Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

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knives
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Re: Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

#101 Post by knives » Wed Oct 31, 2018 3:26 pm

I see your Garfield and raise you a different type of Garfield. Though point taken.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

#102 Post by Mr Sausage » Wed Oct 31, 2018 3:33 pm

Casablanca has to be up there, with at least three of its lines permeating pop culture.

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Feego
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Re: Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

#103 Post by Feego » Wed Oct 31, 2018 4:29 pm

I caught a bit of Dementia 13 on TV this morning before work, and I was reminded of how closely it follows Psycho by introducing us to a duplicitous heroine only to have her brutally dispatched with (underwater and nearly nude) halfway through the movie, and that was just three years after Hitchcock's film. William Castle also reworked scenes and plot twists from Psycho in his movies around the same time, though my favorite is his take on the shower scene in I Saw What You Did, in which the killer is the person taking the shower!

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domino harvey
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Re: Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

#104 Post by domino harvey » Tue Nov 06, 2018 8:19 pm

Image

Eight Blu-ray Psycho box coming to Germany in January, will include for the first time ever the German cut
Universal Pictures and Turbine Medien present another collector's edition as a result of their cooperation: the Psycho Legacy Collection - Deluxe Edition contains 8 BluRays with the following titles: Psycho, Psycho II, Psycho III, Psycho IV - The Beginning, Psycho (1998 Remake) as well as the Uncut version of Psycho with the German localized picture master containing the original 1960 cut of Hitchcock's Psycho.

The set will also contain over 12 hours of special features, including unpublished materials as well as a feature-length documentary about the famous shower scene. Also, there is a 120-page hardcover book (in German), Art cards, posters, letter replicas, a letterhead block as well as a Do Not Disturb door sign from the Bates Motel.

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Big Ben
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Re: Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

#105 Post by Big Ben » Tue Nov 06, 2018 8:41 pm

Big news! I can't imagine Criterion getting to put this out here but a fully uncut print of the original is going to sure make purists happy. Don't know much about the sequels other than that Tarantino prefers II to the original.

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domino harvey
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Re: Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

#106 Post by domino harvey » Tue Nov 06, 2018 8:44 pm

Big Ben wrote:
Tue Nov 06, 2018 8:41 pm
Big news! I can't imagine Criterion getting to put this out here but a fully uncut print of the original is going to sure make purists happy. Don't know much about the sequels other than that Tarantino prefers II to the original.
QT also prefers the Breathless remake with Richard Gere to Godard's, he has notoriously wonky taste. II is the best of the sequels, but that's not exactly high praise. Meg Tilly is a QT in it though, maybe that's why he likes it

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Re: Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

#107 Post by Zot! » Wed Nov 07, 2018 5:49 am

domino harvey wrote:
Tue Nov 06, 2018 8:44 pm
Big Ben wrote:
Tue Nov 06, 2018 8:41 pm
Big news! I can't imagine Criterion getting to put this out here but a fully uncut print of the original is going to sure make purists happy. Don't know much about the sequels other than that Tarantino prefers II to the original.
QT also prefers the Breathless remake with Richard Gere to Godard's, he has notoriously wonky taste. II is the best of the sequels, but that's not exactly high praise. Meg Tilly is a QT in it though, maybe that's why he likes it
For a sec, I thought QT preferred the shot for shot Psycho remake to the original, which would seem like he's just being willfully contrarian. I've never seen Psycho 2, but QT's whole aesthetic is so predicated on pastiche that it makes perfect sense that he likes these versions of the stories heavily filtered through a new lens of 23 years (in the case of Psycho)...and 23 years and a change of location in the case of Breathless. I wouldn't dismiss Breathless altogether actually, as I found the remake to actually work better than I expected, and wasn't hopelessly beholden to the original while still maintaining the spirit of the thing.

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thirtyframesasecond
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Re: Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

#108 Post by thirtyframesasecond » Sun Nov 11, 2018 7:03 am

I saw GVS's Psycho again recently. Tough to know where I stand on it. What should be your take on any remake? Is the issue with Psycho that it's so iconic? Maybe that was GVS's intention. Can you remake such a famous, groundbreaking film, to update it thirty-odd years later in colour? Was GVS trying an audacious experiment within the studio system? Or is it just a cheap cash-in post-Good Will Hunting? The acting talent on show is pretty much as good as you'd have got in mid to late 90s indie cinema (Vaughn was still fresh off Swingers). Chris Doyle's work as DoP is naturally excellent. And the use of colour is often very vivid (I don't want to focus on Heche's clothing and underwear - but those oranges and greens!) So is it the idea that is objectionable or the execution?

