MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > 2020: Psycho Turns 60

2020: Psycho Turns 60

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

As I post this, it is the last day of 2019. 2020 is imminent. A New Year, a new decade and already articles suggesting "a new Roaring 20s." (And are we to expect a new Depression 30s? A new World War 40s?...we're 100 years out...)

But a "hidden" landmark to 2020 is that it is what I call a "0" year: the start of a decade, and Psycho is from the "0" year of perhaps the most rock 'em sock 'em decade of the 20th Century. The 60's. Or shall we now call it "The 1960s?"

Anthony Perkins said that when he contemplated playing the horrific part of Norman Bates, one question he asked himself was "am I ready to start the 60's?" It seems that Perkins -- like Hitchcock -- felt this particular new decade was going to be something wild. The end of the 50's was already pressing for it. In politics. In music(hello, Elvis..here come The Beatles.) And certainly in movies, where Hitchcock, Wilder and Preminger led the charge to try to ditch the Hays Code and make movies like dem dere Europeans. Anatomy of a Murder. Some Like It Hot, The Apartment...Psycho. They all pushed on sex, and Psycho pushed not only on violence, but on a wholesale explosion of narrative norms (the heroine gets killed, the detective gets killed, the protagonist is a madman...)

I'm reminded that right now as I write this, it is 60 years since the PRODUCTION of Psycho, which, interestingly enough, took place at the end of 1959(thus 60 years ago NOW) and the beginning of 1960. It is a movie MADE on the cusp of one decade into another. And back then, decades really seemed to matter, and the switch from the 50's to the 60's commenced a sea change that would take a decade to implement.

Stephen Rebello's great, detailed book on the making of Psycho notes that Janet Leigh's part of the film was filmed in December 1959 -- the shower murder was filmed over a week during Christmas season.

Holidays were taken, and when the movie "re-convened" in January, 1960 the "second half actors" came in: Vera Miles and Martin Balsam, John Gavin returning(I suppose that Gavin "came in early" in December to film his love scene with Leigh, went away for awhile, and came back.) The murder of Arbogast was filmed around January 19 and 20. Marion Crane died in 1959, Arbogast in 1960.

And here we are, 60 years later. The "official" 60-year Anniversary of Psycho will be in June 2020, I suppose -- it opened in NYC and other East Coast cities on June 16. (Note in passing, 12 years later, in 1972 Frenzy almost got that same opening date, it opened around June 20, almost exactly on the day of the Watergate break-in.)

I do recall how, ten years ago in 2010, Psycho got a flurry of "50-Year Anniversary" articles. Back when Newsweek was still a power and sold on the newsstands, Psycho got a two-page spread in 2010, about its 50th Anniversary, with a photo of Janet screaming in the shower to sum it all up. The point made then(as now, as ALWAYS) was that Psycho WAS truly a landmark film, DID break with the movies before it, DID pave the way for more R-rated sex and violence ahead(it took 8 years to get rid of the Hays Code, though, in 1968, But Psycho was there WAY earlier.) And I believe it was the Newsweek article writer who wrote: "There's a part of Psycho in every movie that is made after it." Yeah, maybe. The sex. The violence. The narrative jolts(Pulp Fiction, anyone?) The cinematic dazzle. The workaday realism. "All of human life is here," wrote one critic.

Not to mention: landmark, schmandmark: Psycho was one of the Big Scream horror blockbusters of all time. Audiences lined up round the block for the scares, not the history.

It will be interesting to see what kind of treatment(if any) Psycho gets at 60. Newsweek is about finished(is it even on the stands anymore?) But there will likely be more internet magazine stories, as there were in 2020. And I'll take the bet that the various "Cineplex Classic" series will show Psycho on its 60th. Its always cool to see "Psycho" on the suburban multiplex marquee next to a Marvel movie title.

Here comes a veer: I said that Psycho is an "0 year" movie (1960.) Here are my other favorites from the "0 years" ahead of it and after it, starting with 1950 -- and -- how they connect TO Psycho:

1950: Sunset Boulevard. Its Gothic, yet its modern(1950 Hollywood) -- just like Psycho. Its in moody black and white. Both films feature a murderous madwoman. Both films end with an insane person looking out of the screen at US. And it just may have influenced Hitchcock on Psycho right along with Touch of Evil, Diabolique, and House on Haunted Hill.

