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1960 Psycho -- Murders and Fruit Cellar Scene -- COLORIZED

posted 4 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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I've noted from time to time that it seems just when you think that the 1960 Psycho has been "played out" in terms of anything new deriving from it...you get something new.

Like "Hitchcock"(2012) -- the movie about the making of Psycho.

Or "Bates Motel" (last decade)...a cable series that did OK.

Or "The German Footage" that created a "Director's Cut" that Turner Classic Movies sent out to the near-empty cineplexes of 2020.

Comes now:

1960 Psycho -- colorized.

I stumbled onto these clips on YouTube during one of my routine lookarounds for Psycho stuff.
I am wondering if legalities will lead to their removal or if (which would be better), Universal would allow the colorization to stand. If not...better take a look at the clips soon...

Back in the 80s when colorization was all the rage (another Ted Turner cinematic development), there was fear and anger that the trend would eventually reach Psycho. I think Citizen Kane was stopped from colorization by contractural edict; this may have helped save Psycho, too, along with Hitchcock's oft-stated point that he specifically MADE Psycho in black and white(in the nascent color era) "to avoid red blood during the shower scene." He felt this element would be offensive and sickening to 1960 audiences.

By the 80's, folks had a color version of Psycho to look at anyway -- two of them: Psycho II(1983) and Psycho III(1986). But they neither looked nor "felt" like how a color film would be in 1960. By 1998, folks had a color version of the ORGINAL Psycho -- via Gus Van Sant -- but he so radically changed the the house(inside and out) and the motel that it had no feeling for the 1960 version as matter of look (even as the plot and shots were a good match.)

And thus: these colorized clips of the "big scenes" in 1960 FINALLY do us either the bad --or the good -- of allowing us to see what Psycho in 1960 would look like in color. Sort of.

I will add that I believe that other clips from 1960 Psycho are colorized on YouTube, but I spent my time looking at "The Big Three Clips":

THE SHOWER SCENE: One realizes the irony right off the bat. The main color in the scene is WHITE. As in "black and WHITE." The white of the bathroom walls, the white of the shower tiles, the "clear white" of the shower curtain as Mother approaches. The main color in the scene is MARION. Her face, her flesh(Janet Leigh and body double Marli Renfro.) The flesh tones are good and real, here, not "orange" or "crayon-like."

As for Hitchcock's concern about red blood in the shower, the 1960 "black and white blood"(chocolate syrup) has been reddened, to be sure, but the effect is rather brown-red, rust-like. Irony: this is closer to what blood REALLY looks like. I was watching Hitchcock's Topaz on TCM the other night and there came the moment when the traitor Jarre's head is lifted after a death fall and the "blood" all over his face looks like bright red paint. Not realistic at all. This colorized blood is more like it.

The other colors in the shower scene are there, but hardly noticeable: Mother's gray dress(yet something else that stays "black and white" -- GRAY is a color choice too) and -- crucial decision -- BROWN hair (well, brownish gray) . I think most of us imagined mother's hair (wig) as white-gray. This color choice (important to the Arbogast and fruit cellar scenes) makes Mother a little younger.

I think I need to go back and look one more time at the shower scene clip because I can't recall the colors used to portray the Cabin One flowered wallpaper just beyond the bathroom door. I've always found that wall and wallpaper to be part of the "feeling" of the shower scene; it places the murder in the context of an "old fashioned outback motel." I think the colorization here is a brown-tan tint for that room -- I had always pictured the flowered pattern as "blue on white."'

More specific: In a 1968 Esquire magazine article on "violence in the movies" there were two stills from the shower scene: Marion screaming and Mother with knife upraised. It was the first time I got to "see" the shower scene(albeit two stills) and I still remember the chill I got seeing that FLOWERED WALLPAPER. It was as creepy as Mother herself (trivia: I found that article decades later on microfiche and...Esquire REVERSED the image so that the knife was in Mother's left hand. Which was accurate. Tony Perkins noted he was a leftie and the shower killer was a rightie.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

ARBOGAST ON THE STAIRS: The colorized clip confirmed for me - - yet again -- that the staircase murder is my favorite scene in Psycho(starting earlier than the clip -- starting when Norman sees Arbogast's car pulling up a SECOND time.) Re-phrased: it is not ONLY the part on the staircase that I love, it is all the moments(including my favorite shot in Hitchcock) leading up to that murder.

What I realized this time is that -- unlike with the shower scene and with the fruit cellar climax -- Arbogast's murder sequence is the only one of the three sequences in which the HOUSE -- on the hill, viewed upwards from the outside (such a classic and gripping image in movie history) actually figures in the sequence. I suppose you could say that the house also figures in the shower scene (the final camera move to the house out the window and "Mother, Oh God, Mother") but that's a somewhat blurry shot of the house, after the murder is over. Here with Arbogast with get TWO absolutely "crystalline" views of the house on the hill against a clear night sky(no rain, no clouds.) First is Arbogast's POV shot of the house and hill, second is my favorite shot in all of Hitchcock: Arbogast climbing the hill TO the house (with the motel sharing the right of the frame.)

