Rebecca

Rebecca

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Starring: Joan Fontaine, Laurence Olivier, Judith Anderson

1940

The only film of Hitchcock’s that the Oscars saw fit to recognize, Rebecca is certainly one of Hitchcock’s strongest works.  Not quite up to his true genius of the decades to come, however, and it is really such a shame that the Academy only recognized this, and not more layered and phenomenal films like Rear Window.

Joan Fontaine plays a young, timid, shy ladies’ companion vacationing with her brusque and societal leech of an employer, Mrs. Van Hopper.  While in Monaco, she meets Maxim de Winter (Olivier), a tortured widower seemingly trying to forget the drowning death of his much beloved wife, Rebecca.  The two fall in love and marry quickly, then Maxim takes her back to Manderley, his expansive estate back in England, where she soon realizes the strange hold that the first Mrs. de Winter seems to still have over both the house and all the servants, staff, and indeed, her husband.

It’s funny – this is a scary film.  Sort of.  It’s Hitchcock, to be sure, and immensely suspenseful, but in a very untraditional manner.  It’s practically a period piece, even though it was set during current times.  Manderley is such a character in the film, it makes the entire film feel as if it came from a different era.  There’s a dreamy quality that emanates from this strange estate, a feeling established in the opening shot of the film which, indeed, is revealed to be a dream sequence through a voiceover.  The house is immense, hollow, expansive, and of another era.  It’s easy to see how it could get inside your head, start playing games with you.

As if the house itself wasn’t bad enough, there’s Mrs. Danvers (Anderson), the housekeeper.  Brrr – this is not someone I’d want hovering around while I’m living in a joint!  Cold and imperious from the first, she utterly dominates everything and everyone around her.  It’s revealed that she was devoted to her first mistress, Rebecca.  It’s not difficult to extend this devotion to more of an infatuation, or even obsession.  Mrs. Danvers, with her no-nonsense bun and perfectly straight shoulders, seems just the sort of person who could easily flirt with the edge of insanity.  Anderson plays the role to the hilt as well, spewing thinly disguised insults and manipulations from her very first entrance.

The intimidating Mrs. Danvers and the cavernous Manderley play host to The Second Mrs. de Winter, Joan Fontaine’s character.  Fascinatingly, she is not given a name.  I’m certain that Mrs. Van Hopper introduces her once to Maxim de Winter at the beginning of the film, but that is the only time she’s given a name, and even then I’m not so sure.  Even IMDB lists her character as “The Second Mrs. de Winter.”  Her identity itself is tied up in being the Second Wife After Rebecca.  Once she arrives at Manderley, she is constantly haunted by the shadow of the first, indominatable mistress.  Fontaine plays her role as a baby foal trying to walk for the first time.  All breathlessness and wobbly knees, here is a woman who is very much in love with her new husband, but extraordinarily out of her element in this new environment.  She was not raised in society, nor does she does not know how to fit into society, a fact that Mrs. Danvers is all too aware of, as well as something that only prompts disgust from the staunch housekeeper. 

Fontaine’s character is simply no match for her new world.  As if the house and the creepy Mrs. Danvers weren’t enough for this poor girl (and she really is only a girl) to contend with, soon her husband starts behaving oddly as well.   Laurence Olivier – always a force of nature – is phenomenal as the brooding and mysterious Maxim de Winter.  When we meet him in Monaco, he seems more bemused by Joan Fontaine than in love with her, which makes his very sudden marriage proposal somewhat confusing.  Then, once he’s married her and brought her back to Manderley, he starts to fall into tempers, become withdrawn, or flies off the handle at the tiniest mistake.  Really, what has this poor girl gotten into?  Is Rebecca really that a strong a force that she controls the housekeeper, the house, and her husband, all from beyond the grave?  Well, it certainly seems so, but Rebecca has some tricks up her sleeve yet.

Hitchcock photographs the film brilliantly.  Reminiscent of Otto Preminger (I was forcibly reminded of Laura several times during the course of the film even though I know Rebecca came first), there is a romantic gothic sensibility to the photography here, fitting for the novelist Daphne du Maurier’s work.  We get long lingering shots of the house, showing the caverns of each room, the high ceilings, the long staircases in beautiful shimmery black and white.  The cinematography draws out the mystery, making gauzy window curtains seem as though they may contain a ghost.

