusk, you're not wearing your tie") if a not so perfect final shot(the trunk falling to the floor -- it aint the end of Psycho.) So the dinner scene would be superfluous.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

TOPAZ: This movie could have the largest load of "deleted scenes" in a Hitchcock movie, and most of them ended up in the DVD.

Most famously, the film has three endings.

ONE: A duel in a deserted soccer soccer stadium. Hero Andre (Frederick Stafford) versus villain Granville(Michael Piccoli). This is the most "flashy" of the three filmed endings, but the least logical. Andre, having exposed the villain, is challenged to a pistol duel he will surely lose(Granville is a crack shot.) But Andre goes through with it, and is saved when a planted Russian sniper shoots down Granville. Andre and his wife Nicole(cheated upon, but she cheated with Granville and Granville and Andre's lover Juanita are dead so...what the hell) walk off happily ever after.

TWO: Andre and Nicole watch Granville -- a French traitor and spy for the Russians -- board a plane to Russia. He's being "given back" and rather getting away with things. "Well," says Andre in a poorly written line, "that's the end of Topaz." Though Hitch felt this was how spy cases really DO end(see: Bridge of Spies modernly), it was a bitter ending. So it got dumped, too.

THREE: The disgraced villain Granville commits suicide. A satisfying end, except -- Hitchcock didn't really film it. Some other footage of ANOTHER character(Phillipe Noiret's ) going through Granville's front door was freeze-framed with a gunshot on the soundtrack. This is the ending I saw with Topaz when I saw it first run in December 1969.

Three endings -- none of them really good -- and the best one wasn't even really filmed.

But Topaz has lots and lots of scenes that didn't go out in 1969 and made it into the DVD, most all of them superfluous (CIA man John Forsythe remarking on a military weapon mounted on Andre's wall; the Russian defector having a hissy fit) -- really, Topaz needed to have MORE deleted scenes. Its bloated and too talky.

--

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

VERTIGO: Vertigo famously proves its "art film" credentials by ending without telling us if the film's murderer-plotter villain, Gavin Elster(Tom Helmore) is caught for his crimes. We know he took off for Europe -- was he caught there? Its also a blt open -nded as to whether or not Scottie(James Stewart) will jump to HIS death after his beloved Judy'Madleine has fallen to hers.

Paramount and the censors allowed this version of Vertigo's end to be released -- but Hitchcock filmed a "traditional" ending "just in case." And it ended up on a Vertigo Special Edition DVD about 40 years after the movie was released -- and about 20 years after I first saw the film on TV.

Its a one-take scene set in the apartment of Midge, Scottie's spurned girlfriend who simply disappears from the movie in the released version. So "the reappearance of Midge" is another "additive" of this unreleased "CYA ending."

There is no dialogue. The scene likely takes place some days or weeks after the bell tower finale. Scottie enters Midge's apartment, silent and forlorn, head down. Midge fixes him a drink. So we know -- Scottie didn't jump; he will re-join Midge. On the radio we hear: Gavin Elster has been caught by the cops in Europe and will be extradited to the US. All wrapped up: Elster captured, Scottie alive, Midge returned. And something weird before or after the report on Elster(I can't remember), the radio announcer tells a silly story about UC Berkeley students and a cow on campus! Did Hitchcock put that in there to mock this "forced" scene? Maybe. Anyway, it was weird to see this scene decades after it was filmed. And no, I don't accept it as the true end of Vertigo. Even fiction has its "reality." The REAL ending of Vertigo is the one we have.

So most of the deleted scenes seem to be from The Birds on; perhaps Hitchcock got less sure of his films in his later years, less tight with his scripting.

Oh, yeah...Psycho and its deleted scenes.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Oh, yeah...Psycho and its deleted scenes.

The big mystery about the deleted scenes is this: we know what they are, because they are in Joseph Stefano's published screenplay from 1959. What we DON"T know is: did Hitchcock ever FILM these deleted scenes? Even Stefano, in an interview, said he wasn't sure.

I expect that at least ONE of the deleted scenes was NOT filmed, because it would have taken a lot of time and effort:

Psycho as we have it ends "the Marion sequence" with her car sinking into the swamp and Norman smiling in satisfaction; fade out on the swamp, fade in on Loomis Hardware and Sam writing his fateful letter.

The Stefano script would have put more scenes in between the swamp and Sam's letter:

Norman hosing down the car tracks in front of the motel.
Norman on the landing outside Mother's room(from that same high angle for the Arbogast murder and the scene after that)..he finds Mother's bloody clothes on the floor.
Norman BURNING those clothes in the fruit cellar furnace(which made it into Psycho II.)
A "final" shot (before Sam's letter writing) of the Bates House with smoke curling up out of the chimney against the night sky.

I must admit, that shot of the house(always looking moody and great in this film) with the smoke curling up would have been a great fade out before Loomis Hardware. But methinks Hitchcock felt that the swamp shot was better and more "direct" -- THIS is the "end of Marion" -- and he didn't want to "waste" that overhead landing shot before the Arbogast kill . Not to mention - how "clear" would it be that Mother's clothes were bloody? And would 1960 censors allow that?

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

A deleted scene that MAY have been filmed(because it would have been easy to do so) is probably the most famous deleted scene from Psycho:

Sam and Lila are driving to the Bates Motel for their final confrontation with Norman and Mother. What we have in the movie is "all plot exposition and suspense" -- "We're gonna register as man and wife. And then we're gonna search the whole place, every inch of it." Its pretty exciting, really, about a minute's worth of scene.

But in the script that dialogue comes at the very end of a longer talk between Sam and Marion, in which we learn that Marion and Lila have lived together since their parents died; that Marion gave up college to support Lila; and that both Sam and Lila are fighting their instincts that Marion is ...dead.

