OK...the "extra stabs" down on the below-the-frame Arbogast looked legitimate to me this time. There is still a "glitch" when the new stabs start -- but on the big screen, you can see that the knife takes a different trajectory down in the additional stabs.
The glitch on the second stab is a deal-breaker(vindicator of Hitch's decision to just show the first stab) for me. It's so contrary to Hitch's emphasis on quality control throughout his years in Hollywood. Even when you watch films by other top golden age directors like Wyler, Cukor, Stevens, Sturges you notice a higher rate of technical errors, sub-par edits and shots than you do with Hitch.
I tend to think that the other instances of new footage fall to similar objections. Marion's 'taking off her bra shot' is cut to the last frame to avoid 'showing nipple'. It's unnatural to cut there rather than when Marion hangs up the bra on the chair (or whatever it is) in front of her. As is the shot feels rushed, technically imperfect, and also kind of prurient. Chop it I say.
As for the gorier hands stuff and additional face shots... extra shots clutter things up/just repeat information and then lead into a hard cut from 'bloody hands going left' to 'bloody hands going right' (in a 180 degree reverse angle) and into the basin to be washed. It feels jagged & frenetic, arguably an error. The standard version cuts directly to the basin from about a second of holding on the top of the shower after Perkins's head has exited frame left. It feels calmer, more polished, and more in tune with Herrmann's score at that point.
In other words, I tend to see all the German additions as losing what I'd describe as "Hitchcock polish". The standard version saves shots, avoids errors of various sorts.
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ecarle (14979)
4 years ago
An interesting reaction to -- and rejection of -- the three "German cut additions" to Psycho, swanstep. (You watched them on YouTube or the new DVD, I suppose?) I've pondered your reactions , and here goes.
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The glitch on the second stab is a deal-breaker(vindicator of Hitch's decision to just show the first stab) for me. It's so contrary to Hitch's emphasis on quality control throughout his years in Hollywood. Even when you watch films by other top golden age directors like Wyler, Cukor, Stevens, Sturges you notice a higher rate of technical errors, sub-par edits and shots than you do with Hitch.
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Good analysis of those other directors and the vindication of "Hitchcock quality control" as part of his auteurship.
The glitch on the second stab Is a deal breaker for me. It interferes with the "flow" of a very important few seconds in a movie that is CUT to the millisecond. We are supposed to be "in this horrific moment"(Arbogast being viciously "finished off" by a terrifying "old woman" ) -- the "glitch" reminds us that we are watching film being projected. As I've noted, the first time I saw this, I thought somebody simply took the one stab and then "repeated it." Now, I'm thinking maybe four stabs WERE filmed but why the "glitch?" (Actually, for all we know, Hitchcock had his stunt woman stab down 8, 9, 10 times...she was likely stabbing nothing, Balsam isn't in the shot -- and then he cut it down accordingly.)
CONT
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ecarle (14979)
4 years ago
Stephen Rebello wrote something interesting in his book on the making of Psycho, and I always wondered where he got the information, but here goes: Rebello wrote that in various cities in America during Psycho's 1960 run, city fathers ordered cuts to Psycho at the theaters in which it was shown in America. "Hip" Los Angeles might get the uncut Psycho in 1960, but Salt Lake City in Utah would cut the film before screening it.
And Rebello wrote that in addition to cuts to the shower scene, some cities demanded the removal of...the shots of Mother finishing off Arbogast(while entirely bloodless those shots SUGGEST real brutality for 1960.)
So perhaps Universal ended up with a print that had been cut in Salt Lake City by a theater manager...
CUT
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ecarle (14979)
4 years ago
I tend to think that the other instances of new footage fall to similar objections. Marion's 'taking off her bra shot' is cut to the last frame to avoid 'showing nipple'.
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It remains a fascination of mine the focus over the years, when showing the female torso, that...you can avoid censorship(or the R rating) in America at least simply by not showing that "minor inch or so" of nipple. But this is also true (in America) at the beach. Topless female sunbathing is prohibited.
Consequently, when the nipple (or nipples) ARE shown in a movie -- or it real life, I guess -- to the male gaze(and the gay female gaze)...it is an exciting breakthrough indeed. This is likely a good thing -- leave the mystery of certain body parts covered...and uncovering it can be exciting.
In 1960, film critic Dwight MacDonald(in a pan of Psycho) wrote directly to this as it mattered to Psycho:
"I'm against censorship on general principle, but this shower scene has me bothered. If Hitchcock had had the affrontery to show Janet Leigh's nipples, it would be cut by the censors. But they allow this footage of her being slaughtered, instead."
Good point, Dwight.
The culture of the 21st Century is messing with the "nipple" debate, I fear. I think we know now, all too well, that in order for us to see the actress's nipples (or other nudity) on the movie screen, she should be REALLY wililng to do the nudity. Now we have to worry: "Did the studio or director coerce her into this nudity?" It will now be allowable, I suppose, ONLY when the actress in question REALLY, REALLY wants to do the nudity.
