MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1998) Discussion > Possibly the Most Important Movie Ever ...

Possibly the Most Important Movie Ever Made

posted 17 years ago by ecarle
44 replies | jump to latest

...about cinema, that is. Or the movies.

The 1998 Best Picture was "Shakespeare in Love," which beat the more universally praised and watched "Saving Private Ryan." But neither of those films seem to be as monumental as what Gus Van Sant did.

Irony: Whereas Hitchcock's "Psycho" was a huge blockbuster in 1960 that played from June on through the fall, with re-releases in 1965 and 1969 and record-breaking TV showings...

...Van Sant's "Psycho" was a flop that was in and out of theaters in three weeks. Nobody saw it.

But its importance remains. Van Sant's "experiment" is the only film I can think of that took on the entire MEANING of what movies are (clue: they aren't plays, they aren't novels, they aren't songs --they're "pieces of time"), and that elected to "blasphemy the religion of film." I'm still not sure if Van Sant realizes that he took on 100 years of film history when he made his "little movie."

"Psycho" is probably the most groundbreaking single film ever made. What Hitchcock did in 1960 was unprecedented. The OTHER groundbreaking American films that would follow a few years later-- Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, 2001, The Wild Bunch, Midnight Cowboy -- all rather arrived in a "group rush" of young talent and exploded censorship. But "Psycho" was there first.

Consequently, for Gus Van Sant to try to duplicate a movie that remains so unique in film history is...unique in film history.

He failed. Miserably. Practically everything that Hitchcock got right, Van Sant got wrong. The cutting was mis-timed, and lost Hitchcock's artful flow. Hitchcock's trademark "rhyming shots" were removed (likely because Van Sant never saw them in the first place.) Despite Danny Elfman's valiant efforts, Bernard Herrmann's perfect music cues hit in the wrong places (because of cut or wrongly-timed shots.) The wrong lines were cut so that scenes no longer made sense. The actors, however good, were miscast. The costumes were wrong (Marion with a parasol? Norman Bates in designer shirts? Men in pop-art neckties with alligator shoes?)The lenses were wrongly selected and hence couldn't keep the focus or range of Hitchcock's shots. Most camera angles were "off."

All this, with Van Sant working directly from an on-set DVD of Hitchcock's movie (my favorite Van Sant quote was "Even with the movie to look at, I couldn't get certain shots the way Hitchcock did.")

And audiences didn't even show up to see how Van Sant got it wrong. Why? Because what was groundbreaking in 1960 had no radicalizing societal force in 1998, whatsoever. The first two slasher murders. The first view of a toilet. The first shots of a woman in half-slip and bra. Sexual suggestion. All meaningless in '98. (Frankly, a "Jaws" remake would have worked better. At least that movie OPENS with violent death and keeps the pace of today's filmmaking.)

But the experiment succeeded. By failing.

Van Sant spent $25 million of Universal's money (an incredible show business acheivement in itself, attributed to the success of "Good Will Hunting" and the wilingness of powerful Imagine Entertainment honchos Ron Howard and Brian Grazer to back Van Sant's request)to show us all why Hitchcock -- at his best -- was so good, and will never be replaced.

"Van Sant's Psycho" is also important because now, they'll never do THAT again. "Citizen Kane," "Casablanca", "The Godfather": you're safe!

P.S. In Van Sant's favor, four things:

(1) He just did what a lot of "Psycho" fans probably wish they could do; that movie has an obsessional grip on people. For everybody who ever shot a shower scene spoof on video, or who ever writes or posts incessantly on the film, Van Sant's got your number. My number, too.

(2) Van Sant and his collaborators were top film people: composer Danny Elfman, the award-winning cinematographer Danny Boyle(who makes this "Psycho" gorgeous to look at in candy-cane pastel color, but WRONG); solid actors like William H. Macy (in a stupid hat) and Julianne Moore (playing Lila so tough that we're not even scared for her when she goes into the Bates house.)

(3) Shot by shot, it aint, but the basic story is intact. Remakes of movies like "The Manchurian Candidate" and "Cape Fear" seemed to take glee in throwing out the entire meaning of the original stories, in favor of rather banal "topical updates." Van Sant left great enough alone.

