I understand his mother personality spent most of the time in the bedroom but it's kind of odd there seems to not be a living room. Honestly the way it looks, there's not a lot on the first floor besides the kitchen and the majority of the rooms are on the top floor.
shareOther than the foyer/hall and kitchen, we are not shown the rest of the first floor.
Hitch didn't waste money building sets that wouldn't be photographed.
There is at least one doorway off the foyer, and I always wanted to see what was in there. (One can assume a living or dining room.) Yes, it was only a movie set, but I like old Victorian houses.
"I understand his mother personality spent most of the time in the bedroom..."
More accurately, Mother's BODY rested on the bed; Lila noticed the indentation in the mattress. Norman, when he was "being mother." occupied the room and sat in her chair -- as witness the silhouette seen in the window.
That's not what I meant. I meant as far as the mother personality was concerned she was in her bed a lot of the time.
shareHow do you deduce that about her personality? I've explained the facts.
I mean Norman says she is sick so I assumed she was bedridden most of the time plus there is the scene where he picks her body out of bed and carries her to the basement.
shareYes, he was planning to hide her DEAD body!
Norman's saying that she was "sick" was to keep his secret and keep people away. Other than Norman's word, there's is nothing in the universe of this story to indicate mother was sick.
You assumed it, so I guess you didn't understand the story -- and assumed she spent most of the time upstairs. Sweetheart, she was DEAD!
Hello Gubbio:
I think we need to define our terms here a bit. The OP is justified in an analysis based on an "alive" mother because Hitchcock wants us to think she IS alive.
For "first time viewers" of Psycho, we are to believe that Mother IS alive, and indeed, she is ONLY shown up in her room (through the window from the ground, running out at Arbogast, being carried down by Norman) with one crucial exception: when she comes down to stab Marion in the shower.
We never "see" (or hear) her in the kitchen , or Norman's room. Her bedroom is her "lair" -- from whence she emerges to do bad things, and which Arbogast cannot breach. (Lila can breach the bedroom, but that's only after Norman has moved "live" Mother to the fruit cellar.)
But that's the version based on what we THINK(Mother is alive.) The truth(Mother is NOT alive) adds more clarity to why she's always in that bed (with the indentation) in that bedroom.
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Indeed it is true that Hitchcock made Psycho on so low a budget (and somewhat from his own guaranteed funds) that he decided which rooms and walls WOULD be seen and which would not. For instance, there is a bathroom on the landing between Mother's room and Norman's room which Hitchcock only references in the TRAILER(he opens a door, looks in at nothing and says "the bawthroom.")
You gotta hand it to Hitchcock. He somehow KNEW that audiences wouldn't care if they saw a living room to the left of the foyer or not. When Arbogast takes his "three POV looks" before climbing the stairs, he sees (1) the stairs, (2) a closed door with the Cupid's statue (and arrow shadow across it) and (3) the hallway where a living room MIGHT be, but not where Hitchcock elects to show it to us.
Still, look at the exterior of the house. Clearly there is a room "to the left of the door." With a window. But Hitchcock didn't build that room.
CONT
One more thing: Psycho screenwriter Joe Stefano said that Hitchcock "fought against" the scene where Lila is shown behind the motel as she starts her walk up the hill to the house -- because Hitchcock didn't want to have to build a "rear wall" on the motel(ordinarily the front of the motel would suffice.)
But Hitchcock relented. I don't think he had to build the ENTIRE back wall of the motel -- just enough for Lila to walk in front of.
Hello EC:
Your points on what Hitch wanted the audience to believe are well taken. I understand and agree.
However, the OP makes some leaps in judgement that I couldn't ignore.
1) He assumes there is no living room, just because he doesn't see one. It's a movie; we don't see everything. We don't see people go to the bathroom either, but we know that they do.
2) He then links the lack of living room to Mother probably being bedridden. (Not sure what one thing has to do with the other.)
This line of thinking is just strange to me. He seemed like he was writing is own movie. Just wanted to put him on the right track.
(How would the OP feel to learn that the house was only a 2 sided structure -- with no interior? That would surely blow his mind! 😲 🙄
Ha...well, its not my style to interfere with ongoing discussions but it seemed maybe the OP was just wondering if "the world" felt it was funny that there was no living room SHOWN.
Psycho interests me(among so many other reasons) for how MINIMAL it is...it begs the question "if a movie maker won't SHOW us certain things, is he cheating us on detail in selfish way? Is his cheapness costing US a better movie with more detail.
An example in Psycho is the "gas station" where Arbogast goes to make his final phone call from a phone booth. Hitchcock gives us NO establishing shot of the rural terrain in which the gas station is located -- no "flavor" for the countryside. And then(worse?) he gives us NO shot of an actual gas station. We just see a sign in the corner foreground of the scene that says "GAS." And the phone booth. And the detective drives up in his car and walks into the phone booth and that's ALL. No long shots, medium shots, scenery establishing shots, GAS STATION shots...Hitchocck probably shot this in the corner of a soundstage.