It was good stuff, it gave Sam and Lila "life" but -- it surely cut down on the "run to climax" at this point in the film, and Hitchcock never much liked Vera Miles (after she double-crossed him by quitting Vertigo) or John Gavin(after MCA pushed for him to replace Stuart Whitman.)

AND: Other deleted scenes were likely not filmed because of time, but they sure made the film seem "Spartan":

Marion walking out of the hotel where Sam has been left behind, and getting a cab.
Marion getting into her car with the suitcase with the money at her house -- we would have learned that Marion LiVED in a house(that "anonymous room" could be an apartment.) The script describes "an empty space for Lila's car" but I doubt audience's would have gotten that.

AND: A brief scene of Marion on the highway getting gas...but taking off when a phone rings. (I expect Hitch cut this to get Marion to the Bates Motel at exactly the 30 minute mark; the highway cop and California Charlie were suspenseful deterrents enough.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

AND: A longer scene after Arbogast leaves the hardware store. Sam and Lila talk longer, and them Sam walks Lila through downtown Fairvale(Universal backlot?) to check her into the hotel. Meanwhile, Arbogast is shown renting a car...and watching Sam and Lila suspiciously. (Noteable: in the script, when Sam is questioning Lila about what the trouble with Marion is...he actually worries aloud, without saying the word, that Marion is PREGNANT. I guess the censors got that one.)

AND: Shots of Arbogast driving back and forth, back and forth, somehow on the new highway but in view of the Bates properties -- until he finally pulls into the Bates Motel. (I doubt this was ever filmed, because it posits a view of the Bates Motel and House and highway that the Universal backlot couldn't provide at the time.)

AND: A high long shot of the Fairvale neighborhood where Deputy Sheriff Chambers lives. Its the dead of night. Medium shot of his porch as Sam and Lila ring the doorbell but its EXTREMELY LOUD. (I'm sure that audiences terrified by Arbogast's murder were meant to JUMP.) Mrs. Chambers says: "Oh, that's Tinkerbell...the bell is loud so the sheriff can be awakened at night."

A trend: Hitchcock kept cutting "establishing shots" of the hotel at the beginning; Marion and Lila's house; Chambers' neighborhood -- and chose instead to show these places via interior rooms only. It kept Psycho cheap like a William Castle "B" and anonymous in its settings(only the house and motel get full "context.")

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

AND...drum roll...a scene that actually seems to have been filmed, because an actor was actually cast in it who is not seen in Psycho:

The actor is Larry Thor (one of the CIA people briefed by the Professor in North by Northwest the year before Psycho.)

Thor plays a TV reporter outside the courthouse, talking with another reporter about how Norman Bates "was brought in via a side door" and how mysterious everything is about this case.

Also cut: more dialogue between Sam and Lila in the DA's office before the psychiatrist comes in:

Sam: Do you want some coffee? Its regular.
Lila: Good. I could use something regular right about now.

(I guess this was "well cut.")

----

That's a lot of deleted scenes in Psycho. For the most part, the 109-minute movie survives well without them, and keeps an emphasis on mounting suspense and bursts of shock. Personally, I think I would have liked those "context" shots of the hotel, Marion's house and especially the Chambers neighborhood at night. They would have given Psycho more of a sense of place(I always wanted to see more of Fairvale) and, with the Chambers scene, "mood."

We lost something in losing Norman's continued clean-up of the Marion murder leading up the smoke curling up from the house but...its already a LONG clean-up scene and fading out on the swamp(where Marion has ended up after "all this") seems more "poetic."

And we lost a little bit by losing that Sam/Lila dialogue in the car, but not much. The film is in its very suspenseful final stage right now, the scene was we have it("We're gonna search the place inside and out") keeps the heart racing; I think too much dialogue would have killed the suspense. A bit.

Therefore and in short: Hitchcock cut the correct scenes from the Psycho script, and seems to have only shot the deleted scenes having to do with the courthouse and the DA's office at the end.

Better to leave these deleted scenes in the script, where we can read them...than on the screen.

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

Seeing Quentin Tarantino in the same post as a post about Alfred Hitchcock is like seeing 'turd' on a restaurant menu.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Ha. I , uh, take it you didn't make it past the first paragraph...

Maybe this should be in "general discussion."

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

[deleted]

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

The scene in Torn Curtain - didn't they delete that because there was mention of Gromek having a family, and therefore it might unintentionally make the audience sympathetic toward him?

--

I think maybe Hitchcock gave Truffaut that reason in the Hitchcock/Truffaut book. It would be a bit too "empathetic," but then Torn Curtain posited just how hard it was to kill Gromek as a matter of disturbing the audience; this would disturb them further. Its key to "set up" the backstory -- or lack thereof -- for horror murder victims. Imagine if we knew that Arbogast left a wife and two teenagers behind. We know of Marion Crane's family -- sister Lila, and that seems to be it. Which is sad enough, but imagine if Marion were a married mother of two small children en route to be with her husband and family?

I'm also not a fan of making horror murder victims to be villains or jerks or mean people to start with. I suppose Toomey in Psycho II and Jeff Fahey in Psycho III are examples of victims ...you really don't mind seeing killed. It puts you on the side of the killer.

---

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I want to like Torn Curtain, but it's a bad film.

--

A lot of people agree with you. Its often near the bottom of "Hitchcock's films, ranked" lists. And yet I saw it --surprisingly - on one or two 20 best lists. Go figure.

What Torn Curtain gets a lot is this review: "Its mediocre Hitchcock, but mediocre Hitchcock is better than a lot of the best movies of other filmmakers."

I salute Torn Curtain for its willingness to go drab and mean and depressing for a spy film in the era of James Bond and Matt Helm and Our Man Flint -- while still staying "Hitchcock flashy" enough NOT to be as grim as the more serious "Spy Who Came In From the Cold." Which means I rather like Torn Curtain.