(4) Joseph Stefano, the screenwriter of the original 1960 "Psycho" was paid more to "update" his script for the remake ($40,000 becomes $400,000; "aspic" becomes "jello") than Hitchcock paid for the original script. Good for him. He died wealthier than he would have otherwise.

[–] dep1353 17 years ago

....Assuming an outhouse has only one use, Chaplin predated Hitchcock's "loo" by almost two decades by showing one being blown up by an errant missile in "The Great Dictator".

[–] ecarle 17 years ago

A helpful observation.

But to "split hairs," I think the issue in "Psycho" was showing an actual toilet, from above, being flushed (though mercifully, with only torn-up paper within its waters...)

Audiences seeing, "on the big screen" this most private but necessary of "personal devices" in actual use, were evidently now on edge for the even bigger shock moments away: the shower scene. Freudian; anal.

[–] dep1353 17 years ago

....Point taken. Visually, it helped set up the bathtub drain shot ( probably my favorite in the film ).

[–] ecarle 17 years ago

That's likely true about the drain, isn't it? Another "Hitchcock rhyme." Leading up to indeed one of the greatest shots ever.

While we're on bathroom matters:

It has been written that when Norman sinks Marion's car in the swamp...he's flushing it.

[–] dep1353 17 years ago

...."In the end, everything turns to....."

[–] pain93 17 years ago

To many Van Sant must have failed.
But to me, what he did was great.

Gus Van Sant did not back down when people told him what he was doing was wrong and stupid...no. Infact when asked. "Why Remake Psycho?" He would respond by saying, "No one else would" And he was right, who would dare touch such a piece of cinema? Van Sant had the guts. He brought us some great films, and I think he knew what he was doing when he made this...The casting is odd I will have to agree. But when Van Sant offerd the roles to other big name stars who would have made a better Norman they said No. Running out of time Van Sant took an escape go and casted Vaughn and Heche. Plus with these big names...how can a film turn out bad? Well seen here is an example of what would happen...I like the remake, in fact it ties with the original for me. But I do know many people dont, therefore Im not going to say that this is a good film, because nothing good really came out of it for most. As a viewer myself, I think Van Sant did wonderful. Yes, we have seen PSYCHO before so why shoot it every angle, every detail if we have seen it before? Because Van Sant knew PSYCHO was almost to precious to change. I think he wanted a way to infact show the audience that this is why we have modern films they way we do. The original PSYCHO was ground breaking, while as this may have not been it is a good film and thats fact IMO. The point is that I think people cant take is the fact that this has been made...its there, in your video store...its there. And you will never be able to change that.

There is no pace in todays film making. However you make a film is how it goes. I didnt see the critically acclaimed IDENTITY (2003) opening with someone getting their head choped off...A JAWS remake would've been terrible...worse than this frankly.

He failed. Miserably. Practically everything that Hitchcock got right, Van Sant got wrong. The cutting was mis-timed, and lost Hitchcock's artful flow. Hitchcock's trademark "rhyming shots" were removed (likely because Van Sant never saw them in the first place.) Despite Danny Elfman's valiant efforts, Bernard Herrmann's perfect music cues hit in the wrong places (because of cut or wrongly-timed shots.) The wrong lines were cut so that scenes no longer made sense. The actors, however good, were miscast. The costumes were wrong (Marion with a parasol? Norman Bates in designer shirts? Men in pop-art neckties with alligator shoes?)The lenses were wrongly selected and hence couldn't keep the focus or range of Hitchcock's shots. Most camera angles were "off."

I actually think Danny Elfman's up dated score was far better than the 1960 score. Hitch's rhyming shots were some times long and boring and far un nessassary. I think since that this is was the 90's audiences would've thought any other costume might of been odd. There used to seeing people dressed in designer clothing in films.... People wore suits and alligator shoes... Hitchcoks shots, while good look to dated today, there fore Van Sant might of had to kind of change it. The scenes did make since, in fact JELLO sounds better than aspic, no one anymore says that word anyway.

Overall, PSYCHO (1998) Is no where near as bad as people said it was. (or say it is) In fact, I think another reason it did poorly was the fact that teen slasher flicks were booming at the box office and no one really took the time to care about this movie. It wasnt what was in at the time. Another reason it did poorly is becuase we have seen it before and finally the casting...I think the actors did a fine job (what did you expect? They were oddly casted, and out of their 'typical' rolls, so it must of been hard to pull this off).
Anyhow, PSYCHO (1998) will always be one of my favorite films regardless of what anyone says, in fact I almost like it over the original.