In 1960, Janet Leigh didn't have to worry about nudity, it was forbidden. In the 70's, many actresses did nudity. In the 2020s...I expect we will see a lot LESS nudity.
Except with men. They still have clearance for "butt shots." But men are in possession of the most censored movie body part of all....
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ecarle (14979)
4 years ago
It's unnatural to cut there rather than when Marion hangs up the bra on the chair (or whatever it is) in front of her.
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I've got to look at the "regular" shot here again. As I recall, Marion starts to take off her bra, Hitchcock cuts to Norman's "big eye in profile" peeping, and STAYS on Norman's eye long enough for Marion to put on her robe(which means he sees her nude during those seconds), and then Hitch cuts back and she has the robe on...and THEN she puts the bra on the chair or other object? The bra is in her hand?
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As is the shot feels rushed, technically imperfect, and also kind of prurient. Chop it I say
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I'm OK with this one. It is less "intrusive" than either the blood on hands shot or the "stab glitch."
In her autobio, Janet Leigh wrote of a scene in The Vikings where Tony Curtis(her then-husband) rips her dress down the back to almost her tailbone, showing her bare back for a LONG time. (Or maybe Kirk Douglas -- the villain -- does it. I can't remember.) Wrote Leigh: "I think that the back of a woman is one of our most sensual features." Hence it is possible that Leigh herself liked the Psycho shot with "more back"(and crucially, "near side breast") that was cut. Of greater importance is that a still of this "back shot" has been in the book Hitchocck/Truffaut since it was published in 1967, and it took decades for somebody to notice and write about it. ("Hey, look at that still in Hitchcock/Truffaut! More Janet Leigh back!")
CONT
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ecarle (14979)
4 years ago
It remains important for Psycho, I think, that Hitchcock cuts to Norman's big eye(and the beam of white light travelling into that eye through the darkness) WITHOUT showing us Marion nude. We imagine what Norman is seeing, and it is powerful stuff. The beam of light transmits an erotic image into Norman's brain and...Mother is summoned forth IN that brain.
I do believe that Van Sant's Psycho gave us Anne Heche nude here(before entering the shower) and Van Sant certainly gave us a nude Heche falling dead over the tub (a shot CUT from the Hitchcock film and a bit too graphic with re Heche's nether regions; viewers noticed); and I think that Diana Scarwid did nudity for an "homage to the shower scene" in Psycho III. None of that nudity quite made up for what we imagined in Psycho.
I think it was Julia Roberts who said she would never do nudity in a movie "because it would turn me into a documentary." Anne Heche learned that lesson, hard.
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ecarle (14979)
4 years ago
As for the gorier hands stuff and additional face shots... extra shots clutter things up/just repeat information and then lead into a hard cut from 'bloody hands going left' to 'bloody hands going right' (in a 180 degree reverse angle) and into the basin to be washed. It feels jagged & frenetic, arguably an error.
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Interesting analysis. I realize now that the hands DO go "right to left" in the new shot, and then "left to right" in the original shot (to the sink); I noticed a bit of "clutter" to this extended sequence, and I'm pretty sure(right?) that there is a second new cut to Perkins' face.
That said, of the three "new" shots, this was most clearly an "addition" that could be viewed "for awhile." Leigh's back is "blink and you miss it." The stab glitch interferes with watching that new footage. But this "blood on the hands" shot lasts awhile and delivers some gore and emotional pain(that's MARIONs blood on Norman's hands) and..though it was a little clunky...I liked it.
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ecarle (14979)
4 years ago
The standard version cuts directly to the basin from about a second of holding on the top of the shower after Perkins's head has exited frame left. It feels calmer, more polished, and more in tune with Herrmann's score at that point.
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"In tune with Herrmann's score at that point" is important. I always remember how in Van Sant's Psycho, he cut one shot of Arbogast crossing the office back out to the porch before going up to this murder at the Bates House. In Hitchcock's original, Arbogast emerges on the porch, walks to the edge, looks up. POV: The house -- AND Herrmann's "three notes of madness" occur with great power. In the Van Sant, because of the cut shot of Arbogast(William H. Macy) crossing the office, the "three notes of madness" hit WHEN HE STEPS OUT ON THE PORCH...and thus the POV of the house a few seconds later is accompanied by the wrong musical cue. (I say this even as I feel Danny Elfman did work above the call of duty to match up the old Herrmann score with the new shots.)
I linger on that Hitchcock/Herrmann moment because it again demonstrates how PRECISE Hitchcock's filmmaking could be. And thus, if Herrmann's music better fits the shorter shot of blood on the hands well, I wonder what happened? Did Herrmann never score the LONGER shot of blood on the hands? "I don't know, it must be some kind of mystery," as Lowery said. Psycho has a LOT of those.