1960: Psycho. 'nuff said.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

1970: MASH The Movie. "This is what the new freedom of the screen is all about" said a critic on the poster. And twas true. MASH the movie was to the '70's as Psycho was to the 60's: a marker of a New Age AND a New Decade. Here was an R-rated movie that didn't have to pull punches like Psycho did. The blood was bloodier(spurting from a surgery subject's neck). The sex was sexier(Hot Lips getting it on with Major Burns.) The nudity was -- nuder? (There is a shocking shower scene in this movie, too.)

1980: Used Cars. No horror here -- but this bawdy surreal comedy about duelling used car lots takes place in ...Phoenix, Arizona, and we get a sense, as in Psycho, of how Southwestern and sometimes tacky and definitely "desert desolate" that city is. Had I chosen The Shining as my favorite of 1980 I'd be in "Psycho territory," (Scatman = Arbogast) and it is high up my list, and The Shining IS rather neatly 20 years after Psycho and in an "O year." As is the copycat Psycho from DePalma, "Dressed to Kill." But, alas, Used Cars is my favorite, for personal memory reasons after all these years.

1990: Goodfellas. One of the definitive gangster movies, and one that makes the case that Organized Crime is actually Organized Psychopaths. Joe Pesci(definitely) and Robert DeNiro(somewhat) come off as stone cold psychos, there is no reasoning with them. The film opens with a man stabbed repeatedly in the chest by Joe Pesci, with a butcher knife, and everything that was "below the frame" when Arbogast was stabbed in Psycho is all "above the frame and in our faces" in Goodfellas. Scorsese returns to this sequence later in the film and we see Pesci in his Mother's kitchen(his MOTHER'S kitchen), borrowing the butcher knife with which he will commit the murder(though the victim needs some final shooting by DeNiro.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

2000: The Perfect Storm. Its a bit overdone in the dialogue and dramatics,a bit cheesy(critics couldn't take it seriously) but I was haunted by this movie about a group of fishermen whose small boat was flipped by a tidal wave and lost at sea, and it shares a few things with Psycho. One is that both movies have "unhappy endings" for the leads. Marion and Arbogast die; those fishermen (led by George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg) die. Another is that the movies have to do with the concept of being "doomed" -- and all the wrong decisions and missteps that can lead people from safety to death. Marion and Arbogast both have chances to leave the Bates Motel safely -- but she stays(after that menacing conversation with Norman) and he goes back(after his phone booth confessional.) So too it is with the fishermen of The Perfect Storm...voting to stay at sea, travel farther into the storm area...not go back. And this: both Psycho and The Perfect Storm have overpowering, wall-to-wall musical scores. The music makes these movies.

2010: True Grit. This one has more in common with VAN SANT's Psycho than Hitchcock's, but, well, it is what it is. The original Psycho and the original True Grit are from the 60's(Psycho at the very beginning, True Grit at the very end), and both ended up with very faithful remakes. Psycho is start to finish, shot by shot, scene by scene(less the church scene in the remake.) True Grit has about 6 new sequences, and loses the two great final scenes from the original, but a LOT of it IS shot by shot, line by line, scene by scene(nowhere more noticeable than when Rooster is told "That's bold talk for a one-eyed fat man" and yells "Fill your hands, you son of a bitch" and rides one on four in a big gunbattle on horseback. ) The remake casting of the new True Grit was better than the remake casting of Psycho but both films are pretty much the same experience: you get to relive an old favorite with new actors, and its kinda fun both times. (That's right -- BOTH times.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

2020: I wonder what my favorite movie of 2020 will be? Unlike in other years, I have no movie I'm excited for "up front." One reason: two of the makers of many of my favorite films -- Tarantino and Scorsese -- won't be releasing anything in 2020. So it will be the kind of "up for grabs" year that has gotten me "weak sister" favorites like John Wick and The Magnificent Seven in the 2010's.