BRAVO Mr. Van Sant for having talent and guts!

"I saw you... I saw you in an orange grove."

[–] dep1353 17 years ago

....Van Sant had the "opportunity" to remake it. Courage really didn't enter into it.

...."If it doesn't gel, it isn't Jello"....sounds like one of their commercials. "Rewrite!!"

[–] ecarle 17 years ago

Oh, maybe.

I think the proof's in the pudding on this one.

Anthony Perkins was Hitchcock's one and only choice for Norman Bates -- he told Perkins "You ARE this movie, Tony" -- Vince Vaughn was like, the 20th (and one actor had said "yes" pending another commitment: Joaquin Phoenix, who Van Sant directed in "To Die For.")

Anne Heche just seemed awful in the classic role of Marion. She'd never even seen "Psycho" before she took the role. No understanding of it. This was supposed to be a woman that Norman could never have...opposite Vince Vaughn, it looked like the other way around.

And so forth.

The biggest problem with Van Sant's "Psycho" being "good" is that he basically followed Hitchcock's decisions. (I say he screwed them all up; but even so, Hitchcock made them.) So if the film is good -- its because Hitchcock directed it.

Take, for instance, the murder of the detective.

That murder scene went through NINE different versions from the original Robert Bloch novel (in which Mother slashes the detective with a razor as he comes through the door of the mansion) to the famous version on film. Hitchcock worked and re-worked that scene in the script stages, during shooting, and in re-shoots after having filmed it the first time....

...and Van Sant just goes and films what Hitchcock did.

And screws it up: the light in the doorway isn't timed perfectly as in the original; Macy is looking the wrong way from shot to shot; the lens choice is wrong at the bottom of the stairs so you can't even SEE Mother's hair, shoes, and obscenely uptilted ass. Not to mention the calf and the naked chick from the "Nine Inch Nails" video.

Nope, this movie is some sort of film school experiment gone bad.

Van Sant's greatest acheivement in making the movie was in MAKING it. Universal had said "no" for years (He pitched Timothy Hutton as Norman and Jack Nicholson as Arbogast in the 80's.). Only with "Good Will Hunting" clout and Universal heavyweights Ron Howard and Brian Grazer behind him did Van Sant get a "Yes."

Grazier took lunch in his office the Monday after "Psycho" bombed with reviews to match. And Imagine never worked with Van Sant again.

[–] pain93 17 years ago

You do see mothers hair in the remake. The flashing clips are intresting.

"I saw you... I saw you in an orange grove."

[–] salieri125 17 years ago

Very nice, ecarle, although it somewhat concerns me that you've put so much thought into this - I've never been able to sit through all of Van Sant's Psycho in one sitting, let alone watch it enough times to comment cogently on the timing of the edits. You indeed have suffered for us.

A few months ago I seem to remember reading an interview with Van Sant in which he talks about the influence of the films of Andy Warhol on him. Now, some of this I find suspicious because all the films he talked about were actually directed by Paul Morrissey, whose style is noticeably different (and Van Sant claims to have never seen Chelsea Girls to boot), but the idea of a Warhol influence has stuck in my mind, and it obviously applies here.

Not unlike Warhol's famous silkscreenings of celebrities, endless copies of the same image with different colors added, what is Psycho '98 but a copy with color, "candy-cane pastel color" as you say, added? I don't have any really informative screen captures (I don't, like, actually own these movies on DVD), but I'm sure you can note the comparisons in your head.

Anyway, if Warhol's mass produced art was a comment on mass production then maybe Van Sant's film is an (admittedly failed)attempt to do something similar. The reason it fails is, as you say, because it is not a very good copy. It would have been far more artistically interesting to just take a print of the original film and add tints of pink and green to it.

http://img141.image shack.us/my.php?ima g e=marilynsc y9.png

Come to think of it, Van Sant's "Death Trilogy," which followed Psycho '98 (and thankfully redeemed Van Sant's reputation), all of which are thin disguises of real life tragedies, reminds me of Warhol's series of death and disaster portraits like "129 Die in Jet," which are silkscreens of newspaper headlines and such. So the influence continues.

"Tis a coward I am - but I will hold your coat."

