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Psycho at 60 -- Jaws at 45

posted 4 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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Its July 2020. Some articles came out about Psycho opening on June 16, 1960 and how it is 60 years old. And Life Magazine has put out an entire collectable magazine(a "mini-book") about how Jaws came out on June 20, 1975 and how it is 45 years old.

That magazine is a good "picture read." There are some good "making of photos" of the movie that show you how the "tiny boat alone on the big sea" was actually within 100 FEET of shore and houses; of Robert Shaw posing on deck and smiling with the great white that would soon be eating him up; of an impossibly young Steven Spielberg (sans beard) directing his famous main trio(Scheider, Dreyfuss, Shaw) and the equally famous support(50's character guy and Mr. Robinson himself, Murray Hamiliton, as the craven mayor; sexy Jewish er...MIL...Lorraine Gary, as the police chief's wife -- it didn't hurt Spielberg that she was the wife of studio head Sid Sheinberg.)

The book intersperses some "career overviews" of Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, and Richard Dreyfuss, and there are some interesting quotes in there: Dreyfuss(the only one alive today) saying "I think that I have the best body of work of any modern American movie actor" and "when we made Jaws, Spielberg and I were both princes -- everybody knew I was going to make it as a star-- they had known since I was a teenager -- and that he was going to make it as a director."

And this indirect quote from the late Robert Shaw via his daughter: "He called me and I asked him how the movie was going and he said: I think its going to be a lousy, cheesy film. The shark looks fake. But this young director is very talented."

There are quotes from 1975 book about the making of Jaws -- by its co-writer and co-star Carl Gottlieb(he's a portly, mustachioed local newspaper writer who shadows the mayor) -- called "The Jaws Log" which I recall reading and devouring in 1975. This book launched the famous stories about the fake shark always malfunctioning(hence, he isn't seen a lot) and the ocean-going filming to be a nightmare(tides, waves, changes in sky for continuity.)

Psycho is touched upon in the Life book when the book reaches John Williams famous Jaws score and Jaws theme -- considered next in historical line after the screeching Psycho violins. And alas - whereas Herrmann for Psycho wasn't nominated -- Williams won for HIS score(what a difference 15 years made at the Academy.) A sad truth emerges here: John Williams is now 88 years old. I expect that there aren't many great Williams scores ahead of us.

But how is this for a "buried lede" This Jaws book makes the point that with its June 20, 1975 release, Jaws "invented the summer blockbuster" and that "heretofore, summer was a dumping ground for Elvis movies and programmers." Well hey -- how about Psycho FIFTEEN YEARS EARLIER -- on June 16, 1960?

Well, when the legend becomes fact...print the legend. The truth of the matter is that Hitchcock invented the "summer blockbuster" (with Psycho) indeed 15 years before Jaws, but the studios didn't see it. Christmas would be "blockbuster time" for a long time -- right up to The Exorcist(1973) and The Towering Inferno(1974.)

For me, personally, I was way too young to see or remember Psycho's first release in June of 1960...but I sure was there for Jaws opening day. First matinee. Long line. Playing cards IN line with my friends. And when it was over -- right down to the beach (I was summering in a beach town.)

I recall that first-day screening of Jaws as a full-house screamathon where you couldn't hear a word that Dreyfuss, Scheider, and Hamilton said under the billboard after the "head pops out of the boat scene" right before it. The screams as the fin came up behind the lifeguard were mixed with "LOOK BEHIND YOU! ITS BEHIND YOU!" and even bigger screams when we saw(for the first time) the shark's head and jaws closing on that lifeguard victim(from overhead -- the Arbogast angle.)

Jaws was a big, exiting deal in the summer of 1975, and I remember it well. I remember AFTER seeing it, going to see other movies, and they would show the exciting Jaws trailer("NOW PLAYING IN OUR OTHER THEATER") and I would think: "Why am I here for this OTHER movie? I want to see Jaws again!"

I"ve always seen the "trilogy of superthrillers" as Psycho, The Exorcist, and Jaws. I've also always seen Jaws as the next best thing TO Psycho, derivative of it in some ways(the suspense, the killings) and not at all in others(the blue skies and open spaces; the over-coating of seafaring adventure.)