Looking back at the "0 year films" before and after Psycho, on my personal list, it seems that I picked classics a few times(Sunset Boulevard, Psycho, MASH, Goodfellas), and -- by sheer circumstance -- less renowned films a few times(Used Cars, The Perfect Storm) And True Grit 2010 is rather a specialty item: a classic remake OF a classic.

Oh, well. Loved 'em all.

But none more than Psycho.

Happy New Year. Happy New Decade! Happy 60th Anniversary, Psycho.

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

2020: I wonder what my favorite movie of 2020 will be?

Nolan (Tenet - some sort of time reversal hoo-hah) & Fincher (Mank - about writing Citizen Kane) & Wes Anderson (French Dispatch - anthology film set in Wes version of Europe) are the obvious big directorial names (beyond Spielberg) to watch out for.

Looking through IMDb's list of forthcoming films:
https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?year=2020&title_type=feature&;

some others that jump out:

1. Osgood Perkins gets his biggest budget yet for 'Gretel & Hansel'.
2. Joe Wright (Atonement) remixes every Hitchcock plot ever starting with Rear Window & Lady Vanishes in 'The Woman in the Window'.
3. Benh Zeitlin finally follows up his inspired, Malick-y debut, Beasts of the Southern Wild, with 'Wendy'.
4. Branagh makes his Agatha Christie sequel remake, 'Death on the Nile'.
5. Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners, Arrival, Blade Runner 2049) tries to land sci-fi classic & white whale 'Dune'.
6. Gal Gadot appears to cement her astonishingly elegant, sunny star-power & triumph of casting in 'Wonder Woman 1984'.
7. Ghostbusters, Top Gun, Bad Boys, Bill&Ted, Coming to America, & James Bond all get to continue.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

A nifty list, swanstep...and good to see Osgood Perkins moving up. (The deaths of his two parents were pretty tragic -- his mother died in one of the 9/11 planes and Tony went too young, from AIDS at 60.)

Gal Gadot is in Wonder Woman AND Death on the Nile....though her casting in the latter rather replays the casting of Johnny Depp in Orient Express. (Poor Johnny...a great movie star...gone. Whatever the truth, he never shoulda married that hottie.) And yes, I do think that Gal Gadot has star quality. There are a lot of beautiful women in movies...she's got that "glow." You LIKE her. (I will add that, in whatever year the first Wonder Woman came out, it was pretty close to my favorite of that year -- Gadot's sweet,sexy and strong star power -- and the WWI adventure -- made it one of the better comic movies until the usual too-much-CGI climax.)

The movie buff in me wants to see "Mank"(with the interesting choice of Fincher at the helm.)

I saw a "Woman in the Window" trailer and..yeah...some Hitch in there. (Wasn't there a FORTIES movie called "Woman in the Window"?)

There's a nifty trailer I have also seen (on YouTube) for a 2020 thriller called "Promising Young Woman" in which Carey Mulligan(remember her?) gets a chance to do some wicked line readings and facial expressions as a woman who lets men pick her up in bars "dead drunk and vulnerable" -- and then when the men take her home, reveals that she isn't drunk at all, just luring her prey. But it looks more complex than that. Cool trailer, whatever happens with the movie.

Of all the sequels, I'm most interested in "Bill and Ted." Keanu's a pretty big star again, the other guy isn't, maybe it will be a boost for both of their careers. I would here like to note that Dana Carvey never understood how Mike Myers got away with "Wayne's World" -- "Its just Bill and Ted," said Dana. Evidently not quite.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Top Gun was one of those blockbusters that didn't cut it for me, but boy does it scream "THE 80'S." And Tom Cruise is immortal, with his smallish body and his boyish face, now shapen into...some OTHER kind of face. He hasn't aged, he's just...changed.

Well, its out there, my favorite of 2020, waiting to be seen.

The "movie bug" still works its magic on me, once or twice a year. I can hardly wait.

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

Wasn't there a FORTIES movie called "Woman in the Window"?

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Yep. It's a Eddie G. Robinson femme fatale noir directed by Lang. I don't remember it that well. I *do* remember finding Robinson's murdering but inept college prof hard to swallow, but then the film solved that problem too easily by adding a very exasperating, "It was all a dream" wrap-up. Aren't we all a bit klutzy in our dream bad behaviors? I'd need to rewatch to be sure I wasn't just being grumpy first time around.