[–] ecarle 17 years ago

I've come to accept the Warholian aspects of what Van Sant did with "Psycho," which is why I've never felt that it is the work of a hack (as some of the "Psycho" sequels were -- Anthony Perkins being given a pass by me for personal intergrity.)

I've often called Van Sant's Psycho "an experiment that succeeded by failing."

And yes, I have studied the thing. Seen it many times. Bought the DVD. (The DVD documentary is rather fascinating, because Universal and Van Sant allow some "naysayers" to attack Van Sant's concept all through it, as if the "controversy" might sell the movie.)

For here's the thing: Van Sant appropriated a movie that obsessed millions, including himself, and made an elementary mistake in choosing that movie: it had a very personal effect on people, based not only on the shocks, but on the deep emotional connections Hitchcock drew between the audience and the characters.

In the "world of film," Janet Leigh was killed in 1960 and Anthony Perkins murdered her, and audiences forever remembered it. Leigh had people on the street confront her with "You're alive!" Perkins got decades worth of "fan mail" from people who identified with Norman's loneliness. Propping up miscast Vince Vaughn and Anne Heche as Norman and Marion was rather an insult to a lot of people's memories of a cinematic tragedy that felt very real to them, a one-time event.

On the DVD documentary, they show Van Sant filming his "Psycho," and it is pretty clear that Vaughn and Heche barely take the movie seriously, barely get into character before shots (Perkins took about ten minutes before each scene to meditate.) Macy (who hated Hitchcock's movies, he later revealed) looks skeptical at all times, and Julianne Moore goes Diva, saying of Lila, "I have no character to play here." All of that translated to Van Sant's "Psycho." Hitchcock's actors did their best for him -- they were underappreciated actors who felt Hitch was giving them the chance of a lifetime (well, maybe not Vera Miles; she had her issues with Hitch.) Van Sant's folk just go through the motions (Moore in Cabin One, to Van Sant: "Why am I opening and closing these drawers? What's the point?")

All of this analysis is away from my earlier technical one but honestly, if you know Hitchcock's "Psycho," you watch Van Sant's counting the ways in which he JUST COULDN'T COPY HITCHCOCK'S TECHNICAL PROWESS. The owls are out of focus in the parlor scene. The "frame cutting" by which Hitchcock cut scenes is entirely missing.

And by making little changes, Van Sant screwed himself up.

In the original, Arbogast looks around Norman's parlor. There's a shot of him crossing the office to the porch. Then he reaches the porch, hits the corner, looks up. Sees the house. Herrmann's music gives us the "three notes of madness" (that later close the film in the cell) on a POV of the house.

In Van Sant's, Arbogast looks around Norman's parlor. There is NO shot of him crossing the office to the porch. He reaches the porch and THEN the "three notes of madness" play (Danny Elfman ran out of time to hold off on them), so that when Arbogast reaches the edge of the porch, there are no "three notes of madness" to accompany the POV shot of the house.

Some might call this anal-obsessive on my part (fitting with "Psycho," eh?), but honestly, Hitchcock and Herrmann went to a lot of trouble to make sure that the "three notes of madness" (Mother's theme/Norman's madness theme) hit on the POV shot of the house. There's no point to those notes hitting as Arbogast steps on the porch from the office.

Here's a different example: in the original, Sam's hardware store was a set carefully built to create an Expressionistic claustrophobic tunnel from the store to Sam's room, with knives on the wall that remind us of Marion's fate and hang over Arbogast's head.

In Van Sant's version, to cut costs, no hardware store set was built.Filming took place in a REAL hardware store on Santa Monica Boulevard,with none of Hitchcock's careful Expressionistic tunnel construction, no knives on the wall, etc. Van Sant didn't even think about Hitchcock's original visual intentions.

Van Sant's Warholian experiment was unfortunately conducted on a movie whose innate perfection (in technial construction and key performances) made it one of the greatest movies ever made. Those are hard to do. Not to mention "Psycho"'s centrality to 1960 and everything about that watershed year between the Hays Code and the "R" movies to come, not to mention the film's uncanny prediction of the 60's horrors to come (assassinations, the Mansons, etc.)

Van Sant should have picked another movie to play with.