There is a central mystery to Rebecca, but unraveling it here for you makes it no fun.  There is a quiet beauty, something very unostentatious about this film.  And really, it’s very creepy, but for very different reasons than any other traditional horror or suspense film.

Arbitrary Rating: 9/10

Rear Window

Rear Window

1954

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Starring: James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Thelma Ritter, Raymond Burr

Before I had ever laid my eyes upon a single Hitchcock film (and I shamefully admit I hadn’t seen any of his work prior to working my way deliberately through 1001 Movies), I really had no idea what he was about as a director.  I vaguely thought he made scary movies, predecessors of movies like Friday the 13^th.  Now, having seen all of Hitchcock’s films from 1001 Movies and a handful of others to boot, I honestly don’t know if I’d describe any of them as “scary.”  And Rear Window certainly isn’t frightening.  It’s got moments where it’s tense and moments where it’s thrilling, to be certain, but not scary.  But, despite my expectations being completely wrong, I think I fell in love with Hitchcock’s Rear Window the most because it’s so many things.  It’s funny, it’s compelling, it’s sexy, it’s tense, it’s thrilling… it’s all of these things, none of which I initially expected, and all of which work and blend together perfectly.

“Jeff” Jeffries (Stewart) is an action photographer who travels the world.  Unfortunately, he’s currently recuperating in his Greenwich Village apartment waiting for his broken leg to heal before he can get out on assignment again.  He’s driven crazy with cabin fever, but his fashion model-slash-socialite girlfriend Lisa (Kelly) is thrilled that Jeff is homebound for awhile.  She’s desperately in love with him, but he isn’t sure their lifestyles are a match.  Soon, though, Jeff gets distracted from his relationship woes by watching the lives of his neighbors across the courtyard of his apartment building.  His interest turns into an obsession when he thinks he sees his neighbor across the way (Burr) murder his wife, but did Jeff really see what he think he saw?

  

My heart bursts with adoration for this film.  It’s so good.  All of it, it’s so good.  So, gosh, what can I say about it?  I guess I simply have to enumerate the bits about it I love.

1.      Jeff and Lisa’s relationship.  Smack dab in the middle of the stultifying 1950s, Hitchcock manages to present to us a complicated relationship between two strong-willed people.  I sense that Jeff’s instincts are correct, that he and Lisa are fundamentally different people, and that if they were to marry, those differences would ultimately prove very difficult to overcome.  At the same time, however, there is a great love and attraction between them.  Lisa is hopelessly in love with Jeff, and cannot break herself from him, despite the fact that at one point in the film, she vocalizes the knowledge that it probably would be for the best for them to split up.  

Add on top of a complicated relationship the even more complicated arousals caused by Jeff’s, and then Lisa’s, voyeurism, and Jeff and Lisa grow even more complex.  As both are sucked into the soap opera of Jeff’s neighbors’ lives, he finds himself falling more and more in love with her.  The simple answer is that this has happened because he is happy to find she has a flaw, but I think it’s more than that.  If Jeff was looking for a flaw in Lisa’s life, he could have easily found one elsewhere (for one, she’s stubborn – we see that before she starts peeping at others).  No, Jeff has some sort of erotic response to Lisa’s enjoyment of watching others.  I love the way Stewart smiles, like a giddy little school boy, when he glows at a gushing Lisa just back from doing a bit of illegal sleuthing.  It’s more than a little dirty; it’s messy, as a matter of fact.  Theirs is not a simple relationship.  And the finale of the film hardly states clearly what will happen to Jeff and Lisa.  Will they stay together?  Will they split up?  Can they find a way to be happy?  Their happy ending is hardly guaranteed.  I love it.  I love them.

2.      Voyeurism.  Oh lordy, but Hitchcock knew that deep down, so many of us like to watch, and he just splashes it up on the screen in broad daylight in Rear Window.  Just like Stella, Jeff’s nurse (played immaculately by Ritter), we judge Jeff at first for his peeping tom habit.  But then, it doesn’t take us long at all to get completely caught up in the world of others, and we get annoyed at the “real life people” who try to knock down Jeff’s theories of what happened to the neighbor’s wife.  I can remember being five or six years old and raising my bedroom window curtain at night to look out at the neighbor’s house.  I don’t know what I was hoping to see, but I knew I was hoping to see something.  Anything.  As Jane Austen says, “Who are we, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn.”  This vein runs deep throughout the human experience, and it’s both universal and shameful.  Voyeurism – Rear Window exploits this in spades.  It’s a fascinating movie because of it, and it also makes me feel a little naughty.  Hitchcock knew this. 