But I guess it does have a bad script. HITCHCOCK thought it had a bad script(even though he worked on it) and practically apologized to Newman and Andrews for the condition of that script.

Oh, well -- a spectacular run(from Strangers on a Train through The Birds) had to end sometime for Hitch. So many factors: age, health, "the changing times," studio interference. I think it is telling that Hitchcock didn't hire his veteran DP Robert Burks for Torn Curtain, and fired composer Bernard Herrmann off of it. Hitchcock was in a sort of mental crisis -- he had just gotten over his "Marnie" debacle with Tippi Hedren -- and seems to have gone into Torn Curtain as a scared and desperate man -- firing longtime colleagues, freaking out over Newman and Andrews, etc.

---

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

The Julie Andrews bashing on the forum is just unfair. The script is to blame. It's a very dull script and you CAN'T have a good film without a good script.

--

No, you can't.

---

I actually think Andrews is one of the redeeming qualities of Torn Curtain. She has a regal quality - you might say "gravitas" - that are more significant than any particular acting talent.

---

Well, she's better than Tippi Hedren would have been in the role. Though Hitchcock wanted Eva Marie Saint from NXNW -- I'm glad Saint didn't get it, glad she is only in a GREAT Hitchcock spy film, not a mediocre one.

Hitchcock seems to have wanted to work with Paul Newman, but not with Andrews -- he didn't think she was right for the part, and he wrongly told the world it was her first non-singing role(wrong: that was The Americanization of Emily) and "there was disappointment because she didn't sing." (Well, I guess Doris Day DID sing in The Man Who Knew Too Much.)

I think the attempt to "sex up" Andrews at the beginning of Torn Curtain was fairly good for her(in short, it worked) and she was very good in the first half, all upset that her man is defecting to the Commies and maybe she has to come with him. But then she finds out he's a good guy, its a scam. In the second half, Andrews rather drifts into the background. She's nowhere to be seen during the Gromek murder and Newman's "chalkboard duel" with the East German scientist.

---

By the way, do you know why Andrews isn't blonde in Torn Curtain? She was blonde in The Sound of Music right before.

--

Hmm...but not "BLONDE blonde" -- not quite Grace Kelly or Tippi Hedren blonde. Still, yes, I guess...blonde enough.

--

What the hell color is her hair in this movie anyway?

--

I found it a kind of "auburn brunette" which rather matched Newman's just-starting-to gray salt and pepper look. Honestly, its as if Newman and Andrews have the same color hair. Contrast that with -- as Hitch pal Norman Lloyd said -- Hitchcock's usual combo: "blonde woman, dark-haired man."

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

BTW, about that script: Torn Curtain is one of only TWO...ORIGINAL screenplays in Hitchcock's last 25 years of work. The other was also a spy movie -- NXNW, though even that one had a "seed idea" -- sold to Hitchcock for $1000 by a newspaperman -- the idea of the "nonexistent decoy agent." But NXNW had the great concept of the Mount Rushmore climax and other ideas of equal excitement. Torn Curtain originated as HITCHCOCK's own idea -- he was curious how the wives of British defectors to Russia took the news -- their lives in upheaval, a new life in Moscow or East Berlin, etc. SOME of this sounds in the beginning of Torn Curtain, but since Newman isn't REALLY defecting -- it doesn't really matter. (I would note that the plot is really the old "police undercover with the mob" story, like The Departed or White Heat, except its Newman undercover with the Commies.)

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

[deleted]

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Supposedly there was some behind-the-scenes animosity between Hitchcock and his stars.

---

Yes, its really rather a historic moment for Hitchcock: he is given the two biggest stars in Hollywood at the time, male and female -- and he doesn't really want to work with them.

But keep in mind, whereas filmmakers like John Ford and Howard Hawks and Billy Wilder rather kept working with old friends(Wayne, Stewart, Holden, Lemmon)...Hitchcock dared HIMSELF to work with "the new kids" and there was bound to be friction.

Famously, after Torn Curtain...Hitchcock could never get a major star to work with him again. Torn Curtain wasn't a classic, wasn't much of a hit, followed the perceived failure of Marnie -- and Hitchcock went and insulted Newman and Andrews in public! ("Old man syndrome," frankly.) From then on, all he got were turn-downs from such biggies as Yves Montand(Topaz), Michael Caine, Richard Burton, Richard Harris and Glenda Jackson(Frenzy) and an "American who's who of stars" for Family Plot(Nicholson, Pacino, Reynolds, Dunaway...even Roy "Jaws" Scheider ...all turned roles down.)

---
Newman was outspokenly unhappy about the script and clashed with him over this.

---

Newman also showed up for dinner at Hitchcock's home , took off his jacket, refused Hitchcock's fine wine and...got himself a beer from the fridge. Bad start. New type of star.

Newman was pleasant enough later on, saying indeed that he felt that he and Hitchcock could have hit it off..."except for that script." Newman -- who told Redford "how's it feel to be in a 40 million grosser" on Butch Cassidy, said of Torn Curtain "we all knew it was a dog while we were making it."

---

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

And Hitchcock was rude to Julie; the rumor is one day he said, in front of the entire crew, that they should change a line where she's referred to as "beautiful" to simply "lovely" instead. Ouch.

--

Ouch indeed. Though she ends up in a trenchcoat and peasant's hair scarf for most of the movie, Andrews has a few scenes where she is QUITE beautiful -- dressed up for dinner with the professor; in a tight sweater near the end.

---

JA only speaks fondly of Hitch whenever he comes up in an interview. Of course, she's too classy to say anything else.

---

She's now done two books with slightly different comments on her Torn Curtain experience, always polite.

I like this "summary comment" from her:

"I did the film to work with Alfred Hitchcock. That's why I took it, and that's what I got from it."