P.S. I know these posts are getting long but I honestly think Van Sant's "Psycho" is one of the most important movies ever made, and merits some real talk about it. The shot by shot failures of his copy constitute an essay on what movies are all about, IMHO.

[–] slugnutty 17 years ago

So we needed a pointless, poorly made knock-off of a brilliant movie to remind us how brilliant the original was?

So I should do a paint-by-numbers rendition of the Mona Lisa in order to truly appreciate the genius of Da Vinci?

[–] ecarle 17 years ago

I'm not sure we NEEDED a pointless, etc knock-off of a brilliant movie to remind us...but that was the best USE of this $25 million dollar movie.

See, if Van Sant's "experiment" was to see what would happen if he tried to copy a classic movie shot-by-shot from 1960 "today" (1998), in color from the original black and with, he got to see this result:

He couldn't really do it (from a technical standpoint),and the results were far beneath the original, even using everything he could FROM the original.

Note: As I post this, a "Birds" remake moves closer to actual production: Naomi Watts to star, Michael Bay to produce, Martin Campbell ("Casino Royale") to direct. I'm figuring with that remake, the story will be radically changed and new "bird attack set-pieces" will be added to the old ones. Van Sant's experiment will not be repeated. Moreover, the original "The Birds" had a much weaker script than "Psycho" anyway.

[–] 17 years ago

[deleted]

[–] ecarle 17 years ago

Oh, I don't know. I don't think any movie ranked any higher than any movie in film history than "Psycho" (on the AFI lists, on "Sight and Sound" lists, in various books, possibly even in box office per inflation) has ever been remade.

The importance is that in the failure of Van Sant to do anything close to the original...other classics may have been saved.

Movies live on in our minds. Now we have to "clear the clutter" of Van Sant's version (the masturbating, Arbogast's awful hat) to remember Hitchcock's film. Van Sant's "Psycho" will always rather shadow and mar the original, and that's important, too.

[–] ecarle 17 years ago

Bump. Because its still what I think....

[–] ecarle 16 years ago

Bump. It almost rotated off.

[–] christomacin 15 years ago

is this what American's cinema (and cultural life in genreal) has come to: "Let's spend $25 million just to prove to ourselves that we can fail"?

Where is the passion for excellence and originality that once characterized cinema at it's best?

[–] bSpiker 16 years ago

Van Sant should have never tried remaking Psycho. To remake this movie shot-for-shot was pointless, and I do not care if Sant's reasoning was to prove you can't remake originals. Sadly this movie will not stop money hungry producers and directors from remaking classics. If he wanted to do an experiement--he should've picked a movie that did poorly, one that was REALLY bad and seen if he can prove to us that you can make a bad idea/movie better.

"By morning you'll be gone!"- Joel, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

[–] Doc80 11 years ago

Here is the thing about remakes. Many of them take the idea of the original film and try and do something different with it. What was idiotic about Van Sant was that he did a shot for shot remake without trying to do anything different. At least if he did that I could appreciate his "bravery"

[–] ecarle 10 years ago

But Van Sant expressed in numerous interviews that his intention in remaking Psycho was specifically TO make it shot by shot -- "to not change anything" except making it in color this time.

And ironically, having set this restriction upon himself, he could not help changing a lot of things -- he removed the entire scene at the church, he cut various lines, he had Norman masterbate at the peephole, etc. Van Sant could not adhere to his own rules...which was an interesting result of the experiment himself.

I much prefer the fealty of Van Sant's Psycho to the original to the massive re-writing of "The Manchurian Candidate" and "Charade" (as The Truth About Charlie) that removed everything good about THOSE originals. And those two movies were BOTH directed by Oscar winner Jonathan Demme(Silence of the Lambs.)

It seems that both Demme and Van Sant converted their own honors and Oscars(a nomination for Good Will Hunting in Van Sant's case) into licenses to raid(and in Demme's case, rape) thriller classics.

[–] ecarle 10 years ago

bump

[–] macguffinlassie 16 years ago

and that elected to "blasphemy the religion of film."

?
What does this mean?
As for no one's saying "aspic" anymore, what does THAT mean? People say it who know what it is. And it ain't Jello.

[–] thedictator-1 16 years ago

Interesting points, ecarle. Except it was Christopher Doyle who was the director of photography, not Danny Boyle. Danny Boyle is a very accomplished director, though, who's done some great work.