The sense of spying is palpable throughout, but Hitchcock does it smartly by playing Jeff’s subjective observations against the facts of what we see.  Jeff is quick to link simple observations together with wild conjecture and we are inclined to believe him, until we remember one vital scene where we see something Jeff doesn’t see.  It’s a clever inclusion in the film; we are thinking we’re getting Jeff’s first person account, but this one small sequence is enough to upset that.  Can we trust Jeff?  Can we trust the crazy stories he’s coming up with?  The only way to answer these 

 questions, though, is to look more.  To keep spying.

3.      The performances.  It would be hard for me to come up with a Jimmy Stewart performance I enjoy more than that of Jeff Jeffries, and I cannot come up with a Grace Kelly performance I like more than that of Lisa Fremont.  Stewart’s Jeff is likeable but hardly heroic.  He is a bit of a troubling hero in that the entire film is about his growing obsession, and that obsession puts him in great danger.  Unlike Vertigo, however, where Stewart’s character crosses a line and becomes odious to me, Jeff is sympathetic if not a little off his rocker.  Stewart is great at playing a bit crazy and a bit frustrated.  Jeff’s injuries also represent his lack of power and Jeff slowly realizes how vulnerable he really is.  Stewart does a great job.  As for Kelly, her introduction is downright breathtaking, as she leans in, glowing and dewy, and plants a slow motion kiss on Jimmy Stewart.  She then gracefully walks around the apartment lighting lamps as she speaks her name.  It’s just a gorgeous film introduction; you can see how Hitchcock was infatuated with her.  But it’s not just her presentation I love; I love Lisa’s character.  I love how strong she is, how daring she is, but most of all, how horny she is.  I have never seen Grace Kelly so downright into a guy as Lisa is into Jeff.  No other director had the guts to give Kelly material like this one, and I really respond to her performance here because of it.

4.      The many, many changes in tone that never seem forced or incongruent.  Rear Window is like one gigantic smorgasbord of a film, picking and choosing and shifting constantly.  Because it’s all about spying on neighbors, there are many different stories taking place at the same time, and yet it works.  Jeff makes an offhand crack and it’s funny and I laugh.  The neighbor across the way, the one we think murdered his wife, is behaving oddly and I am nervous.  The other neighbors from the fifth floor wheel their dog down to the garden in basket and I am warmed by their eccentricity.  Lisa pulls out her slinky overnight bag and I chuckle at the sexy arousal.  But most of all, I see Miss Lonely Hearts across the way and I am sad.  I feel all of these things in Rear Window – happy, thrilled, nervous, uncertain, scintillated, and melancholic.  Hitchcock does none of these feelings halfway; when he wants you to laugh, you really laugh.  The scene is really funny.  When he wants you to feel sad, it’s really sad.  The stuff with Miss Lonely Hearts could have been a movie unto itself.  I feel that storyline with an acute pain; it’s so sad and painful yet beautiful in its melancholia as well.  That Hitchcock is able to pull all of these feelings together so well, with such grace, in one film, is astounding.  

5.      The soundtrack.  As a fan of classical music, I always pay attention to music in film.  It’s something I notice and like to think about.  Rear Window is so damn smart in its soundtrack, in that it doesn’t exactly have one.  That is to say, there is definitely a soundtrack, but not a traditional one.  A composer was hired (NOT Herrmann, interestingly enough) but the score he wrote is one of background noises, because that’s what the soundtrack to Rear Window is.  Given that the entire story is that of Jeff Jeffries looking out his apartment window in the Manhattan summer, Hitchcock made a tremendous decision to avoid traditional scoring and instead rely completely on ambient noise.  That’s all we hear.  If the other apartments are silent, there is no background music.  If another apartment is playing music, then there is music.  But there is always the distant sound of the cabs and cars and street sounds.  I like this decision quite a bit; it reminds me of the times I’ve spent in Manhattan when it’s impossible to escape the noises and hubbub of the world around you.