It took me some years to realize that where The Exorcist does NOT match up to Psycho and Jaws is that in the latter two films, the core of the story is: "there's a monster and if you aren't careful it will kill you" -- we get the killing -- but in The Exorcist, the possessed Regan is NOT a monster that kills . At least not on screen. A film director dies offscreen, and the two Exorcists sacrifice themselves at the end.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Psycho and Jaws both operate on the theory of a "zone of lethal danger," that is established early on. Both times the victim is female, naked, and surrounded by water: Marion Crane in the shower(at the 47 minute point); the unknown young woman who swims and dies in the first minutes of Jaws. (Which is why Jaws plays more modern than Psycho today -- the first killing is in the first minutes; the terror is established right off the bat.)

The "zone of lethal danger" in Psycho is pretty much the entire Bates property, but mainly the house in the second half. Arbogast enters and dies; Lila enters and ALMOST dies(and its nothing but suspense and screams getting there.)

The "zone of lethal danger" in Jaws is...the ocean , of course. Whether near shore(where the first three victims are killed), or out at sea(where, on their tiny, leaky boat, the three male heroes are at constant risk of falling into the drink with the killer shark waiting for them.

Thus, both Psycho and Jaws operate as almost "effortless" suspense machines occasionally yielding to the shocks of bloody death. Death from a big knife in Psycho, from big bladed teeth in Jaws. In both cases, bladed, painful death that draws blood. In Psycho, only two people die(but we keep waiting for a third to get killed). In Jaws, made 15 more sensationalistic years later -- five people die..four on screen , one (the head in the boat) off. Times had changed, more killings were necessary to keep the audience's attention.

I think that both Psycho and Jaws benefit from being more than "just one genre." Horror (and gory murder) is the main event in both films, but the films are "hybrids":

Psycho: horror, crime thriller, noir, mystery, Gothic, tragedy...comedy.

Jaws: horror, buddy movie(though they aren't really buddies), sea faring adventure, tragedy...comedy.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The comedy in both Psycho and Jaws is noteable. I've heard good audience laughs in both films. (The Exorcist, not so much...more like laughs AT some of Reagan's more gross-out moments.)

Also linking Psycho and Jaws are the quality of the script and of the actors reading it. Psycho has the Marion/Norman and Arbogast/Norman dialogues; Jaws has Shaw's great long speech about his being on the sunken warship that delivered the Bomb for Hiroshima -- most of the men were taken by sharks in the days awaiting rescue. (This speech manages to combine the horrors of nuclear war AND shark attacks in a profound manner -- and set the stage for Quint's inevitable death to "complete the arc.")

I'd say that in both Psycho and Jaws, three characters are the most interesting. This is "overt" in Jaws, in which Scheider, Shaw, and Dreyfuss go above the title and create one of the great trios in film history. This is "coverT" in Psycho, in which Perkins, Leigh, and Balsam rise above all others to give us three extremely well acted charActers linked by murder: Perkins kills Leigh and Balsam and makes them "immortal" in film.

The trio in Jaws are carefully worked out in a "one against two" scenario that plays three different ways: Dreyfuss(one) is rich; Shaw and Scheider are not; Scheider(one) can't stand being on the ocean; Dreyfuss and Shaw are "sea faring men"; and Shaw (one) is crazy and Dreyfuss and Scheider are not (the growing alarm of Scheider and especially Dreyfuss as they realize that Quint is going nuts is...suspenseful.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

With both Psycho and Jaws (as with many other blockbusters) it can be said that "the movie event was just as big as the story." Psycho is "about" Norman, Marion, Arbogast, Sam and Lila, but the overall effect was much BIGGER than just those characters(to enter the theater was to put yourself in a kind of danger). Jaws is about Chief Brody, Hooper and Quint but the "event' is about the dangers of the ocean in general and sharks in particular. And audiences made these movies much bigger hits than "the average thriller." Part of it was the historic terror in both films: death in a shower , death in the ocean. Part of it was the great overall filmmaking( including two all time great scores). Part of it was the great scripts and great acting.

And this: Jaws rather famously divides into two parts and two "movies." Part One is a Hitchcock movie: horrible murders in broad daylight(often) at the beach in Your Town, USA. Part Two is a Hawks movie("men in groups") that turns back into a Hitchcock movie at the end(when Quint dies so bloodily.)

If at this Psycho page we are saluting Psycho on its 60th year since debuting as a summer blockbuster...we can praise and remember Jaws on its 45th as well. The films are clearly linked in content, in suspense, in terror -- and in having an affect on audiences that still stands tall today.

PS. Somebody called Jaws "Psycho at sea." Someone called Jurrassic Park "Jaws on land." So Psycho leads to ...Jurassic Park?

[–] [email protected] (383) 4 years ago

2 great ages

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

The gap between 1960 and 1975 feels huge to me - the pre-Beatles world of Psycho & The Apartment felt like ancient history in 1975. How does 2005 feel in 2020?