[–] ecarle 16 years ago

Christopher Doyle. Danny Boyle.

Hmmm....the way my mind works is God's own mystery.

Sorry.

[–] dasher11 16 years ago

I'm watching the Psycho remake for the first time now, and it's horrible. The acting and the casting - do I even need to comment? The pastel colors make me feel like I'm watching a '70s porno, not a suspense thriller.

A lot of the points you made are excellent things to notice, ecarle. I'm glad that I got to read your analysis.

I wouldn't say this is the most important movie ever made. I feel like it could have gone better if more time had been taken on the casting, set design, cinematography, etc. If anyone with a true love for and understanding of Psycho had done this movie, it could have been better. It never would have been the original, though. But we already knew that. A remake of a classic should never happen. Movies are classics for a reason. Hitchcock was visionary. Simply copying his work scene-for-scene does not make anyone else a visionary.

A different example is the recent remake of Halloween. (I know that Halloween isn't on par with Psycho, but if you're a horror movie fan, you know that Halloween is a classic.) Rob Zombie tried to re-write the basic premise of Halloween. Micheal Myers is no longer pure, unfeeling evil... He was made evil because he had a slutty mom and a jerk for a stepdad. (*eyeroll*) After spending a half hour on this premise, Zombie felt his work was done and simply copied the rest of the movie (except when he butchered the ending). It was another perfect example of someone who JUST DIDN'T GET IT.

Van Sant just didn't get it.

[–] christomacin 15 years ago

i never like Carpenter's thesis in the original Halloween that a child of that age can somehow be "pure evil" with absolutely no reason other than he saw his sister naked. In Jaws I never liked the fact that Spielberg suggested that a shark is somehow morally evil because it likes to eat, while borrowing the Captain Ahab idea and turned the second half of the film into a mini-Moby Dick, ninus Melville's philosophical complexity. Nevertheless, despite that both Jaws and Halloween are classic films. Classic because of the way they told stories visually. Those movies were designed to scare us, and they did so.

My question is this. If a director really has such a problem with a film's message or philosophy, why not just make up your own story? Since it is going to end up a different movie anyway, why not just make a different movie (with a different title). I realize most films (even great ones) take earlier works for inspiriation, but why advertise the fact so blatantly? I would rather have the audience think I am a genius than so blatantly advertise that I am not. On the other hand, if a director feels a movie is truly a classic, why remake it at all?

[–] mlhmovies 14 years ago

ecarle, i would like to say a huge well done and thank you for all the time, effort and affection you have put into these posts!

I happen to agree with every point youv made, this movie is a hugely important factor in the appreciation of the original (which is my personal favourite film of all time). I have really enjoyed and thoroughly agreed with all the point you've made and really enjoyed the individual scene/character analysis!

Obviously there will always be people who dont agree (they are entitled to their opinion) but I truly admire your love for this film and for all the detail youve given in these posts! Hitch would be proude :-P

Keep up the good work!

[–] mlhmovies 14 years ago

[–] twm-2 16 years ago

Very well done ecarle. I was about to post a reply here, but it ended up being so drawn out (if you recall from some of our past exchanges on the Vertigo threads, once I get started, I can hardly stop), I thought it more appropo to start a new thread--a riff off of yours--"Re: 'The Most Important Movie Ever Made??'"

Would, of course, be interested in your thoughts.

Cheerio!

Fighting for Truth, Justice, and making it the American way.

[–] ecarle 15 years ago

Well, I'll bump this and take a look at your thread.

[–] hazzyblue 14 years ago

I hope this review is an appropriate response...

"Jazz Performers, 23 June 2001
Author: tedg ([email protected]) from Virginia Beach
*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Spoilers herein.

Opinions on this are a matter of religion: I believe this to be literally true because images reach so deeply in the psyche and persist so.

My own belief is that the original formed a template not because it was good, but because it was original. Consider that there are only a half dozens stories anyway, and almost all of every film is not a copy of life, but a copy of some previous film. The best copies rely on the fact that you are replaying the original in your mind, so they get that for `free' and can overlay their own message. Hitchcock's set a new template. This film is lucky enough to reference that template.

It is rather like IMBD comments. What's so great about writing these is that we -- both writer and reader, though strangers -- have shared a rather intimate experience: the writer can immediately assume a couple hours of a shared life. We annotate that shared experience.