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ecarle (14979)
4 years ago
In other words, I tend to see all the German additions as losing what I'd describe as "Hitchcock polish". The standard version saves shots, avoids errors of various sorts.
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Understood, swanstep, and an interesting refutation of the idea that "restoring lost footage is a good thing." I guess we really don't know if Hitchcock wanted this material in the 1960 release or not. I can't imagine he wanted the "stab glitch" in there.
Indeed, of the three shots in question, I wish the "stab glitch" footage was removed(and Arbogast's scream restored to its rightful place.) Janet Leigh's back is sexy to me and barely shown anyway. That can stay.
And I will support the restoration of Norman's bloody hands as adding "just a bit more gore" to Psycho, and making it a bit more horrific.
SIDEBAR ONE:
One of the DVDs of Hitchcock's generally-dismissed late film Topaz, has within its "making of documentary" some fairly fascinating footage in which it is shown how Hitchcock left in "too much coverage" of some scenes that was cut down for the 1969 release...later restored...and perhaps WRONGLY restored...because it made a somewhat long and dull film...longer and duller.
The DVD footage shows a sequence of the film's hero , Andre Devereaux, and his grown daughter, looking out a window to see a man dead on a parked car below(thrown from a great height.) Father and daughter run across the apartment, down a hall , into a stairwell, down a spiral staircase, into the street, and up to the dead man. The scene runs side by side on a split screen -- and ONE version of the scene shows "black space" where Universal(or somebody) cut down the footage of the run down the hall, the run down the stairs, the run down the street to the body.
Its a great lesson in what critics sometimes criticize when they say: "the film could have been more tightly edited." And the version with "black space"(cut footage) IS better.
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ecarle (14979)
4 years ago
SIDEBAR TWO:
I've always matched Spielberg's 1975 Jaws to Psycho as the movie that most closely approximated Hitchcock's technique in the murder scenes. Both Hitchocck and Spielberg seemed to determine that they wanted to film bloody deaths(I guess we will call them "killings" since the shark isn't a murderer, and these attacks in both films are fatal) in a way that was at once more gory than the average thriller and yet acceptable to broad mainstream audiences including pre-teens.
And so the killings in BOTH Psycho and Jaws are "cut to the frame" and rely on suggestion.
The opening killing in Jaws(the young nude female swimmer) is the only one left entirely to our imagination. The second killing (of the young boy) pivots on a weird shot of a fin making a big circular motion in the water as the boy is attacked, and then a gout of underwater blood, and ...that's it. The third killing(of an adult male lifeguard) allows us to see the shark's head for the first time, its jaws closing on the victim and then a cut that I remember to this day from the first time I saw it in 1975: as the lifeguard is being attacked, Spielberg shows us his pale, hairy leg, with a sneaker on it...and it slowly floats to the bottom of the sand...severed. I remember how when I saw that shot, my brain moved quickly: "Oh, that's his leg struggling...no , wait, that's his leg SEVERED!" And the audience screamed some more.
Jaws famously climaxes (well, before the REAL climax) with the shark jumping onto the boat and gobbling Robert Shaw down whole. Here is the gore that Psycho could not show; the "gotcha" moments are of the sharks teeth chomping down onto Shaw's stomach and then a close-up of Shaw spitting out a gout of blood from his mouth.
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ecarle (14979)
4 years ago
1975 and Jaws brought more killings and more gore than Psycho to the screen, but Spielberg still got his PG rating. Because he knew that quick, stray things -- the shark fin encircling the boy; the lifeguard's leg; Shaw's blood from the mouth -- would only leave an impression of ultra-violence, and -- on broadcast TV -- they could be cut. Broadcast TV usually took out the severed leg shot, the shot of the shark biting down on Shaw's stomach, and the shot of Shaw spitting blood.
And as thus it were the same to Psycho: some broadcasts took out the "brutal middle part" of the shower scene(Mother stabs Marion the Most) and Arbogast getting finished off.
The gore in everything from Alien to Friday the 13th and on to Scream and Saw and Hostel was much worse than that in Psycho and Jaws. On the other hand, Halloween is considerably LESS bloody (some victims are strangled, ala Frenzy.)
But Hitchcock and Spielberg knew best what to do: suggest a little, but also SHOW a little -- that gets your audience involved.
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swanstep (2715)
4 years ago
the three "German cut additions" to Psycho... You watched them on YouTube or the new DVD, I suppose?
I did take a peek at a leaked version of the 'Uncut' Blu-ray, just to confirm that the changes to the film were as previewed in this advocacy & comparison video back in 2015:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHDdcZ56HSA
This reference is enough for me it turns out.
Note: What a triumph for *the maker of this video*, the person who posted about all this - in 2013? - to the IMDb predecessor of this group, that they've been able to carry their advocacy all the way through to an Uncut release!
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