It's the year of Peter Jackson's King Kong, Nolan's first Batman film, Burton's Willie Wonka, Spielberg's War of The Worlds & Munich, the 40 Year Old Virgin was a hit, Haneke's Caché blew arthouse minds; Sopranos still going strong, Stephen Colbert left the Daily Show to start The Colbert Report; Green Day's American Idiot record was huge as was Gwen Stefani, Kelly Clarkson, Madonna's last great album, first hits from Rihanna; Hurricane Katrina started the unravelling of the Bush presidency, Youtube is born, Facebook is 1, the iPhone is -2.

2005 doesn't seem that far away to me but maybe to kids today being pre-iPhones (phones with touch-screens) & pre-social media as we know 'em now is enough to make 2005 seem like a strange, dark and distant time.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The gap between 1960 and 1975 feels huge to me - the pre-Beatles world of Psycho & The Apartment felt like ancient history in 1975. How does 2005 feel in 2020?

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As I age (in a mellow manner) and look back...things like this ARE amazing. 15 years mean different things to us where we are personally; but they also mean different things in recent history.

I've always contended that the R rating(and within bounds, what could even be done with a PG or PG 13) is a real line of demarcation. Jaws and The Exorcist are violent enough, and modern enough, that they could be released this year and "fit." But Psycho, made not only under Hays Code constraints but as part of a different era(Late Golden Age) no longer plays "modern."

But there is also the famous "break" of the 60's, which was very real and has not been duplicated in decades since. Simply put, Hitchcock (and Wilder and Ford and Capra and Hawks) were "put out to pasture" in the 60's and Hitchcock (allowed to work when the others were not) couldn't attract top stars after Torn Curtain. And yet, modernly "old guys" like Scorsese and Spielberg in their 70's/80's are going strong and attracting top stars. (Even Stanley Kubrick , at 68-70, could attract Top Star Tom Cruise and his wife Nicole to Kubrick.)

There simply seemed to be a feeling that the "old" way of making movies had to go came the 60's (as Dennis Hopper said to George Cukor at a party, "we will BURY you, man!) and thus we have a radical change in how movies looked and sounded and played from the 70's on.

And yet also: came the 80's, Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda and a whole bunch of directors and actors were thrown out as "TV moguls" took over the studios and started making "movies as TV series."

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

How does 2005 feel in 2020?

It's the year of Peter Jackson's King Kong, Nolan's first Batman film, Burton's Willie Wonka, Spielberg's War of The Worlds & Munich, the 40 Year Old Virgin was a hit, Haneke's Caché blew arthouse minds; Sopranos still going strong, Stephen Colbert left the Daily Show to start The Colbert Report; Green Day's American Idiot record was huge as was Gwen Stefani, Kelly Clarkson, Madonna's last great album, first hits from Rihanna; Hurricane Katrina started the unravelling of the Bush presidency, Youtube is born, Facebook is 1, the iPhone is -2.

--

2005 doesn't seem that long ago, and I'm sure that if somebody made King Kong or War of the Worlds in 2020 -- they'd be current and hits. The 40 Year Old Virgin launched Apatow, and Seth Rogan and they are still "current" too.

I suppose the Hitchcock analogy might be that 15 years after Rebecca, he was still going strong with To Catch a Thief...and had greatness yet ahead of him. So somethings don't change.

Two disconnected thoughts from me:

In 1972, I was at the drive-in with some friends to see Frenzy. Sitting outside our cars in lawn chairs, I could see the marquee outside the drive-in and it said "ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S FRENZY." I remember looking at that with a mix of warmth and pride(here I was, a young Hitchcock fan from his old movies on TV, at a theater seeing a Hitchcock movie -- and the critics said it was good) and sadness(...but Hitchcock is NOT really a big shot anymore, this movie has no stars in it, its a last gasp.")

And I remember thinking: "And Psycho was SO long ago...THAT was a hit...but that was TWELVE years ago."

I was young. 12 years was a long time.

----

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

2005 doesn't seem that far away to me but maybe to kids today being pre-iPhones (phones with touch-screens) & pre-social media as we know 'em now is enough to make 2005 seem like a strange, dark and distant time.

----

Well, as with my Frenzy anecdote above...at a certain age, 12 years(or 15 years) can seem like a long, LONG time ago.

Another more "universal" anecdote:

When the year 1999(or maybe 2000) came, there were all sorts of articles about the 20th Century, particularly the post war decades.