In closing, I need to add that Rear Window is a film that everyone should try to see on the big screen.  There are certain classics that you obviously realize you should take the chance to see in a theater if it comes up – films like Gone With the Wind, Lawrence of Arabia, or 2001: A Space Odyssey are no-brainers.  Of course you’ll see it on the big screen if you can.  But Rear Window isn’t as obvious a choice.  Several years ago, the Dryden had a double feature, North by Northwest and Rear Window (oh boy, that was a great night), and of course I went.  I was beyond surprised, however, to discover how much Rear Window changed by seeing it in a theater.  The major theme of the film, voyeurism, is amplified to a truly remarkable level with the magnification that comes with the big screen.  You can see an amazing level of detail in the neighbors’ apartments when watching it nice and big and blown up.  It really reinforces the idea of peering into someone else’s life, and as such, magnifies the effect of the whole movie.  Honestly, if this is a movie you at all enjoy, GO SEE IT IN A THEATER if you EVER get the chance.  It’s just not the same as seeing it on your little TV (even if your TV, like our TV, is quite a large TV). 

Arbitrary Rating: 10/10.  I never get tired of this one.  Favorite Hitchcock, right here.

The 39 Steps

This was clearly an early poster - notice the lack of advertising for Hitchcock's name.

The 39 Steps

1935

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Starring: Robert Donnat, Madeleine Carroll

Alfred Hitchcock is known as the Master of Suspense, everyone knows that.  But what does that mean for a modern viewer delving into his works?  It means that in a film from 1935, only seven years after talkies hit Hollywood, Hitchcock produced a truly riveting, suspenseful film that nonetheless contains a sense of fun comedy as well.  That is, classic Hitchcock.

Our main character is Hannay (Donat), a Canadian vacationing in England, who goes out to the music hall one night.  A gunshot rings out through the crowded hall.  In the mad rush out, a mysterious, beautiful woman with an accent asks him to take her home.  She’s a spy, and when she is murdered in his apartment in the middle of the night, he is blamed for her murder.  He takes on her mission for the good of England while trying to evade both enemy spies and omnipresent policemen.  What emerges is a mad chase from London to Scotland and back again, during the course of which he falls in with cool blonde Pamela (Carroll) who makes things infinitely more difficult.

The 39 Steps is first and foremost a suspense film, and it’s very well done in this regard.  Hitchcock is clever in how he ratchets up the tension throughout the film.  In the first half, when Hannay is running to Scotland, the sense of him being pursued is derived from the major forms of mass communication, mostly the newspaper.  Hannay is constantly trying to evade newspapers.  At first, some silly lingerie salesmen he shares a train compartment with are nattering about the murder of the lady spy because they have read it in the paper.  Do they suspect him?  Suddenly their silliness seems menacing.  Hannay escapes to a country croft in Scotland, but the crofter takes the paper, and he worries again; will they turn him in?  Friends become foes, and police are always nipping at Hannay’s heels.  There are more close scrapes than you can shake a stick at.  It’s a tremendously suspenseful film; not, perhaps, in the modern cinematic sense, but for a film from the 1930s, it’s absolutely crackerjack.

  

The 39 Steps is also significant in establishing so many traits we associate with Hitchcock.  It’s the first time Hitchcock fully delved into a story about “The Wrong Man,” a theme he returned to again and again in his later works.  Hannay has to be clever in order to fight against his unjust persecution.  We also have the police as enemies, not as friends, another major Hitchcockian thematic element.  This is played out so fully in The 39 Steps that you’ll worry far less about the bad guys catching Hannay than the cops catching Hannay.  Hitchcock even gives us cops flat out lying to Hannay, pretending to believe his story of innocence then turning around and arresting him.  While the police are not evil in the traditional sense, they clearly cannot be trusted either.  The plot device that drives the film – seeking out “the 39 steps” because it’s some impressive spy secret that’s necessary to save England – is a huge MacGuffin.  It hardly matters by the end of the film what “the 39 steps” are; all that matters is that it caused our hero to go on the run.  We even have our blonde female, cold, a little cruel and a little sexy all at once.  I know Hitchcock made a fairly large number of films before this one, and I’ve seen some of them, but in my rather uneducated opinion, this is the first Hitchcock movie that is thoroughly and completely Hitchcockian in nature.  It’s the first time he fully realized what he was all about in terms of story, devices, cinematography, and dialogue.  In fact, an argument could be made that North by Northwest, when you boil it down, is essentially a remake of The 39 Steps but with a bigger budget and better technology.  This is not a knock at North by Northwest, not at all, but the same ideas that course through its veins are here in The 39 Steps as well.

