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"You Only See a Movie Once" SPOILERS FOR PSYCHO

posted 3 years ago by ecarle (14979)
5 replies | jump to latest

Back in the 70's (all of them) with a bit of the late 60s and a bit of the early 80's on either side, the head critic of the Los Angeles Times was a man named Charles Champlin. In the beginning, I had trouble separating him from Charles CHAPLIN -- had the silent comic taken to writing in old age?

Naw. Charles Champlin wrote a fairly erudite, fairly sedate movie review column for the LA Times. I guess you would call it "middle brow" -- his audience was at once a family newspaper and the company town of Hollywood itself.

What I mainly remember about Charles Champlin is that he was a man of temperate tastes forced to handle the R rated movie world of the 70's, and sometimes it was too much for his gentle soul.

Though Alfred Hitchocck had graciously written the introduction to a collection of Champlin columns, that didn't stop Champlin from coming in -- after second string LA Times critic Kevin Thomas had given Frenzy a very good review -- to write a SECOND piece, disappointed in the films use of sex, violence and language (and hanging it as too expository to boot.)

Champlin liked the nice Family Plot a whole lot more, but wrote "Hitchcock , who delved into violence in Frenzy, here delves into profane language, no less unnecessarily."

No less unnecessarily. I love that guy's phrasing. You have to read it twice to figure it out! (But what about the language in Frenzy, Chuck?)

Champlin got to write about Psycho in a roundabout way. He wasn't the Times critic when Psycho came out in 1960, but he wrote an obit for Anthony Perkins ("He had been good before Psycho, and he would be good after Psycho") and in a piece on Martin Balsam(in which Balsam , as usual would not discuss Psycho) wrote of the Arbogast murder: "It was a double shock -- shocking in how it was portrayed and shocking in eliminating the detective just as it seemed he was about to solve the case." Champlin called Psycho "a spectacular film." And it is...without being a "spectacle."

I recall Champlin's opening day pan of Jaws: "Lumpily written and a bore ashore" and -- this was key - he felt it should have been rated R and he was disgusted by the attack on a child. Chuck was a nice guy. Didn't stop any of us from going to the theater that very day.

Of the extremely depressing and downbeat "They Shoot Horses, Don't They" released for Oscars around Christmas, Champlin dryly wrote: "Holiday fun for the entire family."

Anyway, one of Champlin's comments has always stuck with me. I can't remember what movie he was writing about, or if he was just writing about "movies."

The quote: "Remember, you only see a movie once."

He elaborated. "You only see a movie once without knowing the entire story, where it will lead, how it will end, and the twists along the way." Later screenings, Champlin elaborated, were about "the anticipation of reliving the experience, the joy of revisiting favorite scenes and actors."

So imagine: if you "only see a movie once," -- how great would it be to watch Psycho the first time not knowing anything that happens in it until you experience it?

How great would it be to watch Psycho thinking it was going to be about Janet Leigh "all the way to the end," and about her theft, and about choosing between Sam and Norman as husbands.

How great would it be for that shower murder to TRULY come out of nowhere, to TRULY take you by surprise and to truly shock you with its violence?

How great would it be to think that Detective Arbogast might indeed solve the case and to be shocked when he didn't? (in the alternative, if you felt he WOULD get killed, how great would it be waiting in supersuspense to see when and how and where it would happen and how GREAT would it be when it DID?)

How interesting would it be to wonder, when the sheriff said "If that woman you saw in the window was Mrs. Bates...then who's that woman buried out in Greenlawn Cemetary." Mystery time!

How terrifying would it have been to see Lila Crane exploring every room in the Bates Mansion while wondering in which room , and at what moment, Mother would jump out at her as she had at Arbogast?

How terrifying would it be to draw ever closer, with Lila, to the old woman who we had seen so viciously slaughter other people (watching through our fingers closed over our eyes?)

How terrifying would it have been to see NORMAN run in as Mother?

And how perfectly stunning would it have been to find ourselves, at movies end, in a cell with Norman and the REAL Mrs. Bates, and back in the swamp with Marion?

I can't even imagine.

Now, Psycho COULD work that way if you didn't see it trailer in 1960. Here's a link about that:

https://moviechat.org/tt0054215/Psycho/61e5c2a667e86a3cf1da8f01/Psycho-and-The-Greatest-Lie-in-the-History-of-the-American-Motion-Picture

--
But, if you went in "clean and unknowing" -- as, hopefully, new generations will who don't read this SPOILER post...maybe you will get to see Psycho once as everyone did in 1960.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Funny thing about Psycho. Though everybody in 1960 DID see it once (it seems) a lot of them saw it TWICE. I read in a book somewhere (and I don't know the source for this) that Psycho did more REPEAT business than any other movie to its year of release.

Makes sense: people went back to see Psycho to find out "how did Hitchcock fool me?"

He did it in a lot of ways. By showing Mother MOVE across the window that first time(it was Norman) and never again. By having people talk about THEIR mothers, and THEIR fathers to create a "rhythm" in which we accepted Mother as existing. By misdirecting us as to Norman's whereabouts when Mother came out to kill Marion and then Arbogast.

And -- say some -- he did it with one crucial CHEAT. Mother's voice, That was a REAL old lady, right? That couldn't be Anthony Perkins faking it.

Well...yes and no(as the shrink says.) Sometimes it was a woman's voice(Virginia Gregg, who voiced Mother in the sequels, too.) Sometimes it was a man's voice(Paul Jasmin, friend of Anthonjy Perkins.) And sometimes, it mighth have been Jeanette Nolan's voice(wife of Sheriff Chambers, John McItnire...but not his on screen wife in Psycho.)

Anyway, I assume that second-time viewers of Psycho enjoyed it all the more seeing how they had been fooled (if they were fooled, and it seems that most who reported to the press WERE fooled.)

Film critic Richard Corliss said that, as a teenager in New Jersey, he "saw Psycho three times in two days" -- to check it out but also to enjoy it again no doubt, like others would enjoy Jaws and Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Hitchcock said that audienes should see films three times (money in his pocket): to experience the story the first time all by itself; to study the movie, and to enjoy it one more time.

Me? I see Psycho at least once a year, every year. And its funny to me: I know exactly what's going to happen, and when, and how, and (somewhat )why.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

What's the allure?

The allure is watching it all happen again, and now with the gift of "passing time." I'm getting in a time machine and going back to a different world, a different America, a different type of movie and movie star and director.

And sometimes the movie can fool me: I will foolishly think that Marion will survive, drive home, marry Sam.

More often than not, I watch Psycho with a sense of doom: Here's Marion in her hotel room with Sam . "When your time is up..." she says. And her time IS up. The first 47 minutes of Psycho are the final hours of Marion Crane's life. When she gets in that shower, its 10, 9, 8, 7, 6...5, 4,3, 2, 1.

Until she comes to life again the next time we see Psycho.

Arbogast, too. He enters the hardware store and announces his quest to find Marion ("She's here, in this town, somewhere, I'll find her) and HIS life counts down to a walk up a staircase. 10, 9, 8, 7...

Its a metaphor for our own lives, you know. We, too, are "on countdown to death." But hopefully, it will be a lot longer than Marion and Arbogast got.

And lot less scary and painful.

[–] Egosomnia (860) 3 years ago

Well-written piece, ecarle.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Thank you for reading it, Egosomnia!

[–] Theman (1224) 2 years ago

Not true. I saw Star Wars and a lot of other movies more than once.