Posted on 06/17/2010 7:55:21 AM PDT by Borges
Why it’s really about the death of God. -
Like just about all the greatest movies, Psycho works on the level of myth. It starts out as a faintly chintzy morality play in which Marion Crane, though she made a big mistake, will presumably be chastened, redeemed, protected, and rewarded by a universe that saves those who save themselves. It turns into a movie in which no one — not even a sinner who repents — will be saved. And that, for the first time in Hollywood, is a truly godless world. You don’t have to be Carl Jung to see that it was a game-changing reflection of what our world was becoming. Psycho cleaves the 20th century in half, turning order into chaos, ushering us into a new way of seeing, of being. Yet the movie’s ultimate paradox — it’s there in the final shot of the car being dredged out of the swamp — is that it lifts us up by dragging us down. Its monster is all too brutally real. At the same time, that monster really is a ghost — “Mrs. Bates” doesn’t even exist. So why does it trouble our sleep so when she goes bump in the night?
(Excerpt) Read more at movie-critics.ew.com ...
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I saw a documentary on the great Hitchcock recently. Interestingly, he had every shot meticulously planned out in advance, to the point that the actual filming of the movie was, for him, anticlimactic.
I have always liked his earlier films better. I never really favored his turn toward the bizarre and the shocking which, perhaps started with Psycho.
Psycho seems so tame compared to films produced these days, but it sure was scary back in the day.
“Psycho seems so tame compared to films produced these days, but it sure was scary back in the day.”
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Actually, to me, it still is more terrifying than the gore-in-your-face detritus being produced today.
Hitchcock understood that what you DIDN’T show had more potential to horrify, than what you actually framed with the camera lens.
Alien and Psycho are prime examples.
It’s been a while since I seen the movie, reading that made me want to watch it again.
The author mentioned “Manhunter” as the only other movie that is in the class of Psycho, I would add “Seven” to that list.
Well done.
What an academic over-analysis.
Hitch would agree with you.
Naw, ex-wife's birthday is in March, and she's 49.
I don`t think it`s possible to overrate the impact of Psycho. Pauline Kael said the shower scene was like a violation—it went where no ther movie ever had in terms of shock because that kind of thing isn`t supposed to happen to the main character partway through. I`m glad that Bernard Herrmann gets his due. The music really makes the movie, creating an unnerving atmosphere, but the shower music is simply the greatest use of music in a dramatic scene, ever. The music is so unusual and shocking in the moment that it`s like an ambush on the viewer, like a repeating musical scream, and I think it makes the viewer think `What the hell is happening?` on a subconscious level. I can think of few movies that have been as influential as Psycho.
I read the book PSYCHO by Robert Bloch years ago.
It takes place between Tulsa, OK and Joplin MO.
Norman was very fat, like Michael Moore.
Still a darn good movie!
I saw an interview with Janet Leigh a number of years ago in which she talked about the shower scene. She said they did several takes, but Alfred Hitchcock felt he wasn’t getting a realistic enough reaction from her during the scene (he felt her screaming didn’t sound genuine enough.) He told her they would try it again. Unknown to her, however, this time he switched from the warm water that was being used in the shower to ice cold water. The screaming that Janet Leigh does in the scene is primarily due to her reaction to the ice cold water.
A prime example of government’s good intentions causing psychosis and mayhem in citizens lives.
Had the new highway never been built things would have been booming at the Bates Motel.
(yeah, I know it’s a stretch!)
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