Hitchcock was always an innovator, but he concealed it by producing films with mass market appeal.  Throughout his career, however, he would always dabble with the experimental, finding ways to make his films using alternate techniques.  The 39 Steps is a classic example of this.  Sound was still relatively new, so there is no traditional music soundtrack in The 39 Steps, but Hitchcock is smart in his use of sound effects.  Just after our mysterious lady spy has been killed, the phone rings.  There is no swelling of violins in the background (Bernard Herrmann would come later), but it’s not needed, not with the incessant ringing of the phone.  The ring takes on a sinister sound as we start to believe it’s the bad guys come to finish off Hannay as well.  When we later see the mysterious spy’s face superimposed over a shot of the men we think are after her, again we have Hitchcock playing around with film techniques.  Furthermore, there is definitely a play of light and shadow, perhaps from the influence of German Expressionism, that later turned into the films from Hitchcock’s oeuvre that are most definitely films noir.

There is a sly sense of sexiness that makes The 39 Steps still feel juicy today.  The film was made in England so there was no Hays Code, but Hitchcock would have still had to play by its rules in order to get distribution in the States.  That being said, like so many films of the time, Hitchcock found a way around its strictures to get a little racy.  There are the obvious aforementioned lingerie salesmen who unblushingly produce undergarments from their briefcase, right before they start telling dirty limericks.  A priest glances a little too long at said some lingerie.  Hannay has to pretend to be having an illicit affair in order to sneak out of his flat, and later, throws the police off his track by making out with Pamela by means of an introduction.  The country crofter who gives Hannay a bed immediately suspects that he is making eyes at his young pretty wife.  And lastly, much of Hannay and Pamela’s interaction comes with the two of them being literally handcuffed to each other, so the sly, tongue-in-cheek suggestions as to how they spent the night together become a bit salacious (watch how she takes her stockings off, then go get a glass of ice water), despite the fact that nothing is shown.  It’s all about hinting at all the sexuality without really seeing anything.  

  

I love the chemistry between Madeleine Carroll, the cool blonde, and Robert Donnat.  Pamela wholly believes that Hannay is a murderer, and when she winds up handcuffed to him, things get interesting.  It’s at this point that the picture turns from a nonstop thrill ride to a romance under unlikely circumstances.  The formula of a bickering pair turned romantic pair is one of which I will never tire when done well, and Hitchcock does it well.  A particular favorite scene of mine is when Donnat, tired of trying to convince her of his innocence, starts to tell Carroll the tall tales of his “life as a murderer.”  He rattles it off with such an exasperated coolness that she starts giggling.  Who wouldn’t?  

  

There is a delicious sense of a full-circle in this film with Hannay’s game of cat and mouse taking him from a music hall in London to the moors of Scotland, then back to a crowded hall in London.  It gives a sense of completeness that is very satisfying.  Overall, The 39 Steps is a wonderful romantic romp, a suspenseful thriller, and a great adventure.  For me, I have a soft spot for it because I saw it in my first month of watching films from the 1001 Movies list, and it truly impressed me.  I still remember watching it for the first time and getting completely caught up in the suspenseful adventure, literally dropping my jaw on more than one occasion.  It’s a little primitive, but no more so than any other film from the thirties, and more advanced than most of its counterparts.  Most of all, though, this is a fully realized Hitchcock film.

Arbitrary Rating: 9/10.  A sentimental favorite.

Psycho

 

Psycho

1960

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Starring: Janet Leigh, Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, John Gavin

Don’t go in the bathroom.

I have to say this from the get-go: I have to talk about spoilers in this write up.  I hope that readers of this blog know that I try really hard not to spoil a film if I can possibly help it, but I can’t help it here.  So… if you haven’t seen Pyscho, just skip this whole entry.  Go read something else.  Or, even better, go watch Psycho.