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dda1996a
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Re: Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

#109 Post by dda1996a » Sun Nov 11, 2018 2:05 pm

Haven't seen it yet but I doubt GvS would do a shot for shot remake as a cash grab, as it doesn't even come off as one. More of using his cache to try a possibly audacious follies

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Feego
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Re: Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

#110 Post by Feego » Sun Nov 11, 2018 3:56 pm

In his DVD commentary, Van Sant explicitly states that he remade Psycho in color so that young audiences would see it, since young audiences have no interest in black and white movies. And I firmly believe he is totally bullshitting us when he says that (though Vince Vaughn and especially Anne Heche, who share the commentary, seem to buy it). The interesting thing is that it's not even really a shot-for-shot remake, as there are plenty of shots throughout that are not exact replicas of the original, are framed differently, filmed from different angles, last for a different duration, or are completely new. There's also an entire scene (the one with Sam and Lila meeting the sheriff after church) that is missing in the remake. I too feel that the movie was more of an experiment than a true attempt to either update the original or even appeal to modern audiences, though I have no earthly idea what the point is. I do know that I like it as a kind of weird experience on its own.

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Mr Sausage
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Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

#111 Post by Mr Sausage » Mon Apr 27, 2020 6:59 am

DISCUSSION ENDS MONDAY, May 11th.

Members have a two week period in which to discuss the film before it's moved to its dedicated thread in The Criterion Collection subforum. Please read the Rules and Procedures.

This thread is not spoiler free. This is a discussion thread; you should expect plot points of the individual films under discussion to be discussed openly. See: spoiler rules.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

I encourage members to submit questions, either those designed to elicit discussion and point out interesting things to keep an eye on, or just something you want answered. This will be extremely helpful in getting discussion started. Starting is always the hardest part, all the more so if it's unguided. Questions can be submitted to me via PM.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

#112 Post by Mr Sausage » Mon Apr 27, 2020 7:01 am

The winner of the Horror List Redux project is our discussion topic this round.

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Re: Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

#113 Post by Orlac » Mon Apr 27, 2020 8:53 am

I wonder how obvious the twist was back in 1960.
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The book has the advantage that you don't know Mother is being hidden. I wonder what a typical 1960 moviegoer was thinking when they kept hiding mother.

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Feego
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Re: Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

#114 Post by Feego » Mon Apr 27, 2020 9:20 am

Orlac wrote:
Mon Apr 27, 2020 8:53 am
I wonder how obvious the twist was back in 1960.
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The book has the advantage that you don't know Mother is being hidden. I wonder what a typical 1960 moviegoer was thinking when they kept hiding mother.
For what it's worth, I watched Psycho for the first time around the year 2000 (I would have been about 16). I did not grow up on a steady diet of horror films, and I was thoroughly surprised by the twist in this film. Like, truly unnerved and caught off guard by it. Perhaps I was just incredibly naive, but as to your spoilerboxed point, it never dawned on me that Hitchcock was keeping something from the audience.
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I suppose I just took Mother's existence for granted since we heard her voice, and Marion clearly hears her voice too. I didn't think it through this far at the time, but I suppose I accepted keeping her face hidden as a stylistic choice. Perhaps she was grotesquely ugly and the revelation of her face would be saved for the end. I do remember being so anxious for Leila when she goes down to the fruit cellar at the end, only to be shocked out of my mind when Mrs. Bates is revealed to be a skeleton.
All that to say that I wouldn't be surprised if 1960 audiences had no clue what was coming.

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Mr Sheldrake
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Re: Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

#115 Post by Mr Sheldrake » Mon Apr 27, 2020 10:07 am

I saw this on its first local broadcast out of NYC, mid 60s. I had no idea, the shock stuck with me for days as it did to my friends who were too young for its original release. One cannot overemphasize the departure from the norm it represented, now hundreds of movies have gone much farther. Despite that, Psycho and Hitchcock’s audacity (with thematic richness) still stuns.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

#116 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Apr 27, 2020 10:08 am

I don't think it was obvious at all, and Feego gives a strong point in the authoritative and feminine voice (contrasting with Norman's timid and anxious maneuvers to cover up in desperation). It's quite a leap, given the information we have, to assume that
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Norman has split personality, and his entire character we get to know quite well in his idiosyncratic humanity, as a byproduct of a subordinate role in a complex, twisted family system, is only half of his identity.