I looked carefully at the images of the house in the Arbogast colorized version and felt: "OK...it is not wrecked." It is not as good as the "crystalline slate gray" look in black and white, but the dark blue selected for the night sky -- and the bright tan-brown selected for the house itself -- gave us a pretty good sense indeed of what "1960 Psycho would have looked like in color." Indeed, as Arbogast climbs the hill to the house in color against a night sky, this shot becomes more of a match for the COLOR shot of Cary Grant walking up a different hill to Vandamm's Mount Rushmore house in North by Northwest the year before.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Once Arbogast(Martin Balsam) enters the foyer of the house --the shots that follow are powerful in composition and angle, movie history before our very eyes -- one realizes that "colorization" is again a bit of a losing game here. The house interior is basically done in a blue-gray. The POV of the entire staircase, in color, is very strongly reminiscent of the POV of the staircase at the McKittrick Hotel in Vertigo. ALSO: Some green for the ferns in the room. And of course, good flesh tone for Arbogast's face -- unlike Janet Leigh, he isn't supposed to be naked in this scene. His big round bald head stands out even more in color. He wears that nice gray suit and the colorizing folks decided to give him a light blue shirt for color contrast.

The staircase scene plays out in color as in black and white, and so the "colorized" Mother runs out with the knife, slashes Arbogast and -- in the shift to his "huge facial close-up"(so beloved by Hitchcock himself as an achievement) we again see "black blood tinted red" on Arbogast's face to create a slightly brown effect.

One realizes -- both in the shower scene and here with the slash to Arbogast's face -- that had Hitchcock made "Psycho" in 1960 in color, he likely would have used much more bright red "blood" in the murder scenes. Possibly too fake(as in The Birds and Topaz.) This "colorization" of the historic blood in Psycho just isn't "in color" enough.

Again, my memory is fading fast on these clips, but I think when Arbogast hits the floor and is finished off by Mother in the foyer(he dies "where he entered") the overall color is "brown-tan" for the room. NOT blue-gray. I'll have to look again.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

THE FRUIT CELLAR: Watching the clip , I was reminded that the fruit cellar scene(again, starting EARLIER than the fruit cellar itself) is "the biggest scream sequence" in the entire movie. I mean, people pretty much screamed the second Vera Miles hid under the stairs and Perkins came through the door, and just KEPT ON SCREAMING until Gavin folied Perkins and then KEPT ON SCREAMING even as the psychiatrist was talking in the next scene. It took a few minutes for the audience to "dial down" from both the suspense of the fruit cellar scene(Miles walking ever closer to a woman who was capable of the worst murder imaginable) and the payoff of the fruit cellar scene(not ONE, but TWO mothers -- and they are both horrific in different ways.)

Consequently, I can't say that the color mattered all that much here. Again a shift from gray-blue to brown-tan in the overall "tint" of the sequence. Good flesh tone on Vera Miles, and a good head of light brown hair (irony: though Perkins wears a wig as Mrs. Bates, Vera Miles here wears a wig as Lila -- because her head had been shaved for the movie before this one, Five Branded Women.)

Here we get the longest look at Mother's wig -- as it falls to the fruit cellar floor and lies there like a dead furry dog or something -- and again the colorizers elect to go with brown over white for the old lady's hair. Seems wrong to me -- but looks good.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I will say that there WAS some satisfaction for me in seeing these colorized clips because over the decades I HAVE wondered what Psycho would have looked like as a color 1960 film. Movie color in the 80s and 90s looked different; one wanted to see Psycho looking, oh -- like North by Northwest or Vertigo, perhaps. Or The Birds. Or maybe Marnie(which has an opening office sequence that suggests the real estate office in Psycho, in color.)

Which turns out to be a problem, actually. Hitchcock made Vertigo, NXNW and The Birds(for three) KNOWING he would be working in color -- so he gave each of them a distinctive color scheme. Vertigo's is the most visually luscious: the bright red of Ernies inside; the bright yet hazy green light when Judy emerges as Madeleine. Indeed, Vertigo is so much a "red and green movie" that you could call it a Christmas movie...visually.

Jump to The Birds. Tippi is in a black suitdress for her first scene at the SF bird shop with Mitch. From then on, Tippi is in a light green suit that Hitchcock "matches" to a light green/turquoise color scheme that includes the hallway of Mitch's SF apartment; his truck in Bodega Bay, and the ocean itself near the town.