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Hah.."it was all a dream" isn't a very effective dramatic device, though I guess 'The Wizard of Oz" and "Dallas" used it famously.

There have been "bogus" analyses of both Vertigo and Psycho in which the writer suggests that these stories were "dreams of their protagonists" -- i.e Marion DREAMED her shower death, Scottie DREAMED the Judy concept in his catatonic state. Nah.

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Seems to me there were a number of movies about windows and women...I recall one with Ann Southern -- I think she was a killer -- where at the end, a little boy say the shadow of Southern in a window and realized she was the killer from a previous such view...this is an old memory from the afternoon movies of my youth. I expect with Ann Southern as the "clue," I could look it up.

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

8. Edgar Wright’s first horror proper, Last Night in Soho, is apparently 'in the vein of Repulsion and Don’t Look Now'.
9. Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine, Synecdoche NY, Anomalisa) is back from the depression mines with I’m Thinking of Ending Things.
10. Aaron Sorkin does The Trial of the Chicago 7.
11. David Chase does the young Tony Soprano (with James Gandolfini's son Michael in the part; no word on Livia's actress yet) in The Many Saints of Newark.
12. Art films can have sequels too! The Souvenir Part 2 arrives.

I must say that laid out like this it does seem like there's a decent number of offerings for adults projected for 2020.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

That's a fine list(several lists) of 2020 movies, swanstep. Thank you.

I suppose as a matter of my own movie history, the "young Tony Soprano" film holds the most promise. I'll never really forgive David Chase for the awful ending of The Sopranos, but...the other 80 hours of the show were classic, I do miss the show and the fact that this is a "movie movie" -- as opposed to the Deadwood movie on HBO ...is intriguing. I hear that Vera Farmiga is Livia, which would be fitting, seeing as she did a long stint as Mrs. Norma Bates on Bates Motel.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

10. Aaron Sorkin does The Trial of the Chicago 7.

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Another possible favorite of 2020. Sorkin scripts -- written or co-written by him -- have powered favorites of mine from Charlie Wilson's War to Moneyball to Molly's Game -- and yes, I liked all the Jack Nicholson scenes in A Few Good Men(the rest of the movie is rather dull, less some great Sorkin dialogue for Cruise alone, early on, and Kevin Pollak as his fellow military lawyer saying often "I'm so-and-so, and I have no important role in the comportment of this trial" or something like that..)

A film about the Chicago 7 will remind us that however tumultuous the times seem now - they were plenty tumultuous then. Its a never ending battle, I guess.

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

13. Horror auteur Ben Wheatley (Kill List, A Field in England, High Rise) gets stars and a big budget to do a new Rebecca w. Armie Hammer & Lily James.
14. Dee Rees whose 'Mudbound' for Netflix two years ago was moving & just a couple million $ budget short of being the sort of social epic with a WW2 twist that sweeps the Oscars has a new classy-looking-thing for Netflix: Anne Hathaway, Ben Affleck, and Willem Dafoe are journalists entangled in an arms-running scheme in Central America in the 1980s in The Last Thing He Wanted.

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

It needs to be said that in 2019 & 2020 Hitchcock & esp. Psycho is well represented:

1. Marriage Story has a big Psycho steal in the scene where Adam Driver metaphorically dies.
2. The Souvenir has a whole film school scene where Psycho is explicitly discussed. (Vertigo gets in some licks immediately after)
3. Parasite has a few spoilerific Psycho touches at the conceptual level, &, I just discovered from a spoilerific vid on youtube, Hitchcock's face glowers from the spine of a dvd in the middle of a frame in a shot from one of Parasite's key montage sequences.
4. Colbert used Trump as Mother after Trump tweeted himself as Thanos.
5. Joaquin Phoenix's Joker has a big dose of Norman in him behind the obvious Travis Bickle & Rupert Pupkin stuff. Not to mention that Phoenix did a kind of dress rehearsal for Joker in Lynn Ramsey's 'hitman who lives with his mom' movie, You Were Never Really There, and *that* role includes an explicit discussion of Psycho between son & mom. See:
https://moviechat.org/tt0054215/Psycho/5d9774b4d652de7674ac0a9f/The-Joker-Could-Have-Been-Norman-Bates?reply=5dcb514909452a55f8949f77

Most of our faves over the years *stay* in the past but not Psycho.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Most of our faves over the years *stay* in the past but not Psycho.