I recall one guy -- a perhaps TOO classic "Aging hippie boomer" type, made this contention in his article: after the historic upheavals of both the 60's and the 70's, the 80s and 90s were...nothing. Too smooth, too easy, too corporate -- and he made a point of noting that corporations took over everything -- "especially rock music. MTV made sure that musicians never escaped corporate control again."

Maybe. I guess so.

Certainly we got a "new and improved doomsday" as the 21st Century began. 9/11 to lead things off in 2001, devolved to where we are today. But how scared can I be? I grew up in a childhood with the assurance that nuclear war would likely kill everybody.

Enjoy the passage of time...

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I'd like to underline this about the difference between Psycho and Jaws(even as , in a lot of ways as stories and events, they are the same.)

Psycho doesn't have its first shock killing until 47 minutes into a 109 minute movie. I contend that Psycho becomes a horror movie at the 30-minute mark: that's when we first see the Bates Mansion and the "horror atmosphere"(however modern), kicks in. Still, those first 47 minutes are "old fashioned narrative movie-making": a story about a woman on the run with money and her meeting with a nice young man. Then, after the traumatic shower murder, Hitchcock(as he said many times) "milks the suspense from that initial horror for the entire movie" and while only one more victim is killed(Arbogast) , you never really know if someone else will be killed after that, until Norman's capture.

Jaws famously leads off with its first killing: the young woman(Chrissie, I think) who is first killed by the shark. there's about 20 minutes of set-up exposition for Chief Brody and then we get the second killing(the young Kintner boy)... we then get a big meaty stretch of movie(introducing Quint , introducing Hooper) with one "non killing shock"(the head in the hole in the boat) before a THIRD on-screen killing(the lifeguard, who loses a leg in the process.)

That's a lot of bloody deaths and is the main "marker" that Jaws was made 15 years later than Psycho -- no Hays Code restraints on frequency of killings. (A final, fourth -- or fifth -- killing -- is the "big one": watching Quint get bit on, chewed up and swallowed.) Noteworthy: while the two Psycho victims, Marion and Arbogast, were played by Oscar-caliber talent(Leigh, Balsam) and were given lengthy dramatic scenes, the first three victims in Jaws are pretty much "bit players," with no real opportunity to act at all(well, Chrissie makes some really bad come hither looks at a teenage beau, that's about it.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

LA Times critic Charles Champlin didn't like Jaws ("Lumpily written and a bore ashore") but mainly railed against the PG rating: ("Greivously wrong.") Not only did Jaws come out well after the Hays Code was done, it was manipulated to escape an R rating by this argument: the bloody killings were "animal violence" and not psycho knife murders.

I dunno. The R-rated "Exorcist" sure had more sexual gross-out shocks than Jaws. Weirdly enough I still think that Psycho with its 1960 pulled punches remains a supremely creepy movie, and with a really PERSONAL violence to the attacks on Marion and Arbogast -- its more violent "on the senses' than Jaws because Marion and Arbogast are such "in depth" human beings.

Jaws got away with its PG rating, but its director, Spielberg, later pressed for the PG-13 rating to accommodate the "kiddie violence" of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom(well, movies made AFTER that one got the PG-13.)

Today on DVD, Psycho famously has an " R" rating that makes little sense. It got an "M" (PG) rating for its 1969 re-release. Oh well -- I suppose a defenseless naked woman getting stabbed to death multiple times should never be considered PG again.

And this: between Psycho and Jaws(leaving out The Exorcist) came Night of the Living Dead and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, sickening ultra-violent cult classics that were "just too much" for the mainstream. Jaws brought back the kind of suggestive style and restraint that made Psycho such a hit. As Perkins said of Psycho (and it could be said of Jaws): "The difference between Psycho and most blood and guts horror movies is: you ENJOY it."

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

Jaws famously leads off with its first killing: the young woman(Chrissie, I think) who is first killed by the shark. there's about 20 minutes of set-up exposition for Chief Brody and then we get the second killing(the young Kintner boy)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

A funny/terrible aside: Many people including myself have noted the parallels between Jaws and aspects of the current situation with 'we need to get back in the water/get the economy moving people' vs 'we first need to kill the shark/virus'. In this image the President and lots of southern Governors are all 'Mayors from Jaws'. (Nobody wants to be an MFJ!)

--

In the not-very-good all-female reboot of "Ghostbusters" a few years ago, one of the ghostbusters accuses NYC Mayor Andy Garcia of being "the mayor from Jaws" and he goes berserk "I am NOT the Mayor from Jaws! Don't say that!" I'm guessing that somehow that scene(which is pretty funny) is powering these "Mayor from Jaws" memes. And they are relevant.