Newman was a little tougher:

"He had no right to talk like us in public like that. As stars we brought fans with us, and we both turned down other projects to work with him."

In Newman's case, he turned down 'The Sand Pebbles"...which got Steve McQueen an Oscar nom. THAT had to bug Newman.

In any event -- and I AM a Hitchcock fan and I DO think at least Frenzy is pretty damn great -- Hitchcock never got stars to work with him again after Torn Curtain.

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

[deleted]

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Note in passing:

I FORGOT two clearly "deleted scenes" from Psycho that we can look at today:

Actually, they are deleted FRAMES.

In that famous "German print" of Psycho, we have:

ONE: Extra footage of Leigh pulling more of her bra down while Norman peeps at her, revealing a bit of her side breast and more of her back.

TWO: Extra footage of Norman's blood-stained hands as he moves to the sink to wash them.

I've seen that footage and it looks "true" to me.

There is a THIRD piece of extra deleted footage from Psycho's German print, but I can't really believe it:

Ostensibly, it is second and third downward stab of the knife in Mother's hand as Arbogast is finished off -- but to me it looks like somebody artificially REPEATED the one stab in the movie. Maybe they did this in Germany to give the stabbing more "oomph."

Hitchcock today -- and Scorsese and QT today -- all famously turn in "footage that the censors must take out" -- so that other footage can remain IN. Modernly that "extra footage" is meant to get an R instead of an NC-17. In Hitchcock's day, it was to get the film released, period.

We can only wonder what "extra" shots Hitchcock filmed for Psycho that were taken out -- Joe Stefano said there was an overhead shot of Marion's nude buttocks after the shower murder death. I can see where that got took out in 1960. A photo of this moment is in Janet Leigh's book about Psycho -- I couldn't tell if it was a real frame or a re-staging.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

The film is nice to look at: interesting locations, well-directed, and it's the mid 60s which was the aesthetic peak of cinema.

---

Interesting comment. There was certainly a sleekness in the mid-sixties that seemed to come from the confluence of Old Studio Hollywood and New International Film.

--

(If you like to watch films just for their visual lavishness, check out a little known Jane Fonda flick from 1966 called "The Game Is Over.")

--

I will -- I also believe that the beautiful Jane allowed some topless shots of her to be published in Playboy from this film - it was her "sexpot" period with sex movie maker Roger Vadim(Barbarella.) That would soon end when Fonda divorced Vadim and married ugly ol' Tom Hayden the Activist.

---
But that script! There is nothing for the leads to do.

---

Well, Newman gets to fight Gromek to the death -- except he needs another person, a woman, to help him.

I admit the difficult part of the film is the bus sequence -- it is suspenseful enough(the bad bus is catching up to the good bus, a good simple Hitchcock concept), but Newman and Andrews just SIT there -- when Newman manages to grab back the money bag from robbers...he gets applause but its a damn weak heroic gesture.

--
Newman is sleepwalking through his role

---

Newman had a phrase -- if he didn't like a scene, he'd "play the scene leaning against a wall" -- with no commitment. He does a LOT of Torn Curtain leaning against a wall(notably, on the tractor with the fake "farmer.")

I mentioned this before and poster countered angrily at Newman: "He took the role and was paid well for it...he should have given his all."

So..who's to blame for Torn Curtain? Hitcchcock? Screenwriter Brian Moore? Newman a little? All of the above.

---

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

and Andrews has to rely solely on charm.

---

Yep. Well , she has it, and again, I think she shines in the first hour -- and she has a really good scene(before she knows that Newman's defection is fake) when she yells at the Commies that she CAN'T join her man in the defection. It has that "Hitchcock emotional power" -- she's going to give up love for country.

---

David Opatoshu and Lila Kedrova have some funny moments in their small supporting roles, though.

---

Its funny. By then, Kedrova had an Oscar (and she GAVE the Oscar to fellow Hitchcockian Martin Balsam the next year), but Opathoshu was more of a "TV guy"(Exodus excepted.) I noticed both of them accordingly. Kedrova's funny part ends sadly..in accord with the grim tone of Torn Curtain, a movie whose happy ending arrives with a lot of bitterness attached.

---

Note in passing: Hitchcock in a print interview said he wanted Eva Marie Saint for the Andrews role in Torn Curtain. Meanwhile, on YouTube, you can see the late Anthony Perkins saying that Hitchcock wanted him to star in Torn Curtain, but Universal preferred Newman.

Imagine: Norman Bates and Eve Kendall in Torn Curtain. Better to leave Perkins and Saint in their solo bona fide Hitchcock classics. Though Perkins killing Gromek -- with a butcher knife that BREAKS -- would have been ironic stuff. (And hey, Hitch was trying to HELP Perkins...to give him a romantic leading role.)

[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

"David Opatoshu and Lila Kedrova have some funny moments in their small supporting roles, though."

- The same year of Torn Curtain's release, Opatoshu was featured in Monty Clift's final film, The Defector, another somber Cold War drama. Clift is a bookish American scientist who's enlisted by the CIA for some behind-the-Iron-Curtain espionage (by an outwardly charming yet insidiously threatening Roddy McDowall), and Opatoshu plays the hard-as-nails-cold-as-ice overseer of Clift's Eastern Bloc "opposite number," a tremendously engaging Hardy Krüger.

Kedrova's sequence is one of those colorful little stand-alone vignettes that Hitchcock occasionally indulged, and injects some warmth and heart into the otherwise mostly cool proceedings (after being kicked off with a suspense-inducing, "You WILL take coffee with me, Professor Armstrong!"). It's one of the few sequences in which Torn Curtain comes to life.

[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

"The scene was a long dialogue between Mitch and Melanie with a little humor(Mitch imagining the birds listening to a speech from their military leader), a little pathos(more about Melanie's background)...and a fairly long kiss.