In the case of this remake, we have a homeopathic commentary -- the closer, the more powerful the differences. Here we have actors that are in most cases MUCH better than the originals. Heche isn't a deep actor, but she is masterfully cast. However, Macy and Moore are famously multidimensional. They act more than one film, more than one character at a time. Moore is rather a whirlwind as she brings this annotative style of acting to several films a year.

So we have annotative acting where we can see two movie performances at once and groove off the resonances because of the near twinning. A large example: here the sex object is played by a lesbian, her sister IS a lesbian, and Norman is not gay: all a rather large shuffle of the underlying sexual dynamic. A small example: when first Macy encounters Norman outside the office, see how he needles Norman both as his character the detective and also as surrogate viewer. Another: when Heche is driving, we get a far deeper performance from her face -- she projects her mind on her face for the benefit of the viewer, she becomes both the character and the character's annotator. Way richer than the original. Anything Moore does exists in two spaces.

This film was set up for later annotation, in fact is structured in that very way. The first half, we have the real story: the theft and murder. The second half we have a second film, which overlays the first. Following that we have a more narrative annotion: the `explanation.' (Which incidentally is tedious in the original, much more efficient in this version.)

We also have a completely different film cinematically. Hitchcock's camerawork was clever in its time. But today we have so much more we can do with the camera that a close watching of how he choreographs his eye, it seems slow, dull, passive. I'm not an admirer of van Sant's work generally, but this new film is very intelligent in its use of the eye and the motion of color. In this case, the film is quite far from Hitchcock's, and to my mind the changes are emphasized by their differences. The result is a hyperselfaware eye.

Close, annotative jazz acting on a familiar script, and colordancing distance in the eye make this a pretty rich experience. If you are serious about film, you really must see this. If you worship Hitchcock for some reason, then you are likely to be an unhappy viewer whatever you see.

[–] The_Dying_Flutchman 14 years ago

This relates to the OP's original post. I agree with many of the things you write, but I firmly believe this version of the classic masterpiece is actually a post modern retelling of the original. Yes, many of you will say it is a remake, but I am not so sure of that. If any of you know anything about post modern theory of literature and film, you can see how Van Sant's version is a deliberate attempt to be what could be called "an original version". Actually, not unlike one of Andy Warhol's "original" series pictures. Exactly the same yet different. It is a philosophical conundrum and a rather difficult thing to master. Different reinactors in this case as opposed to a picture that can be printed over and over ad infinitum. This would explain the dogged determination to stick so closely to the original script. I firmly believe it was something the director sorely needed to get out of his system, failure or not.

Absolute perfection in the face of woofing!

[–] 14 years ago

[deleted]

[–] The_Dying_Flutchman 14 years ago

We must bow to your enlightened speech and desire, oh potentate of the putrid.

Nothing is more beautiful than Machine Gun Swartz.

[–] DrinkFromTheSameFountain 13 years ago

This movie from 1998 is only "not a remake" if post-modernism has become more compelling to you than movies (or literature, art, etc.). Frankly, most people would rather be entertained.

Hitchcock's version was visceral & engaging & seductive. Van Sant's version was cerebral & off-putting & lifeless. That's the main difference. So, it doesn't really matter if Van Sant's version was a "deliberate attempt to be an 'original version'" or whatever it was you were trying to say. Not only is this movie awful, it feels very bizarre, e.g., some parts feel more or less circa 1998 whereas other elements are taken right out of 1960. I can't even imagine what reasons he had to do the movie.

[–] ecarle 11 years ago

An interesting dichotomy.

[–] rascal67 8 years ago

Hitchcock's version was visceral & engaging & seductive. Van Sant's version was cerebral & off-putting & lifeless. That's the main difference.
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I think the main problem with Van Sant's plagiarism, was in the casting. Anne Heche as Marion Crane??? Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates??? They were just wrong, wrong, wrong. They had absolutely none of the screen presence, charisma or talent of Leigh or Perkins. Since the film was also a predominante shot for shot remake, there was no sense of originality or spontaneity to the film or performances. It was all calculated and self-conscious to the max. Changing the design of the house—which wasn't even creepy or iconic looking—and making it in lush color, doesn't excuse this pointless and confounded remake. Why not just do a totally different remake, based on the original source novel?

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