Though it has been given a different color tone in recent years(brown), I always pictured North by Northwest as a "blue gray" movie dictated by Cary Grant's silver-gray suit, the interior of the UN building, the train inside and out; up to the night sky of the Rushmore climax. I suppose these color tones are closest to what Hitchcock would have used for Psycho -- which also has a lot of great night shots. (I must go to YouTube and see if they colorized any Janet Leigh scenes in her wool suitdress. What color?)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Even with the "colorized" clips, it is hard to imagine what Hitchcock would have REALLY chosen as a color scheme for Psycho. Marion on the road involves a lot of daylight -- would Hitch have muted it? As for costumes, well, the dresses for Marion and Lila would be about all the "color" allowed in the film. When you think about it, the color schemes weren't all that dynamic for Hitchcock films such as Rope, Rear Window, and The Man Who Knew Too Much. Dial M and To Catch a Thief were dynamic (Grace Kelly's red dress in the first one and gold gown in the second.) But the color in the other films was ...just there. (Oh, wait a minute...Grace's green outfit in Rear Window mattered.)

I expect Hitchcock's greatest attention to color in Psycho would have been -- the house. Again: Inside and out. The colorization folks went for brown and tan sometimes and gray and blue others.

We can only wonder what Hitchcock would have done.

In the meantime we have these very nicely colorized clips and...I vote for the Arbogast murder sequence as the best of them.

[–] Gubbio (3893) 4 years ago

LINK TO CLIPS:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=psycho+1960+colorized

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Thanks, Gubbio!

I'm all thumbs with those links...

...there they are, for all to see.

[–] Gubbio (3893) 4 years ago

My Pleasure, EC ! 😊

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Thanks again!

I took a look at Arbogast in the house again..it seems as if the colorization keeps "shifting back and forth" between a gray-blue tint and a brown-tan tint, sometimes in the same shot, as if the colorizers could not control their own process.

Still, very interesting to look at.

Thank you.

[–] Gubbio (3893) 4 years ago

I noticed shifts in color in most of the clips. Wondering if it was just the quality of these particular clips -- or if the "finished product" looked that way.

Surely, colorization has come a long way... Look at some of the "Lucy" clips. They are very clean looking, practically flawless.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I wish I could do italics as well as you do, Gubbio. But I am doomed to CAPS. (People tell me I'm yelling, but I don't write thinking that. I "see" italics.)

Yes, I don't know the answer to that color shift...but still the clips feel more real than some of the 80's stuff, which I recall as looking more like a "crayon" effect.

I have not seen the "Lucy" clips but add those to this Psycho set and I'll agree..colorization has come a long way. I suppose that is to be expected so many decades after the 80's and given the advances in computer technology.

Irony: they keep saying they can bring back Bogart and John Wayne as "living breathing movie stars" via computer technology...but new generations don't seem to remember who they WERE. Heck, I have a young person(20s) in my circle who does not know who Eddie Murphy is(I brought him up assuming she knew, nope -- but then she lives a non-movie life.)

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

The main color in the scene is MARION. Her face, her flesh(Janet Leigh

Leigh in the pink flesh and golden hair is just shockingly sensual and good-looking to my eyes. B&W cools her down by comparison.

In B&W her soaping herself feels a little like chaste health film footage or even a WAC or 'women in the armed forces' newsreel from WW2. In color she's just a flat out hottie with the dewy skin of a teenager; she doesn't read as a pushing-30 'at the end of her rope' *at all*!

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The main color in the scene is MARION. Her face, her flesh(Janet Leigh
Leigh in the pink flesh and golden hair is just shockingly sensual and good-looking to my eyes. B&W cools her down by comparison.

In B&W her soaping herself feels a little like chaste health film footage or even a WAC or 'women in the armed forces' newsreel from WW2. In color she's just a flat out hottie with the dewy skin of a teenager;

---

An interesting observation, swanstep. I now see it myself looking at the footage. And it leads me to this thought: perhaps, in addition to not wanting to show red blood in the shower in 1960, Hitchocck may well have known that "naked Janet Leigh in color" would be too REAL, too sensual, too much "of the pink flesh," and thus even a suggested stabbing with a big knife would be sickening with too real a victim. Its just a thought.

----

she doesn't read as a pushing-30 'at the end of her rope' *at all*!

--

I'm reminded that somewhat in the 50s , and definitely in the 60's, when black and white was "a choice and not a requirement," filmmakers usually used black and white for "gritty reality." Think Marty, 12 Angry Men, Anatomy of a Murder...or Hud, Dr. Stranglove...The Pawnbroker(especially The Pawnbroker.)

And yet, in reality, black and white was far LESS REAL than color -- because LIFE is in color.

But Psycho in black and white created its own gritty reality, its own mood. I would say it is the mood of cheap horror movies with a touch of Gothic rather than "Pawnbroker"style bleakness. Still, Janet Leigh in black and white COULD seem more "at the end of her rope."

And in black and white, in the shower, Leigh's nudity became more subdued.