However: by losing this scene, we lost the passionate kiss between Mitch and Melanie and thus lost some of that classic Hitchcock 'romantic eroticism.'"

- Seems to me a problem might have been not only with length, but with momentum-disrupting placement. As the film exists, there's a dissolve from Melanie in her bedroom to Lydia approaching the Faucett farm. The too-cute-by-half dialogue about bird speeches and whatnot sounds dispensable, and a dissolve instead right to the passionate kiss would have served as one of those disarming, out-of-nowhere moments, with the eroticism heightened by when-the-cat's-away illicitness.

A straight cut then to Lydia approaching the farm would accentuate what's going on behind her back, and provide firmer grounding for her pushing Mitch and Melanie away after she spills out of her truck (it's always seemed to me that her reaction was almost as much to the tender moment she witnessed upon returning home as to what she'd seen at the Faucett house; she's traumatized and needs comfort, and is confronted instead with upset on top of upset).

On the whole, we'd be talking about only a few seconds of additional footage that could add an extra dimension. I don't second-guess Hitchcock too often, but, well, what the hell.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

- Seems to me a problem might have been not only with length, but with momentum-disrupting placement.

---

I'll have to go to the DVD on this...I recall the (great) long shot of the truck spewing dust LEAVING the Fawcett farm. Going out TO the Fawcett farm, Hitchcock had the dusty road watered down, I guess he shot the LEAVING first. (Such attention to detail...its like the dark smoke from the train when Uncle Charlie arrives and yes...this is why "artistic genius" isn't too strong a word for Hitch.)

Anyway, is the close-up of Lydia driving fast up to her house right AFTER the shot of the "emotional truck"(as Hitchcock called it to Truffaut) leaving the cloud of dust?

If so, any cutaway to Mitch and Melanie might be tricky...but a little dialogue ...then the kiss...make work as below from you, doghouse:

---

As the film exists, there's a dissolve from Melanie in her bedroom to Lydia approaching the Faucett farm. The too-cute-by-half dialogue about bird speeches and whatnot sounds dispensable, and a dissolve instead right to the passionate kiss would have served as one of those disarming, out-of-nowhere moments, with the eroticism heightened by when-the-cat's-away illicitness.

---

Agreed. Also agreed on cutting the speech about "military birds" (which, by the way, was the "in the corner of the panel" gag in the Mad magazine spoof of this film -- "For the Birds." Mad kept showing generals ordering birds to march, do drill, etc.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

A straight cut then to Lydia approaching the farm would accentuate what's going on behind her back, and provide firmer grounding for her pushing Mitch and Melanie away after she spills out of her truck (it's always seemed to me that her reaction was almost as much to the tender moment she witnessed upon returning home as to what she'd seen at the Faucett house; she's traumatized and needs comfort, and is confronted instead with upset on top of upset).

--

Again, back to the DVD for me -- I didn't remember that she saw ANY of the Mitch/Melanie tender moment(whatever survived to the final print, I mean)...yes, adding in some kissin' first might really put things in perspective. Heretofore, Lydia has likely been subtle and careful in driving away Mitch's lovers -- here, she must CONFRONT.

Though later, lying in bed, Lydia DOES try to convey her clinging to Mitch being a matter of lonlieness and fear of abandonment -- and of the husband she lost too soon. She is supposedly NOT Mrs. Bates...NOT hating of other women.

---

On the whole, we'd be talking about only a few seconds of additional footage that could add an extra dimension. I don't second-guess Hitchcock too often, but, well, what the hell.

---

What the hell indeed. Yes, he got it "perfect" a lot of times but not every time.

Which reminds me: I've always felt that one of his shots of Lila(Vera Miles) looking at Mrs. Bates horrible skull face in the fruit cellar was too "neutral and relaxed" as if somebody put the wrong shot of Miles in there. I wanted to change THAT shot, I know.

[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

"Anyway, is the close-up of Lydia driving fast up to her house right AFTER the shot of the "emotional truck"(as Hitchcock called it to Truffaut) leaving the cloud of dust?"

- The first close-up immediately follows the "emotional truck" longshot; then a road-level shot of the truck rounding a bend; another close-up; then a through-the-windshield shot of Mitch and Melanie as Lydia arrives.

"I didn't remember that she saw ANY of the Mitch/Melanie tender moment(whatever survived to the final print, I mean)"

- What we see through the windshield is the pair close together at a fence next to the house; Melanie has an arm around Mitch that drops as the truck closes in and skids to a stop. It's a fleeting glimpse, but I'm certain Hitchcock had it there to indicate that Lydia was aware of it even in her panic. As the two flank her at the truck, she looks pointedly into Melanie's eyes, then into Mitch's, before angrily pushing them both away and rushing wordlessly into the house. Here, too, I'm certain of Hitchcock's intention: to connect them to Lydia's already-present anxiety.

"Though later, lying in bed, Lydia DOES try to convey her clinging to Mitch being a matter of lonlieness and fear of abandonment -- and of the husband she lost too soon. She is supposedly NOT Mrs. Bates...NOT hating of other women."

- Indeed. At her most vulnerable, she finally drops her guard with Melanie, and confesses her deepest fears. I appreciate that scene for its rich subtext: she likes and trusts Melanie enough to do so, yet underneath it is the unspoken declaration that she has nothing against Melanie herself, but considers any relationship of Mitch's that could lead to her being "left alone," as she puts it, a danger. It makes it especially touching when, with worry over Cathy at the school mounting and Mitch elsewhere, she transfers her dependence to Melanie in that moment.

[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

"Which reminds me: I've always felt that one of his shots of Lila(Vera Miles) looking at Mrs. Bates horrible skull face in the fruit cellar was too "neutral and relaxed" as if somebody put the wrong shot of Miles in there. I wanted to change THAT shot, I know."