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Its getting rather intense, I think -- I honestly think that Psycho is outpacing such other classics as Citizen Kane, Casablanca and GWTW as having "relevance to our modern films." Something about its simplicity -- the entire film is easy to remember -- and how the shower scene towers above every other scene in movie history in its historic power.

Also, Norman Bates is really ground zero for any number of scary psychos to follow him -- Harry Roat, Jr. in Wait Until Dark, Scorpio in Dirty Harry, Michael Myers, Jason, Freddie....Hannibal Lecter, John Doe in 7even....the "knock-off" killer of Dressed to Kill(guess who?) and IMHO the very unsung "authentic Hitchcock psycho" : Bob Rusk. And Norman informs the "serious prestige psycho" who is Travis Bickle and his off-shoots right up to Joaquin's joker.

Also, so many of our modern hits are, essentially , thrillers.

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Most of our faves over the years *stay* in the past but not Psycho.

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As I will share in another post about Anthony Perkins appearance in his death year of 1992 to introduce "Psycho" at a screening...he felt exactly the same way.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Joaquin Phoenix's Joker has a big dose of Norman in him behind the obvious Travis Bickle & Rupert Pupkin stuff. Not to mention that Phoenix did a kind of dress rehearsal for Joker in Lynn Ramsey's 'hitman who lives with his mom' movie, You Were Never Really There, and *that* role includes an explicit discussion of Psycho between son & mom.

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You have mentioned this film before, and I always make a note to see it...and I haven't yet. But I will. Given the explicit discussion of Psycho between son and mom...I gotta.

Which reminds me: in "Batman Returns"(1992), Michael Keaton's Bruce Wayne/Batman opines that he himself might have a "Norman Bates split personality," which suggests that even our heroes relate to that famous villain.

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

Phoenix did a kind of dress rehearsal for Joker in Lynn Ramsey's 'hitman who lives with his mom' movie, You Were Never Really There, and *that* role includes an explicit discussion of Psycho between son & mom.
--
You have mentioned this film before, and I always make a note to see it...and I haven't yet. But I will. Given the explicit discussion of Psycho between son and mom...I gotta.

Be warned, YWNRT, goes full-art-film in its final act. I'm generally quite tolerant of such flourishes but was *infuriated* by this one. To me, the director botched the whole end of her movie for no good reason, perhaps just because any conventionally satisfying but devastating, dark, character-driven semi-thriller ending (Third Man, Get Carter, Chinatown, Mona Lisa, Parasite, etc.) struck her as boring, cliched, 'done'. I was *very* annoyed and suspect that the 90+% of viewers more mainstream than me will feel the same way.

BTW I saw Parasite again... It really is great. Maybe the Acad won't be able to bring itself to vote a foreign language film Best Picture but there's just no way Bong doesn't get Best Director for this. I really hope they get in a gaggle of classy directors to present this award (the way they did for Scorsese the year of The Departed), say Coppola, Bigelow, Del Toro to welcome Bong aboard.

[–] swanstep (2715) 5 years ago

Slight Spoiler:
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The key shot in Parasite that includes Hitchcock's face on the spine of a dvd box set frame right has, frame left, a larger b&w photo of the film's mysterious, 'famous architect', Namgoong in front of the house he built that's the film's main set:
https://tinyurl.com/yhb2uq7g
It's only a slight spoiler to say that this house in Parasite plays some of the same conceptual roles for Bong that Psycho's house plays for Hitchcock. Given this I find that the photo of Namgoong reminds me of publicity & trailer shots of Hitchcock in front of Psycho's house, e.g.,
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Alfred_Hitchcock%27s_Psycho_trailer.png
I think Bong is gently nodding to some of his film's Hitchcockian & Siodmakian roots (e.g., Spiral Staircase - https://moviechat.org/tt0054215/Psycho/5dc705c701231645eeeb1a4e/The-Two-Cellars-In-Psycho?reply=5dc75f5095f20e7704259cfc)