Psycho (1960)

USA, 109 minutes
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Writers: Joseph Stefano, Robert Bloch
Photography: John L. Russell
Music: Bernard Herrmann
Editor: George Tomasini
Cast: Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, John Gavin, Martin Balsam, John McIntire, Simon Oakland, Frank Albertson, Patricia Hitchcock, Mort Mills

Alfred Hitchcock’s full-tilt stab at horror must have come as something of a shock to those who had grown used to the technicolor antics and capers of all those sparkling Hollywood stars in Hitchcock’s ‘50s productions, whatever weird trails they might have gone down, such as Vertigo. But Psycho remains a classic horror show to this day, one of the pictures most associated with Hitchcock and one by which he may be best remembered. It came at the tail end of arguably his greatest run, after Vertigo and North by Northwest, and it heralded the dawn of the kandy-kolored tangerine dream decade that was to follow with the grit and harsh contrasts of a movie that was black and white on multiple levels to its core.

It takes a number of chances, most notably in the single-minded way it goes for the look and feel of a tawdry low-budget shocker as well as in the relatively brief screen time given to its female lead, Janet Leigh. In many ways, and in spite of its feature length, it operates as a particularly meticulous installment of his TV show, complete with story twists and surprises and a clumsy everything's-all-right-after-all coda, grounded in the reassuring avuncular tones of a professional psychiatrist. Because of those story twists and surprises, and how artfully the picture manages to husband its secrets, I feel obligated at this point to mention that spoilers are ahead.


The best parts of Psycho, no question, all feature Janet Leigh, and once she's done in in the famous shower scene, the life of this movie tends to drain away as inexorably as the chocolate syrup used for blood in that scene drains down the bathtub, lingering on that brilliant and brilliantly cold shot of Leigh's dead face pressed into the bathroom floor, eyes wide open and unblinking. Until that point it is as lean and taut and ruthless in its brutal arithmetic as anything Hitchcock or indeed most other filmmakers have ever done.

An opening shot of the Phoenix skyline slowly, slowly swirls in on and finally enters from the outside a cheap hotel room where a midday tryst between Marion Crane (played by Janet Leigh) and Sam Loomis (played by John Gavin), her jut-jawed lunk of a boyfriend, is just then being concluded. Marion Crane is a good girl, you know that because she's prowling around the hotel room in white underwear, and talking seriously about marrying Sam. But still, she's prowling around in her underwear (Sam is recently divorced, we finally learn, and under a heavy yoke of alimony). "They also pay who meet in hotel rooms," Marion Crane murmurs, trying to make the case that she's already taken on the for-better-or-worse of a marriage, as ready for the commitment (and pleasures) as anyone could be. When Sam scoffs that she can lick the stamps when he sends his alimony payments, Marion says, "I'll lick the stamps."

Later, back at work, she finds herself on the wrong end of a leering flirtation with an older man (played by Frank Albertson) flaunting a pile of cash, and even whose comments on the weather are somehow lascivious: "Hot as fresh milk!" On an impulse she finds a way to rob him. Back in her home, packing to get out of town, she's shown prowling around now in black underwear (or perhaps red—it's not easy to make out through the gray tones), because now she's a bad girl, even if her crime is for love. And thus begins the greatest low-speed chase sequence for 35 years, until O.J. Simpson and his buddy took a suitcase full of wigs and disguises and his white Ford Bronco and attempted to beat it to Mexico. (Once again a score by Bernard Herrmann is called on to perform yeoman's work in making Marion's flight so effective.)

By the time Marion spots the Bates Motel sign swimming out of nighttime rain it's likely plain to any and all that she is a doomed woman—no friends, no help, guilt heavy on her single woman's brow. These are facts about her that it doesn't take Norman Bates (played by a youthful and unsettling Anthony Perkins, who has perhaps never been better) long to figure out. Her false name on the register, her shifting stories of her circumstances, and finally her all but unambiguous acknowledgment of her guilt and her isolation quickly mark her as an ideal victim for a serial killer.

Perkins is so great because he's at once so boyishly charming and yet so disquieting and malevolent that he is almost perfectly creepy, establishing himself as one of the great screen villains, surrounded by his stuffed birds and with his peephole into Marion's room, where we can watch nearly as eagerly as him as Janet Leigh's clothes come off and she wraps herself in a sexy robe before heading into the bathroom to take her final shower.

For all his charm, Bates has an evident edge gnawing away at him, which never lets viewers relax in his presence, as when he responds to Marion's suggestion that he consider institutionalizing his mother, who is obviously troubled. He bristles, furious. "What do you know about caring?" he says. "People always mean well. The cluck their thick tongues, and shake their heads, and suggest, oh so very delicately..." It's not a comfortable moment, sequestered at that moment in Bates's parlor behind the office, eating a sandwich and milk while he watches her sardonically.

The appearance of Perkins also heralds the arrival of the film's unexpected humor, which is icy and cutting and very funny, one of its greatest and most enduring features, yet always careful, again, never to give away too many of the film's secrets. Some of the best jokes are not understood until later viewings, as when Bates, apologizing for the awkward position created by the fight that Marion has overheard him have with his mother, says, "My mother—what is the phrase?—she isn't quite herself today."

If the first half of Psycho stands as the greatest episode of Hitchcock's TV show ever, the second half for the most part is more typical of its humdrum output, as Marion's sister Lila (played by Vera Miles) and a private detective (played nicely by Martin Balsam) and Sam all put their heads together to try to solve the mystery of what happened to Marion. And solve it they do, of course, eventually, and then, as embellishment, as a kind of dessert for the gourmand, the psychiatrist (played by Simon Oakland) struts on to illuminate mysteries of serial murder itself. For me the best way to take this last scene is as another of Hitchcock's jokes, and in that light it's not a bad joke, though unfortunately as much as anything one at the expense of the squares watching. I suppose they don't deserve any better, but it's as cold as anything else here.