- And it's back to the Psycho disc for ME.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

- And it's back to the Psycho disc for ME.

---I looked...the shot isn't that bad...and its when she's looking at NORMAN as Mrs. B.

"My bad."

[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

I took a look at it and didn't want to say anything until you'd checked in.

I consider that the best non-verbal (aside from the scream, which was probably ADRd anyway) acting Miles does in the film: from, "Huh? Wha...? to disbelief to terror as she sees Mrs. Bates's corpse, and then right back to "Huh? Wha...? and more disbelief as Norman charges in. And she maintains those split-second progressions across two different setups. It's the sort of thing an actor can all too easily oversell. What may feel right in front of the camera can appear overboard onscreen.

That's one of the toughest aspects of screen acting, wherein the slightest widening of eyes or facial twitch is magnified. You've got to keep it pulled in just enough, while still reaching the sufficient pitch of intensity.

They used to say about Garbo that, to crew on the set and even fellow players, she appeared as expressive as a cigar store Indian. But on the screen, the hundred little nuances that shone through her eyes or flickered across her features and were imperceptible to the naked eye were revealed.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I took a look at it and didn't want to say anything until you'd checked in.

---

I appreciate that. After I went back, I didn't think it was that "wrong " a reaction shot.

Which is a lesson to me: sometimes I get it wrong the first time, or react wrong the first time,...or misremember entirely. Then a "re-view" later proves me wrong.

Case in point: When Jack Nicholson "misbehaved" a bit on the stage of the 1993 Golden Globes(for 1992 and A Few Good Men), I REMEMBERED him as making a wild, drunken fool of himself. Well, years later I looked at the clip, and though he's a BIT out of control, he's not WILD. I had magnified the moment in my imagination.

---

I consider that the best non-verbal (aside from the scream, which was probably ADRd anyway) acting Miles does in the film: from, "Huh? Wha...? to disbelief to terror as she sees Mrs. Bates's corpse, and then right back to "Huh? Wha...? and more disbelief as Norman charges in. And she maintains those split-second progressions across two different setups. It's the sort of thing an actor can all too easily oversell. What may feel right in front of the camera can appear overboard onscreen.

---

Well, one of the big "draws" to me in Hitchcock is how deadpan and literally "cool" his actors are, and his direction is. Its a matter of feeling like one is in an atmosphere of "cool" in watching the movie itself. Hitchcock bugged me a bit in The Birds and Marnie by having characters get hysterical and shrill, but I read somewhere that he felt such acting might get him that elusive Oscar. Meanwhile, back at Psycho, people like Marion, Arbogast, and Norman are ALL cool and calm -- until their "moments of truth" and THEN they go berserk -- Marion and Arbogast as they are killed, Norman as he is captured. And Lila in the fruit celler, but still under some control.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

It's the sort of thing an actor can all too easily oversell. What may feel right in front of the camera can appear overboard onscreen.

---

I'd like to point out that I saw Anthony Perkins in a few of his movies made BEFORE Psycho, and he DID oversell things in some of those parts, over-emoted, over-acted, etc.

I think a great gift of Hitchcock to Perkins was somehow getting the young actor to UNDER-play with expert sophistication. Audiences had not seen that in Perkins before(notably in his scene with Martin Balsam) and it looked good on him.

An older "movie mentor" relative of mine would always say -- if we were watching a movie on TV and an actor overacted or inappropriately yelled a line or something -- "I blame the director for that bad acting there. The director should have done another take and calmed that guy down."

There's the famous story of Hitchcock taking out a pad and drawing one line on it and telling Kim Novak: "Try to act like this one line." Then he scribbled all over the pad and said "THIS is what you are doing with your face, scribbling all over the place."

She's fine in Vertigo, but you know what? I saw Novak in Pal Joey last year(for the first time) and her face is moving all over the place -- scribbling. Pal Joey was a movie or two before Vertigo for Novak. Hitchcock helped her calm down.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

That's one of the toughest aspects of screen acting, wherein the slightest widening of eyes or facial twitch is magnified. You've got to keep it pulled in just enough, while still reaching the sufficient pitch of intensity.

---

Yep. Good directors help get that...but great actors DO it.

Also in Psycho: The moment where Lila(Vera Miles) opens up the book in Norman's bedroom. The book with no name. The expression on her face! Utterly calm with the slightest raise of the eyebrows.

The "aprocryphal" story on that shot is that Hitchcock -- for one of the few times in his career -- ran Miles through over 20 takes of that shot to get her expression "just right."

What's in that book is one of the shot-by-shot, great moment by great moment glories of Psycho. We don't KNOW what is in that book. Critic Robin Wood opined: "A Bates Family Album?"
Bloch's book specifies pornography, which I think we GUESS in the movie. But we can't be sure. And Miles' slightly -- what? intrigued? disgusted? titillated?" -- expression clues us in.

Oh, Van Sant just showed it to be a garden variety skin magazine, so Julianne Moore's expression DIDN'T MATTER.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

They used to say about Garbo that, to crew on the set and even fellow players, she appeared as expressive as a cigar store Indian. But on the screen, the hundred little nuances that shone through her eyes or flickered across her features and were imperceptible to the naked eye were revealed.

---

I've heard this variation on that story:

Specific: Robert Shaw said that as he watched Paul Newman act in The Sting on set, he felt Newman was fairly boring and inexpressive. THEN he saw Newman on screen in the movie and the "magic was there" straight into the lens.

I've also read that said about Steve McQueen and Spencer Tracy. And I'll take Garbo on the distaff side.

Michael Caine has given some film acting classes on tape and he's got all sort of little hints about how to look at the lens, how to adjust lighting, how to move, all sorts of things that a skilled film actor knows how to do to enhance performance.

On the other hand, a couple of movie stars have said: you're a good movie actor or you are not. You can't really study for it, and Hollywood still exists to find those people who have "it."

