Film Review
Alfred Hitchcock's most famous film, and certainly one of his biggest
successes,
Psycho is the film
that redefined the horror genre in the early 1960s.
It brought popularity and a measure of respectability to a genre that had
previously languished in B movie purgatory, inviting a spate of
imitations that led to the gory horror films of the 1980s and the
recent trend in blood-encrusted slasher movies. With its
masterful mix of suspense and surprise,
Psycho is a film whose complexity
and touches of cinematic brilliance make it one of Hitchcock's best and
most entertaining films.
The film was adapted from a novel by Robert Bloch, which was based on
the real-life exploits of a Wisconsin serial killer named Ed
Gein. The story instantly appealed to Hitchcock because he
had reached a point in his career where he needed a major box office
hit (to balance out the failure of his recent film
Vertigo)
and he saw that this had the potential to deliver just that. The
story also appealed to his sense of the macabre and
Psycho is unquestionably one of his
darkest films, albeit with a black comedic underbelly.
The decision to make the film in black and white rather than colour was
primarily for commercial, not artistic, reasons. Having failed to
persuade Paramount to finance the film, Hitchcock was compelled to make
it through his own company, Shamley Productions, on an extraordinarily
tight budget of around $800,000. Despite such cost constraints,
the director managed to attract two big name actors to play the leads,
Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins, each of whom gives a very laudable
performance. The film made Perkins an international star,
although he would forever be associated with the role of Norman Bates.
The longevity of
Psycho is
most probably down to its terrific set-piece shock scenes, which have
rarely if ever been bettered in any horror film. The most famous
of these is of course the shower sequence in which Janet Leigh is
carved up nicely by what we think is Norman Bates' mum. The three
minute long sequence took seven days to shoot and includes around
seventy shots, mostly close ups. Although we never actually see
the knife make contact with the flesh, the way the montage is
constructed, in a manic frenzy of quick cuts, the impression is
unavoidably one of a beautiful young woman being hacked to pieces by a
madman. Bernard Herrmann's now legendary score accentuates the
sense of visceral horror, the screeching violins sounding like a cry
from Hell, making the spectator react to every slash as if it
were he, not Janet Leigh, standing in the shower. As
shocking as the shower scene is today, it was ten times more so when
the film was first released because at that time it was inconceivable
that the lead actress would be killed off within the first half of the
film.
Whilst famous for shocking audiences,
Psycho does have a lighter side to
it, although this isn't readily apparent. Hitchcock doesn't
quite set out to parody the B movie horror genre, but he comes close
to doing so. The characters in the film are frankly ludicrous and
the plot really doesn't stand up to close scrutiny. What
Hitchcock does with the material that makes up the clunky narrative is
far more interesting than the narrative itself. The killer, who
in the original novel is a very unsympathetic villain, is made the most
sympathetic character in the film - to the extent that the audience is
driven to side with him against the so-called "good guys" (who have
about as much charm as a bucket of creosote). The murders
are brutal and shocking but they are realised in a very stylised way,
evoking something of the tradition of the Grand Guignol, but executed
with great restraint (and without the now obligatory olympic size
swimming pool quantity of theatrical blood). When it is
first seen, the film certainly shocks, but on subsequent viewings it
makes a subtly different impression and Hitckcock's very dark black
humour becomes evident.
On its initial release,
Psycho
received very mixed reviews from the critics, but it was an instant box
office hit and many reviewers later reappraised their
opinions. The film was nominated for four Oscars - in
the categories of Best Director, Best B&W Cinematography, Best
Actress (Janet Leight) and Best B&W Art Design - although it won
none.
It inspired two direct sequels (made in the 1980s) and a
television prequel (all featuring Anthony Perkins happily reprising the
role of Normal Bates). In 1998, Gus Van Sant directed a
shot-by-shot colour remake of the film, which has been described as
possibly the most pointless exercise in film history.
Comparing
Psycho with the
subsequent films that it inspired, it is surprising how restrained and
how much more effective the former film is. Rather than
show explicit scenes of mayhem and bodily mutilation, which is the
current tend in horror, it shows just enough to stimulate the
spectator's imagination, allowing the mind to conceive images far more
horrific, far more real than could ever be portrayed on a cinema screen. Today's
generation of cinematic fear merchants have a great deal to learn from
the dark jewel that is
Psycho.
© James Travers 2008
The above content is owned by frenchfilms.org and must not be copied.
Next Alfred Hitchcock film:
The Birds (1963)
Film Synopsis
Arizona secretary Marion Crane is desperate to marry her lover Sam
Loomis but the latter's debts and hefty alimony payments to his ex-wife
make this impossible. One day, one of her boss's clients deposits
$40,000 in her office and, without a moment's thought, Marion makes the
decision to steal the money. On the way to Sam's home in
California, she is overtaken by fatigue and decides to stop at a
roadside motel. The proprietor, Norman Bates, is an amiable young
man who admits that she is his first customer in several weeks.
As she chats with her friendly host, Marion realises that she has made
a terrible mistake by stealing the money and resolves to head back to
Arizona the next morning. Unfortunately, things don't quite
turn out as she might have hoped...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by frenchfilms.org and must not be copied.