But...he got away with it. What's important is what Arbogast SAYS (a lot of dialogue that "saves the day" so Sam and Lila can find the Bates Motel) and our creeping suspense: "Oh no...he's going BACK there." It doesn't MATTER that we get no location scenery and no gas station.
With the interior of the house...very selective yet indeed. Only PART of the kitchen(that which we can see through the doorway.) No living room. Hell, no den. No upstairs bathroom. All we see is the foyer and the staircase to the second floor...other than the bedrooms of Mother and Norman. (each of which is wonderfully dense with decoration and personality.)
CONT
That living room to the left -- complete with piano (as I"d always envisoned the room BEFORE I saw Psycho) is in "Psycho II." So they had more money? Not really -- for Psycho II, they didn't even build the entire façade of the Bates Motel, just the office area -- the rest was a matte p
shareYou completely misunderstand what I meant. I meant the mother personality inside Norman's head. The one he argues with. He thinks of her as being sick and ill mentally and physically. Sheesh!
sharePick up the marbles , you win!
How nice for you! 😁
Who cares. Its a plot hole. This way, no one wins or loses. Isn't that better than arguing who is right or wrong
shareTo you everything is a plothole. 😳
shareMillsey himself has said in the past, if he doesn't understand the issue, he just labels it a plot hole rather than try to figure it out. "It makes for a nice convenient answer." (exact quote)
shareHe's also written that he's TROLLING. I don't pay much attention to him. 🙄
To convert the humorous into the serious...Hitchcock himself instructed his screenwriters to put a few plot holes into his stories ON PURPOSE.
Hitchcock called this "the icebox theory." (Back when people had iceboxes, not refrigerators.)
A married couple sees a movie. They go home and pull chicken out of the icebox to eat and they discuss the movie.
One or both of them remark on one or more plot holes in the movie. They argue a little.
They go back and see the movie a second time to check for the plotholes.They are proud to discover them.
Hitchcock makes money.
One more thing about the rooms in the Psycho house:
The exterior was built, I believe, 2/3 size of what the house should have been -- so as to fit better in the lens framing and to provide a better backdrop for the humans filmed in front of the house.
So all those rooms couldn't really fit in that house.
"So all those rooms couldn't really fit in that house."
Maybe that's why there was no living room; no room for one! 😏
That sounds like a convenient answer to lazy writing
shareWell...this was said by one or two of his screenwriters....
...you know, plot holes are really quite an interesting topic on their own. A "perfectly" written script should not have them, but most do...writers can only do so much to make a story work.
A woman in North by Northwest -- a villainous woman talking to villain James Mason -- tells him that some dinner guests have arrived in another room. But we never see or hear those dinner guests. Hitchcock was asked about that plot hole and answered:
"I can't tell you. That woman said that. I've never met her."
Of course, its not that much of a plot hole. We next see a forcibly drunk Cary Grant being dragged to a car to be sent to his doom in a crash. We can FIGURE that his mouth was covered and he was dragged out a side door of the mansion by Mason's henchmen WHILE James Mason and the woman had dinner with their guests. We didn't need to see it.
In other words, some plot holes...aren't. The interviewers just didn't understand.
Never thought about it, to be honest. I'll bet Hitchcock figured the audience might not either-- this was in the days before home media, where we could watch a film dozens of times and more closely examine it.
shareNever thought about it, to be honest. I'll bet Hitchcock figured the audience might not either-- this was in the days before home media, where we could watch a film dozens of times and more closely examine it.
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That's absolutely true. Hitchcock may have told his "icebox story" just for the publicity of it ("I want plot holes in my scripts") but he and other directors and writers knew that when a story is rolling along to the end, the audience simply doesn't have time to stop and examine exactly why or how things happened.
The coming of the VHS recorder was a boon for us movie fans, but a bane for writers and directors as "every little thing" got checked.
And I'm not just talking plot holes. "Slowing down and freeze framing" Psycho - -you can see the string being pulled down a tube on Martin Balsam's face to bring the blood down his face in Psycho, and you can see a little toy truck and a little Cary Grant doll being crashed into by a toy plane at the climax of the crop duster scene in North by Northwest. You CANNOT see these tricks on DVD...something about digital recording.
There is a living room that is off to the side of the stairs when you first enter the house. You can see it in the sequels. Not sure if they used the same set from the original movie, or if they recreated it, but given the amount of time between films, I suspect it’s the latter.
shareI think everything was recreated for the three sequels.
Certainly the interiors of the house and of the motel and its rooms.
The OUTSIDE of the Bates House may just have been replaced too-- board by board, from 1960 to 1982(when Psycho II was filmed.)
As I noted above, for Psycho II, all they built of the motel exterior was the check in office and the parlor. I visited the set in person in 1982 and the Bates Motel set extended no further to the right than the office.
For Psycho III, they built the entire motel and set various scenes of Norman walking on the porch there. This set was used in turn for a "Spielberg's Amazing Stories" episode(complete with mansion AND house) about a "Psycho fanatic" being transported into the movie itself.
For Psycho IV, they built both a house and a motel at the Florida Universal tour grounds to show a "flashback early Bates property from the 1940's.)