[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

"The moment where Lila(Vera Miles) opens up the book in Norman's bedroom. The book with no name. The expression on her face! Utterly calm with the slightest raise of the eyebrows."

- I wonder if your perception matches mine: it seems to me that Miles pretty much duplicates that subtle expression when Dr. Richman describes with rather graphic intensity Norman's reaction to Marion ("When he met your sister, he was touched by her. Aroused by her. He wanted her."); just the slightest raising of brows and widening of eyes.

In this case, however, the effect, rather than intriguing, approaches dark humor, as though she's internalizing an offended, Jack Benny-esque, "Well!" It's just a little more than she really needs to hear at that moment. And it wouldn't have worked without the emphatic reading that Simon Oakland gives those lines, suggesting that - with their individual shots done at different times - it was all carefully coordinated.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

"Anyway, is the close-up of Lydia driving fast up to her house right AFTER the shot of the "emotional truck"(as Hitchcock called it to Truffaut) leaving the cloud of dust?"

- The first close-up immediately follows the "emotional truck" longshot; then a road-level shot of the truck rounding a bend; another close-up; then a through-the-windshield shot of Mitch and Melanie as Lydia arrives.

---

Hmm...its interesting . Had they left in the Mitch/Melanie scene it would have taken Lydia too LONG to get to the house. The film as we have it - it seems like it takes too LITTLE time for her to get home.

Of course, from Psycho: after Sheriff Chambers finishes his phone conversation with an unseen Norman, he talks to Sam and Lila for quite some while. Fade out: "...who's that woman buried out in Greenlawn Cemetary?" Fade in: Norman JUST HANGING UP THE PHONE. So we go "back in time" to Norman(as he brings Mother down to the fruit cellar, Sam and Lila are talking to the sheriff.)

Lesson: movie time can be stretched....Mitch and Melanie may be have been talking BEFORE Lydia saw Fawcett.

---

"I didn't remember that she saw ANY of the Mitch/Melanie tender moment(whatever survived to the final print, I mean)"

- What we see through the windshield is the pair close together at a fence next to the house; Melanie has an arm around Mitch that drops as the truck closes in and skids to a stop. It's a fleeting glimpse, but I'm certain Hitchcock had it there to indicate that Lydia was aware of it even in her panic.

--

Yes,

---

As the two flank her at the truck, she looks pointedly into Melanie's eyes, then into Mitch's, before angrily pushing them both away and rushing wordlessly into the house. Here, too, I'm certain of Hitchcock's intention: to connect them to Lydia's already-present anxiety.

---

Yes...she probably wanted to come home and fall into MITCH's arms(not romantically, just "taken care of.") But there's that blonde again...

---

"

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Though later, lying in bed, Lydia DOES try to convey her clinging to Mitch being a matter of lonlieness and fear of abandonment -- and of the husband she lost too soon. She is supposedly NOT Mrs. Bates...NOT hating of other women."

- Indeed. At her most vulnerable, she finally drops her guard with Melanie, and confesses her deepest fears. I appreciate that scene for its rich subtext: she likes and trusts Melanie enough to do so, yet underneath it is the unspoken declaration that she has nothing against Melanie herself, but considers any relationship of Mitch's that could lead to her being "left alone," as she puts it, a danger. It makes it especially touching when, with worry over Cathy at the school mounting and Mitch elsewhere, she transfers her dependence to Melanie in that moment.

---

All true. You know, Hitchcock was at pains to tell 1963 interviewers that his "Birds" characters were much more developed than his "Psycho" characters, and scenes like this confirm that. (I believe Hitch was Oscar hunting; his only truly unmet goal.) So Lydia's "guard dropping" here IS dramatic and poignant and nuanced enough but....Psycho just wins for the sheer intensity of what's going on and how the characters are interesting even amidst more horror and less "in depth characterization". Says I.

[–] Doghouse (447) 5 years ago

Although The Birds is only ten minutes longer than Psycho, those additional minutes feel like more than ten. It simply doesn't have the momentum of Psycho. It's also more predictably rhythmic, like a roller coaster on which you can see each hill approaching, and always know what's in store for you next: a drop here; a turn there. Now that's not necessarily a bad thing; you get the thrill of anticipation. And for the downtime in between, there's the luxury of developing those characters and their relationships. And each comes with a back story.

Psycho's more like a darkened haunted house ride, where you can't always guess what's around the next corner. It keeps you off balance. And in terms of Marion, Sam, Lila and Arbogast, little to nothing in the way of back stories. They're concisely drawn, and it's from their actions and expressions we shall know them. And then there's Norman. Whole different ball of wax.

"Oh, I thought I'd gotten off the main road." And isn't that line merely Hitchcock and Stefano mischievously informing us that this is exactly where we're being taken?

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Although The Birds is only ten minutes longer than Psycho, those additional minutes feel like more than ten. It simply doesn't have the momentum of Psycho.

---

Unlike as with Scorsese and Spielberg and directors younger than them, Hitchcock's career is long over, we can study it now from any number of vantage points, its a "complete set."

And how Hitchcock tried to "beat" or "top" or even "get past" the glory of Psycho with The Birds is a fascinating study in a director testing himself.

Hitchcock's POV shots and camera moves and "air pockets of silence" remained the same from film to film, but other than that, each film he made created an entirely different WORLD that the one before it. Its really fascinating to take in, with Hitchcock, how it almost seems like he didn't totally CONTROL how each world differed. Each film took on a life of its own -- whether good(Rear Window) or not so good(Torn Curtain.)

So it is with The Birds versus Psycho. Yes, the characters all have pretty good back stories(Annie as Mitch's ex lover; Lydia with her dead husband and pre-teen daughter; Melanie with a past as a "wild girl and practical joker" that does't seem to fit the staid and brittle woman before us.