So is that perfectly clear?  I’ll be spoiling away here?  You know what you’re getting yourself into?  Fantastic.

The police officer has warned you!

Marion Crane (Leigh) is a receptionist for a realtor in Phoenix.  She loves her sexy boyfriend Sam (Gavin) but they’re too poor to marry.  When an opportunity presents itself, she leaves town with $40,000 in cold hard cash, running away to marry her boyfriend.  But Marion is a pretty shitty thief, and she is plagued by attacks of anxiety.  She pulls over in a rainstorm to spend the night at the Bates Motel where she is met by quirky oddball Norman (Perkins) who manages the place while his overbearing mother watches over the motel from their house on the hilltop.  Poor Marion doesn’t make it through the night at the Bates Motel, which prompts Sam and Marion’s sister Lila (Miles) to start investigating Marion’s disappearance.

Part of the reason I mention the spoilers at the beginning is because I had this film massively spoiled for me.  I suppose it’s my own fault – I didn’t get around to seeing Psycho until I was in my late twenties.  By then, being as interested in pop culture as I am, bits and pieces had been continually leaked to me and I had put everything together.  In all honesty, because of this and because of the enormity of Psycho’s reputation, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed the first time I saw it.  I mean really, how on earth was it going to live up to its incredibly ridiculous reputation?  It just couldn’t, not for me.  I rather wish I had seen it when I was younger, as it would have been lovely not to expect Janet Leigh’s shower scene death or Norman Bates dressed as his own mother.  Psycho will always have a touch of the disappointing to me.

Something I’ve realized about Hitchcock is just how much of an innovator he was.  He made successful films, but he also liked to experiment with film – just consider Rope.  I consider the major innovation in Psycho to be the narrative (along with some pretty badass shot composition).  I mean really, the dude essentially invented an entire subgenre of films with this one explosive film, the slasher horror genre, with a nice dose of the concept of the serial killer film as well.  Psycho was technically based on a novel (which was based on a real life killer), but Hitchcock, by his own admission, read it then completely threw it away, cherry-picking things he liked and changing things he didn’t.

The film is almost three stories in one.  The first half hour is focused entirely on Marion’s anxiety-laden decision to steal the $40,000.  We meet her in a seedy hotel (with a great crotch shot of her boyfriend right above her face that made laugh, it was so suggestive) and establish her financial difficulties.  When she finally decides to flee with the cash, we have what I consider to be the tensest parts of the film.  Marion is not a good criminal – she’s never done it before, after all – so when a cop stops her on the road to ask her some routine questions, she’s stupidly nervous in her responses, which naturally raises red flags for said cop.  Her decision to trade in her car for a different one at a used car shop is unexpectedly filled with danger.  Marion’s escape from Phoenix to the Bates Motel is incredibly tense and suspenseful.  That’s story #1.

hee hee hee...

Story #2 starts as soon as Marion pulls into the Bates Motel and we introduce Norman.  This story is about a sad, lonely man living alone with his vicious mother, and we openly feel sympathy for him, just like Marion.  Still, he’s a little off, so while the sense of suspense has faded from the first part of the movie, it’s been replaced with a different feeling, one of unease.  In the classic parlor room conversation between Marion and Normal, Hitchcock rarely films the two in a two-shot, instead choosing alternating one-shots to help convince us how they different these two are.  Marion is shot with a lovely, flattering light, surrounded by soft shapes, emphasizing that she’s fundamentally likeable.  Norman, however – ha ha ha.  Norman is shot from unflattering angles with harsh lighting, and he’s surrounded by the birds he’s stuffed, many of which are arranged in horribly vicious positions filled with sharp angles.  Our initial sympathy for Normal is fading a bit, and the feeling of unease is increasing.  When Marion is killed in the classic shower scene, a scene so famous it’s a bit ridiculous, Norman finds the body and cleans up after the killer.  I found the clean-up more interesting than the actual murder.  Norman is shocked by Marion’s body, but watch how he cleans up – with ruthless efficiency (just like the Spanish Inquisition).  He barely pauses for breath as he goes about scrubbing the bathroom clean then dumping the car, with the body, in the swamp.  I love Hitchcock’s touch of having the car sink most of the way then stop.  It’s a heart-stopping moment, least of which is because you realize that you are rooting for a man to get away with covering up a murder.  