Rather by fleshing him out so much and tricking the audience into aligning with him as a surrogate, this potential reading becomes placed further into the shadows. The most crucial moment - which has been written about in plenty of essays on audience-engagement via suture in film - is when he tries to cover up the murder and watches the car stop in the mud. We as the audience feel stressed with him and part of us wants that car to keep going down! We are now aligned with the man covering up a murder, we want him to get away with it, and part of this is because we pity him and his position on some subconscious level.
While Wait Until Dark may have popularized the 'jump scare' we get today, Psycho likely was the first mainstream American film to really redefine this jolting of audiences out of their seats with the infamous stairs scene. I remember seeing that as a child and being absolutely terrified at the unexpected timing of it from the objective birds-eye-view angle.

What I love most about this film isn't even the horror elements themselves, but the way the narrative is dressed to move across genres towards a nightmarish social prison. By the time we get to horror, we have been involved in a masterfully suspenseful noir adventure, followed by an opportunity to slow down and engage in a conversational pitstop one might find in a road movie, with flirtation in potential-romance and the seeds of two family dramas. The film is always far more eclectic than I expect going in, and that's part of what keeps me from placing it as number one on my horror list, though the slow-burn (of high-wire tension, mind you!) leading all roads to this space of horror has many implications for distrusting fellow man and abolishing expectations of both narrative and the safety in straying from the familiar.

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Re: Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

#117 Post by MichaelB » Mon Apr 27, 2020 10:13 am

I showed this to my son a couple of years ago. He knew about the shower murder in advance, but didn't know about anything else, which was able to take him completely by surprise (and in a very satisfying way).

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Re: Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

#118 Post by Rayon Vert » Mon Apr 27, 2020 10:14 am

therewillbeblus wrote:
Mon Apr 27, 2020 10:08 am
What I love most about this film isn't even the horror elements themselves, but the way the narrative is dressed to move across genres towards a nightmarish social prison. By the time we get to horror, we have been involved in a masterfully suspenseful noir adventure, followed by an opportunity to slow down and engage in a conversational pitstop one might find in a road movie, with flirtation in potential-romance and the seeds of two family dramas. The film is always far more eclectic than I expect going in (...)
Same here. Here is part of my write-up for the Hitchcock project:
The first 30 minutes or so is such a terrific noir, I almost wish the film didn’t take the turn it does. The film claims its greatness right off with that incredible score, definitely one of the greatest in Hitchcock and in film in general. Then you have the masterful visuals and mise-en-scène throughout, truly a feast for the eyes: the close-ups of Marion driving as night as she’s getting to the Bates motel, that foreshadowing scene in the hotel parlor room with Norman framed with that menacing owl over his head (and what I believe are, among the stuffed birds, paintings of mythological scenes involving Pan, known as the god of rape among other things), the shot of the camera pulling out slowly from Marion’s eye after the shower scene, the angle at which the camera is set to film Norman’s “craning” neck towards the register as the detective is looking through it.

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knives
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Re: Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

#119 Post by knives » Mon Apr 27, 2020 10:23 am

MichaelB wrote:
Mon Apr 27, 2020 10:13 am
I showed this to my son a couple of years ago. He knew about the shower murder in advance, but didn't know about anything else, which was able to take him completely by surprise (and in a very satisfying way).
When I was a kid I had heard about the shower scene, but thought it meant a rain shower leaving me confused from the theft till the actual scene which shook little 10 year old me terribly.

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domino harvey
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Re: Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

#120 Post by domino harvey » Mon Apr 27, 2020 11:15 am

I’ve mentioned this before, but being able to show this to my students who had never heard of any of the twists and were able to see it for the first time completely unspoiled was one of my fondest memories of teaching film. They all loved it, of course. And they’d seen Janet Leigh in a few films from earlier units, so they knew she was a star, which made her unexpected exit as impactful for them as it would have been for audiences at the time

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Feego
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Re: Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

#121 Post by Feego » Mon Apr 27, 2020 2:09 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:
Mon Apr 27, 2020 10:08 am
While Wait Until Dark may have popularized the 'jump scare' we get today, Psycho likely was the first mainstream American film to really redefine this jolting of audiences out of their seats with the infamous stairs scene. I remember seeing that as a child and being absolutely terrified at the unexpected timing of it from the objective birds-eye-view angle.
That moment got a big jolt out of me too on my first viewing! I only wish I could have experienced the film with the shower scene unspoiled.

