2012 Film Challenge #8: Psycho (1960)
Foreword: if you haven't seen the original Psycho and also don't know anything about the story, you should totally drop everything and go watch it right now without reading anything more about it, because you are one of the few people in the world who can see it and actually be surprised about what happens on the screen. The only reason not to do this is if you really, really don't like scary movies, in which case you should not watch it because you will probably crap your pants.
Even if you have a fairly good idea of what takes place in the film but haven't actually seen it you might want to stop reading now, because there are going to be some spoilers in here.
Anyway, this all gets to the heart of the problem of a movie like Psycho, which is that it is a film that suffers from its own fame; the movie is full of shocks and surprises, but most people who sit down to watch it for the first time already know what's really going on and what the most famous scenes are. Heck, I could understand a 2012 viewer even being a little bored by some parts of the film, because the first twenty-five minutes are all misdirection. We are meant to think that this is a movie about a pretty girl stealing forty thousand dollars, and if you are watching it in this context, the fairly long scene where she's quietly freaking out at a user car lot is tense; if you're watching the same scene wondering why the hell she isn't at the Bates Motel already, it's dull.
It's also worth mentioning that while a 2012 viewer will be patiently anticipating the shower scene, the whole Marion-Crane-getting-murdered thing would have been extremely surprising to 1960 audiences, because Janet Leigh was the lead and the only well-known face in the film aside from Anthony Perkins. I mean, think about it: she is ostensibly the star of the movie, you follow her every move for a half an hour, and then all of the sudden she's dead? Uhh...what are we going to watch now?
My own first experience with the film was probably back when I was around thirteen or so. My parents were and are big Alfred Hitchcock fans, so if one of his movies was on TV or we found it at the video store, we would all sit down to watch it together. I was also really interested in the horror genre at the time, reading every Stephen King novel I could get my hands on and keeping tabs on all the scary movies that came out, so Psycho made a pretty big impression on me. I don't recall how much I knew about the story going into it, but I remember being scared silly by the scene where the private detective goes up the stairs and the bedroom door slowly opens....
The movie also made a big impression on me because around this same time I was beginning to take an interest in film craft. What makes one scene more effective than another? What makes a scene seem more interesting, genuine or memorable than another? In the case of a horror movie, good technique translates to a visceral experience—i.e., what makes one scene scarier than another? In this respect, Psycho seemed to be the ultimate in film technique, because back then everyone would readily agree that it was pretty much one of the scariest movies that anyone had ever seen.
How did it hold up? Psycho is the movie that has been in my top-whatever list the longest, but watching it now I can see that the film's not perfect. For starters, the dialogue tries very hard to be clever and often misses the mark; it's awkward and unnatural-sounding, and there are some lines that I only finally understood for the first time viewing it this week. The prize-winning clunker is "if it doesn't gel, it isn't aspic, and this isn't gelling." Holy cow, was that ever a thing that people really said? I sure hope not.
On top of that, Simon Oakland's performance as the psychologist at the end of the film is a bit hammy, to say the least. Why didn't all those policemen arrest him for being an insufferable boob? Or is it possible that psychologists were really like that back in 1960? Maybe, I guess. It would certainly explain how people got so crazy.
On the other hand, I still continue to be amazed at the masterful precision of the film's best moments. Of course one always thinks of the Eisensteinian shower scene, but really the entire sequence leading up to that moment—the meeting of madman and victim and their meal in the parlor—is virtuosic and precise, like a piece of music, with the tension and eeriness slowly ratcheting up until the final terrible moment when the bathroom door silently swings open.
Excruciatingly perfect too is Lila Crane's exploration of the Bates residence at the end of the film, with the ornate creepiness of the rooms, the jewelry box with the folded hands, Norman's garret with its weird stuffed animals, the way that Lila flinches from the balusters when Norman enters, and then notices the cellar door below.
I don't know if I would still consider Psycho a favorite; there are too many moments that seem false, and I'm not sure that the movie has any special meaning to me outside of nostalgia. I'm even a little uncomfortable now about watching a woman get knifed in the shower for entertainment purposes. The great scenes are still among the best ever shot, though, and so I'll always recommend a stay at the Bates Motel to those who have never been...and who aren't too afraid of the dark....
