Ufr angellier close-up on alfred hitchcock

2.A Very Controversial Film

A story that could happen to everybody

What makes this film so shocking is its realism. Indeed, it is very easy for the spectators to identify with Marion Crane. At the beginning of the film, we are given the time and place, which makes the story real. According to Amanda Wells, it is this realism that makes Psycho so distressing:

Alfred Hitchcock knew he had audiences thinking this could happen to anyone, in any town in America, and that is one of the reasons the film so frightened spectators who were more used to fantasy horror films about zombies and vampires.³⁴

Besides, since we share Marion’s POV until her death, we become her accomplices to a certain extent. The film opens in medias res and the spectators rapidly understand that Marion and Sam’s relationship is illicit because they are not married. And yet, we want to know what is going to happen, our curiosity is triggered. Moreover, when Marion steals the money, we side with her (even if stealing is not right) and we want the policeman to stop investigating. We are relieved when she arrives at the motel. However, when Norman is watching her, we cannot help but watch her also. Hitchcock used a lens that resembled the most a human being’s eye. As a result, when we watch her through the hole, it is as if we were at Norman’s place. We want to know what is going to happen. As Jean Douchet explains: « Notre désir de voir va encore se fortifier : Perkins est comme nous et regarde sa cliente se déshabiller. Va-t-il y avoir viol ou vol ? Ni l’un ni n’autre mais pis. »³⁵

The shower scene is the most famous moment of Psycho. A lot of critics have dealt with this scene and they all agree to analyse it as a metaphor for the main protagonist’s will of giving the money back. Indeed, Marion is cleansing her sins. The shower thus acts as a sort of purification. Marion is smiling as if she was relieved to have changed her mind and to have decided to give the money back [46:46] (Fig. 38).

Fig. 38: Marion’s “purification”

On the other hand, the spectators side with Norman after Marion’s death because, deep down, we wish Marion’s car to disappear into the muddy water. Jean Douchet adds:

Enfin, elle [la voiture de Marion] s’enfonce complètement, définitivement. Nous poussons un soupir de soulagement. Les ténèbres – ou notre inconscient – ont englouti, croyons-nous, à jamais, notre complicité de vol. Mais pour cela, nous sommes devenus complices d’un crime…³⁶

Nevertheless, when we discover that his mother is dead and, therefore, that Norman is the murderer, we do not side with him anymore. We feel that we have been betrayed to a certain extent. This is what Truffaut explains in his interviews with Hitchcock:

Au début on espère que Janet Leigh ne se fera pas prendre. Nous sommes très surpris par le meurtre, mais dès qu’Anthony Perkins efface les indices, on lui devient favorable, on espère qu’il ne sera pas inquiété. Plus tard, quand on apprend par le shérif que la mère de Perkins est morte depuis huit ans, alors brusquement on change de camp et on devient contre Anthony Perkins, mais par pure curiosité.³⁷

We keep on changing our opinion, as we adopt the POV of the protagonist that we follow.

A film that went beyond conventions

Censorship

In 1960, Hitchcock’s project was very daring. Indeed the Paramount refused to pay for the film because they thought it would be a failure and, among other things, they were opposed to the fact of showing a woman being murdered in her shower. Censorship was still very present at the time. As a consequence, Hitchcock financed the film himself and shot Psycho with his television crew. He explains his daring choices in his interviews with Truffaut. For instance, he told the director that he wanted to show Marion in her underwear in the hotel room in order to adapt to the new audiences:

Je ressentais le besoin de tourner la scène de cette façon, avec Janet Leigh en soutien-gorge car le public change, il évolue. La scène classique du baiser sain serait aujourd’hui méprisée par les jeunes spectateurs […]. Je sais qu’eux-mêmes se comportent comme John Gavin et Janet Leigh, et il faut leur montrer la façon dont ils se conduisent eux-mêmes, la plupart du temps.³⁸

Before releasing his film, he had to show it to people working for the Motion Picture Production Code (also known as the Hays Code). Hitchcock managed to convince the censors to maintain certain scenes and certain lines stipulating that he would remove others. For instance, he would have preferred to show Marion naked at the beginning of the film (when Marion is in the hotel room with her lover) and said to Truffaut that the scene would have been more interesting. He probably wanted to challenge the conventions of Hollywood cinema and to shock the audiences from the beginning. Hitchcock must be referring to this sort of scene when he says that he had to cut some shots in order to have other scenes accepted.