As noted at the time, Jaws borrowed this angle from an Ibsen play called "Enemy of the People" which, ended up being made only a couple of years after Jaws by Steve McQueen as a vanity project. In THAT one, McQueen's doctor goes up against his brother(the MAYOR) about closing springs that serve tourists and townspeople alike, which McQueen believes to be polluted.

We are kinda/sorta in the "Mayor from Jaws" situation now , but in Jaws, the problem could be eliminated by finding and killing the shark, which takes what...two days?

This virus could stick around for two YEARS. And though there may be a vaccine...there may not.

Scary, but then...such is life.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Well, fairly early on in the pandemic, the Mrs Kinter actress, Lee Fiero, died at 91 of complications from the novel coronavirus.

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Yes, and that allowed the "Mayor from Jaws" meme that much more power. But she was 91. Though younger people are now dying from this(a 41 year old Broadway star), it does seem to be taking out the elderly first and most. (One of this era's charming young internet posters has dubbed the virus: "Boomer Remover.")

As for me, and at my "advanced" age...I have already swum this summer in the ocean at exactly the same beach I swam the day that I saw Jaws in 1975. The beach is the one place you are MOST safe from coronavirus, if done right.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I would like to veer here to a quick look at the actor who PLAYED Mayor Vaughn in Jaws, because both personally and objectively, I find the man's career to have been fascinating in a specific Hollywood way(the comeback) and I read of something very touching about his work on ...Jaws 2.

His name was Murray Hamilton, and if you saw a lot of late 50s movies on 60s TV, he was around a LOT in movies.

In 1959, Murray Hamilton did two movies with James Stewart. In "The FBI Story," Hamilton is Stewart's FBI partner , and after they have a shootout with Pretty Boy Floyd or somebody, they are crouched on the ground and we get this exchange:

Hamilton: Are you alright?
Stewart: Yeah.
Hamilton: Good...because I'm NOT.

And Murray dies in Jimmy's arms. Its a scene you don't forget when you're young...the "best pal" who dies alongside his friend.

Also in '59, Murray, in Anatomy of a Murder, played a bartender/witness to murder whom defense attorney James Stewart destroys on the witness stand. What I like is, the next day during a break in the trial, Stewart goes to Hamilton's bar and orders a drink from the seething Hamilton, and says: "Oh, come on. No hard feelings, are there? I was just doing my job." The Trial Lawyer -- Why We Hate Them.

In that late 50's corridor, you can find Murray Hamilton as Andy Griffith's Army pal in No Time for Sergeants, as support to Cary Grant in Houseboat, as Tony Perkins' college basketball coach in Tall Story..he was EVERYWHERE.

And then...he sort of disappeared. An IMDb check shows not really, though. He disappeared from MOVIES and did a lot of TV.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

And then...in 1967...Hamilton got the role of the cuckolded "Mr. Robinson" in the blockbuster The Graduate(after Gene Hackman was fired by Mike Nichols as "too young.")

Hamilton gets two great scenes:

(1) boozily coming home from golf to his home to find a nervous Dustin Hoffman waiting for himin his living room(Mrs. Robinson has just hit hard on Dustin sexually), and telling the wheezing Hoffman to "enjoy your youth." I like how the ice cubes clink in Mr. Robinson's glass of scotch and how he keeps saying "Ben...." with a certain fatherly care.

(2) Later, having discovered that Ben has been Mrs. Robinson's lover and now seeks his daughter's hand in marriage, Mr. Robinson goes berserk: "I think you are FILTH! I think you are SCUM! I think you are a DEGENERATE!"

Yep, I remember those two scenes.

And then Murray Hamilton disappeared again(oh, plenty of TV work) for 8 years and ended up -- in exhausted, gray-haired middle age, with his Role of a Lifetime: the Mayor of Shark City.

I KNEW of Murray Hamilton's long career when I saw Jaws(especially the old James Stewart movies) and seeing him in "Jaws" was like seeing a long lost friend.

Coda: I read somewhere that when Murray Hamilton returned for Jaws 2 (a much lesser film than Jaws) he learned that his hospitalized wife had only days to live. Hamilton asked to be written out of the movie; he said "any way it happens, I'm not staying here to make this movie while my wife is dying." The producers came up with a plan to film ALL of Hamilton's scenes in one DAY...and he got to his wife in time to be with her when she died.