Even if you have a fairly good idea of what takes place in the film but haven't actually seen it you might want to stop reading now, because there are going to be some spoilers in here.
Anyway, this all gets to the heart of the problem of a movie like Psycho, which is that it is a film that suffers from its own fame; the movie is full of shocks and surprises, but most people who sit down to watch it for the first time already know what's really going on and what the most famous scenes are. Heck, I could understand a 2012 viewer even being a little bored by some parts of the film, because the first twenty-five minutes are all misdirection. We are meant to think that this is a movie about a pretty girl stealing forty thousand dollars, and if you are watching it in this context, the fairly long scene where she's quietly freaking out at a user car lot is tense; if you're watching the same scene wondering why the hell she isn't at the Bates Motel already, it's dull.
It's also worth mentioning that while a 2012 viewer will be patiently anticipating the shower scene, the whole Marion-Crane-getting-murdered thing would have been extremely surprising to 1960 audiences, because Janet Leigh was the lead and the only well-known face in the film aside from Anthony Perkins. I mean, think about it: she is ostensibly the star of the movie, you follow her every move for a half an hour, and then all of the sudden she's dead? Uhh...what are we going to watch now?
My own first experience with the film was probably back when I was around thirteen or so. My parents were and are big Alfred Hitchcock fans, so if one of his movies was on TV or we found it at the video store, we would all sit down to watch it together. I was also really interested in the horror genre at the time, reading every Stephen King novel I could get my hands on and keeping tabs on all the scary movies that came out, so Psycho made a pretty big impression on me. I don't recall how much I knew about the story going into it, but I remember being scared silly by the scene where the private detective goes up the stairs and the bedroom door slowly opens....
The movie also made a big impression on me because around this same time I was beginning to take an interest in film craft. What makes one scene more effective than another? What makes a scene seem more interesting, genuine or memorable than another? In the case of a horror movie, good technique translates to a visceral experience—i.e., what makes one scene scarier than another? In this respect, Psycho seemed to be the ultimate in film technique, because back then everyone would readily agree that it was pretty much one of the scariest movies that anyone had ever seen.
How did it hold up? Psycho is the movie that has been in my top-whatever list the longest, but watching it now I can see that the film's not perfect. For starters, the dialogue tries very hard to be clever and often misses the mark; it's awkward and unnatural-sounding, and there are some lines that I only finally understood for the first time viewing it this week. The prize-winning clunker is "if it doesn't gel, it isn't aspic, and this isn't gelling." Holy cow, was that ever a thing that people really said? I sure hope not.
On top of that, Simon Oakland's performance as the psychologist at the end of the film is a bit hammy, to say the least. Why didn't all those policemen arrest him for being an insufferable boob? Or is it possible that psychologists were really like that back in 1960? Maybe, I guess. It would certainly explain how people got so crazy.
On the other hand, I still continue to be amazed at the masterful precision of the film's best moments. Of course one always thinks of the Eisensteinian shower scene, but really the entire sequence leading up to that moment—the meeting of madman and victim and their meal in the parlor—is virtuosic and precise, like a piece of music, with the tension and eeriness slowly ratcheting up until the final terrible moment when the bathroom door silently swings open.
Excruciatingly perfect too is Lila Crane's exploration of the Bates residence at the end of the film, with the ornate creepiness of the rooms, the jewelry box with the folded hands, Norman's garret with its weird stuffed animals, the way that Lila flinches from the balusters when Norman enters, and then notices the cellar door below.
I don't know if I would still consider Psycho a favorite; there are too many moments that seem false, and I'm not sure that the movie has any special meaning to me outside of nostalgia. I'm even a little uncomfortable now about watching a woman get knifed in the shower for entertainment purposes. The great scenes are still among the best ever shot, though, and so I'll always recommend a stay at the Bates Motel to those who have never been...and who aren't too afraid of the dark....
Labels: Movies
posted by Joe Gola at 9:24 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home