The shower scene was obviously problematic. The censors said that nudity was too present. However, Hitchcock sent the scene back to them and they could see no nudity. In fact, because of the numerous shots and the quick editing, the spectators have the feeling that they see nudity. Yet, it is only a cinematic effect, – another trick. The audience think they see Marion naked but nothing is actually shown³⁹. This sequence is made up of over fifty shots that last for two or three seconds. Therefore, spectators have the illusion of watching a gory scene whereas, in reality, they only see details. Hitchcock decided to use very quick shots in order to make the spectators think that each shot represented a cut in Marion’s body (the knife never actually touches her body). All these elements, mingled with Bernard Herrmann’s screeching music, contribute to create one of the most famous horror scenes in the history of cinema. Rumour has it that this scene was actually directed by Saul Bass, the graphic designer who made the opening credits of the film and who storyboarded some of Psycho’s scenes. Of course, Alfred Hitchcock, as well as Janet Leigh, denied this, and the main actress claimed that the whole sequence was directed by Hitchcock himself.

The direction of the audience

Hitchcock decided to “kill” the star of the film, which was a real challenge for the time, as we have already seen. He wanted to do something different, to shake people.

After the release of the film, Hitchcock continued to “direct” the audience. Indeed, he made a trailer explaining some of the major elements of the film (the shower scene in particular) in order to make people want to see the film. Moreover, it was forbidden for belated spectators to enter the theatres. By doing so, the director maintained the suspense around his film. Obviously, he did not want the spectators to arrive after the murder of Marion Crane. Since Janet Leigh was the star of the film, the spectators would have spent their time looking for her. There were a lot of posters reading: “No one… BUT NO ONE… will be admitted to the theatre after the start of each performance.”⁴⁰ And to top it all, the director bought all the copies of Robert Bloch’s Psycho (the novel that inspired Hitchcock) to prevent the audience from knowing the end of the plot.

Rumour also has it that, in order to maintain the suspense around his film, Hitchcock made his cast and crew swear that they would not reveal anything. As Vera Miles explains: “When we started to work, we all had to raise our hands and promise not to divulge one word of the story⁴¹.”

The presence of female characters

The question of gender is also at stake in Psycho. Indeed people were used to seeing films whose main character was a man. In the film, it is slightly different. As Amanda Wells explains, Marion represents a sexual threat. At the very beginning of the film, we understand that she has an illicit relationship with her lover Sam. At the time, at the start of the sixties, women were more sexually free than before thanks to, for instance, new methods of contraception. However, it threatened the traditional vision of the family. Marion Crane’s brutal murder can be interpreted as a punishment for her sexual transgressions. The fact that she smiles in her shower has also been interpreted by some critics as a sign of sexual enjoyment. This is reinforced by Norman’s comment when Marion is having dinner in his parlour. Norman says to her: “You eat like a bird”. For Amanda Wells: “Norman implies that although Marion may try to appear dainty just like a bird she must really have a tremendous appetite and therefore, underneath the surface be a voracious man-eater⁴².” As a consequence, her murder may be analysed as the disappearance of the sexual threat.

Also, we can notice that Marion is punished for her sexual transgressions whereas Sam Loomis, her lover, is not. Feminist critics have stated that Psycho is an evidence of the patriarchal ideology of Hollywood. Laura Mulvey pointed this out and, as already discussed, she forged the term “to-be-looked-at-ness”.

However, one has to bear in mind the character played by Vera Miles, Lila, who is Marion’s sister. As soon as Marion dies, Lila appears and she is the one who will discover the truth about her sister’s death. Therefore, the image of women in Psycho is not wholly negative.