But the "minimal" characters of Psycho are JUST MORE INTERESTING to me. Partially , the horrific tale they inhabit MAKES them interesting, but Arbogast with no back story is more interesting to me than Lydia with plenty of it.

Though that's something else, as well. Perhaps I'm "male-centric" in my movie watching, but Psycho's five leads are three men and two women; The Birds five leads are one man and four women(one a girl)..with a woman IN the lead(Melanie.) In short, The Birds is a chick flick.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

It's also more predictably rhythmic, like a roller coaster on which you can see each hill approaching, and always know what's in store for you next: a drop here; a turn there. Now that's not necessarily a bad thing; you get the thrill of anticipation. And for the downtime in between, there's the luxury of developing those characters and their relationships. And each comes with a back story.

---

I suppose eventually the movie "announces" its rhythm: the birds attack, and then go off to "be quiet and mass again for the next attack." And in that downtime, we get things like Lydia in bed talking to Melanie; the (admittedly great) Tide Diner debate; and emotional discussions at the under-siege Brenner home.

Psycho on first viewing indeed takes sudden plunges. I'll give in and say that enough people DIDN'T see Hitchcock's trailer so that Marion Crane getting killed must have been a real story shocker. And what's interesting about Arbogast's later killing , I think, is how the movie hints that he MAY save the day but no, he gets wiped out so quick and suddenly (if horribly) that its just kinda FUNNY how little he mattered. But he DID matter: he heroically found out that Marion was at the Bates Motel and pointed Sam and Lila to that vital winning fact.

---

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Psycho's more like a darkened haunted house ride, where you can't always guess what's around the next corner. It keeps you off balance.

---

And...once Marion dies...pretty much(in the 60s at least) in terror anytime anybody sets foot on the Bates property , and in REAL terror when Arbogast(first) and Lila(later) enter the house(which becomes the ultimate in terror chambers).

---

And in terms of Marion, Sam, Lila and Arbogast, little to nothing in the way of back stories.

---

I recall Robin Wood's essay of Psycho. First of all, he wrote nothing of the Arbogast sequence, and simply mentioned the man's name once, grouped with two other names, thus: "(Lila, Sam, Arbogast") and said of all three "are only instruments for the search, perfunctorily sketched.") Wood went on to say that "the characters of Psycho are one character, and that character is US." Oh, maybe. I guess US feels the terror of being attacked and dying, but US also watches other people getting killed...they ARE people to us, we do feel bad for them, etc.

Hitchcock, promoting The Birds, said that the characters in the second half of Psycho "were merley figures" and that The Birds had more in-depth characters.

And I say: balderdash. Take Sam. We certainly know that he's a divorced man(young, and yet paying alimony) who has to live in a small room in the back of his hardware store to survive(how LONELY it looks at night in darkness, even without a horror movie around it.) He looks great with his shirt off, and likes sex, but he's a rather sad man.

Take Lila. The woman we meet is angry and panicked and determined, and we sense that SOME of that was part of Lila even before this crisis hit. There is also no man seen or mentioned in her life. There seems something lonely about HER, too. (And that the Van Sant made Lila a lesbian is beside the point, we don't hear about the WOMAN in her life, either.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

And even take Arbogast. He's the most "movie-ish character" IN Psycho. Decades of private eyes as leads(The Maltese Falcon) or supporting characters tell us: "a private eye isn't SUPPOSED to have backstory. He's just a plot device." So it is with Arbogast. And yet in Stefano's writing and Balsam's playing, Arbogast comes across as a man too sly and witty and sophisticated for his low-rent job. He MUST have an interesting life out there, somewhere.(I guessed him as a New York transplant who "went west" to Phoenix who enjoys nearby Las Vegas for fun..)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

And then there's Norman. Whole different ball of wax.

---

Indeed. In movie history, Norman Bates is important because the audience is invited to accept him as the "hero" of the story(he's cute movie star Anthony Perkins) even as his involvement in Mother's crimes make him a villain. And yet we "stick with him" and all those other characters rather orbit around him. Each stage of revelation ABOUT Norman horrifies us more, until, at the end, we realize we are looking at a human being who isn't really FULLY human. Something is VERY wrong with Norman Bates.

Meanwhile, back at Marion: we SEE her a lot for the first 47 minutes of Psycho, but do we really KNOW her? Hard to say.

And yet, critic Dwight MacDonald (who didn't like Psycho) wrote "we've come to know quite a lot about that girl who gets slaughtered in the shower" and thus the murder is more sadistic than those "quickies" shown on Hitchocck's TV at the time.

---

The rather "sparse and Spartan" nature of the characters in Psycho(less Norman) weirdly work in its favor; it keeps the film grounded and realistic even as the story gets more and more fantastic(not supernatural, just fantastic.)

Weirdly, all those messed-up and back-storied characters in The Birds seem TOO familiar. Although Mitch always bugs me: he's a criminal defense lawyer who keeps acting like a law-and-order prosecutor. It doesn't "compute." What DOES compute is that he's a prig who likes to use his lawyerly techniques to undercut and badger Melanie(and, one assumes, other women in his life, and other men.) He gets HIS. Well, he doesn't die, but he is certainly put to the test.

---

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

"Oh, I thought I'd gotten off the main road." And isn't that line merely Hitchcock and Stefano mischievously informing us that this is exactly where we're being taken?

---

Likely, yes. Psycho was pretty much taking THE MOVIES off the main road.

And we've never really gone back. Its like the worlds of Andy Hardy and the MGM musical(to name just two tropes) disappeared when Psycho hit the scene.

But also of course, this is part of the "effortless symbolism" of Psycho: you only end up at the Bates Motel IF "you've gotten off the main road." In life. As Marion has. But also FOR REAL...they moved the main highway. So now NORMAN is off the main road.