Story #3 starts as soon as the car has sunk and is also my least favorite portion of the film.  Marion’s sister Lila is investigating Marion’s disappearance with the help of Marion’s boyfriend Sam and a private investigator.  This part of the film has a hint of the haunted house to it as we get peeks for the first time behind the door of Norman’s mother’s house.  The house holds all the answers to the secrets that have been asked, and it is in the house that additional murders are committed and attempted, but also where we do finally get our resolution.  The clunky investigating skills of Lila and Sam are laughable, but I think they’re meant to be.  We have Norman’s final attack, the discovery of the mother, and then that ending.

Even my husband, who is not nearly as analytical as I am when it comes to film, commented independently (I was trying to remain mum on the subject, as I was curious what he thought) that he felt the psychiatrist ending was unnecessary.  “Show us a bit of it,” he said, “and show us Norman wrapped up in the blanket, but we didn’t really need all of that.  Plus it was way too long.”  Honey, I completely agree.  There’s far too much exposition at the end of the film.  Really, we get it.  We’ve seen Norman dressed up like dear old Mama.  You don’t need to blather on for many minutes about his multiple personality disorder.  Thank goodness for the cut to Norman in the room, because it manages to get back that sense of creepiness that we lost in the psychobabble.  (I suppose Hitch really does love his psychobabble – Spellbound is proof enough of that.)

I forgot how good Anthony Perkins is as Norman Bates.  He stands out amongst his cast members.  The fifties and sixties were a time of great change in film, changes that included approaches to acting style.  Perkins’ performance seems to come from the same school of thought that Marlon Brando championed, related to the idea of method acting, where a role is completely embodied in a very naturalistic manner by the actor.  Everyone else in the film, however, is much more old school Hollywood in their performances.  They’re fine, but they feel far more theatrical, and therefore, less real.  Perkins, with all his stutters and tics and nervous twitches, is so much better.  It’s easy to understand why Perkins was never capable of completely shedding Norman Bates – he’s just too good.  (My husband would appreciate me adding that he thought Janet Leigh did a very nice job too.  While I don’t think she was as good as Perkins, I do think this is the best performance I’ve ever seen by her.)

 

I also forgot just how good Bernard Herrmann’s score is.  Everyone knows the knife slashing “REE REE REE!” of the shower sequence, but there’s so much more to Psycho’s score than just some dissonant chords.  Done entirely with a string orchestra (as a clarinetist, I officially want to lodge a complaint to Herrmann – show some woodwinds some love, man!), the score as a whole is very good.  It’s alternately thrilling and then quiet and tense.  It’s particularly good in the first half of the film, helping greatly to up the tension when Marion is fleeing.  (My husband would now appreciate me adding that the main theme of Psycho – not the REE REE REE bit but the actual main theme – is used as a musical introduction when his favorite band Dream Theater performs live.)

The last thing I want to say about Psycho is that it will always remind of an anecdote from my family.  My mother was 10 when this film came out, and Hitchcock flooded the airwaves with advertisement and strategic marketing techniques (No one admitted after the film has started!).  My grandfather, who was a hoot and a half, was rather taken with Hitchcock’s personality, and would march around the house quoting the ads, saying “Don’t go in the bawwwthroom,” as he was mimicking Hitchcock’s low voice and British accent.  I can hear my grandfather saying that, as well as my mother imitating my grandfather.  It makes me smile. 

I really like the first hour of Pyscho much more than the last 45 minutes.  It’s stronger, it’s tenser, it’s more interesting.  Solving the mystery of Psycho in the last half is necessary but clunky.  But I will absolutely give Hitchcock his due, and admit that though this films lacks some traditional Hitchcockian suspense elements (not all, but some), he also pretty much invented the slasher horror genre, the psychopathic serial killer genre, and must have also supplied a huge inspiration to what would eventually become the police procedural television series.

I just wish I hadn’t had the whole dang thing spoiled for me.  It certainly sapped the film of some (most?) of its power.

Arbitrary Rating: 8/10