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Re: Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

#122 Post by Kat » Mon Apr 27, 2020 2:53 pm

all shocking, yes.
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I'm also shocked by the quite lengthy analysis at the end in the questioning, Norman's tone, a kind of clarity, but it can't be, is not -- I also find it hard to remember and think it hardly ever gets discussed when people mention the film. It simultaneously starts to explain and not, it can't be. It's some time since I saw it, but the tone of those scenes, when often films often end before that, take the working out as read. It also does something, for me, after the horror to make it real, it gives questions too, but if other parts of the film escape narrative conventions this can't, surely. I nearly wrote escape norms, which I'd not thought before of him, stuck in them and escaping them, like her, but not knowingly at all, having to as he does not.

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Re: Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

#123 Post by Finch » Tue Apr 28, 2020 5:45 am

The entire first half and our identification with Marion and then Norman is so strong that when the film invariably has to focus on her sister and boyfriend, it sags a little, and I was long bothered by
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the shrink's tidy explanation
that closes the film until I thought, perhaps that is the entire point? It is so blatantly unsatisfactory that I now feel silly for thinking that we are meant to take it seriously. Does anyone else feel the same way? In any event, the scene in the cell and that final superimposition are so bone chilling that it takes away any sour taste the preceding sequence has (I seem to recall reading somewhere that the scriptwriter Stefano had issues with the actor playing the psychiatrist and I'd agree, the performance doesn't help).

Also, on the UK Blu-Ray with the remixed sound, there is a bonus feature that has the shower sequence without the strings playing over it. I kind of wish that Hermann hadn't talked Hitch into using music but perhaps Herrmann's (and other people's?) concern was that the scene would be unbearable to watch without a score. I'd be intrigued to see the entire film play with the score but for that one sequence!

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Re: Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

#124 Post by MichaelB » Tue Apr 28, 2020 6:11 am

I appreciate the intended tact, but surely we don't need spoiler tags in this discussion? Especially not the last one, which isn't even a spoiler.

As for the music, it seems that the difference between the first (with no music) and second (with music) screenings was absolutely electrifying - it is of course impossible to imagine how the famous screeching violins must have sounded to people who weren't anticipating them (and they're not teased in advance; Herrmann intended the sound to be as big a shock as what was happening onscreen), and while Hitchcock had issued instructions for there not to be any music over the shower scene, he did a complete U-turn when he heard what Herrmann came up with. And presumably Herrmann came up with it in the first place because he disagreed that the scene played well without the music, although it's hard to be objective about this now.

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Kat
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Re: Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

#125 Post by Kat » Tue Apr 28, 2020 8:40 am

Finch wrote:
Tue Apr 28, 2020 5:45 am
The entire first half and our identification with Marion and then Norman is so strong that when the film invariably has to focus on her sister and boyfriend, it sags a little, and I was long bothered by
SpoilerShow
the shrink's tidy explanation
that closes the film until I thought, perhaps that is the entire point? It is so blatantly unsatisfactory that I now feel silly for thinking that we are meant to take it seriously. Does anyone else feel the same way? In any event, the scene in the cell and that final superimposition are so bone chilling that it takes away any sour taste the preceding sequence has (I seem to recall reading somewhere that the scriptwriter Stefano had issues with the actor playing the psychiatrist and I'd agree, the performance doesn't help).

Also, on the UK Blu-Ray with the remixed sound, there is a bonus feature that has the shower sequence without the strings playing over it. I kind of wish that Hermann hadn't talked Hitch into using music but perhaps Herrmann's (and other people's?) concern was that the scene would be unbearable to watch without a score. I'd be intrigued to see the entire film play with the score but for that one sequence!
I wasn't thinking of the shrink as much as Norman and maybe both in comparison to what we'd seen. It makes me wonder about understanding (now) and can see I'll have to watch again, but it's not a film I enjoy at all. In a way is all the film a comparison of certain narratives against reality, an argument for art showing you what can't be explained. Is there also a losing track of the person under the narrative we give them, the shrink doing exactly that too (I guess, I don't remember well) - seems to be a recurring theme of A. Hithcock.

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