‘We all go a little mad sometimes…’
As with many masterpieces, Psycho almost never happened at all. Paramount were understandably reluctant to distribute a film about a cross-dressing serial killer, and eventually director Alfred Hitchcock had to finance the film himself (which is why it is shot in black and white), work for a reduced fee and use the crew from his TV show Alfred Hitchcock Presents to keep costs down. When Hitch’s long-time assistant Peggy Robertson recommended Robert Bloch’s novel, the wily filmmaker must have known she was on to something…
Psycho is very much a film of two halves. The first half of the film follows Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) after she steals a significant amount of money from her workplace and goes on the run, before settling for the night at the Bates Motel. There she meets Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), and the two share an unforgettable shower. The second half of the film deals with the fallout of that infamous shower sequence.
Hitchcock had already played with structure before in Rope and, most notably, Vertigo. The latter film is essentially the same film played out twice with a ‘death’ scene in the middle. Psycho also boasts two sections separated by a murder. It is the first half of the film that is most lauded and what most people think of when heaping praise on Psycho. But I also love the second half. It’s grimier. It explores the dark, voyeuristic impulses that Hitchcock himself succumbed to, both as an artist and as a man. The second death scene, while nowhere near as iconic as the shower sequence, is just as brutally effective. It’s all tied together by Bernard Herrmann’s wondrous score – perhaps the most recognisable film score ever along with John Williams and Jaws – and the stark, black and white photography lends Psycho a timelessness that once again proves that necessity is the mother of invention (sorry… I shouldn’t mention mother around Norman).
Hitch changed the more salacious elements of the story (Marion is decapitated in the book instead of being stabbed to death), but the black heart beating at the centre of both works remains the same. Bates is deeply troubled. He was always destined to reach a breaking point. Psycho is that breaking point writ large on a canvas that has echoed throughout cinematic history and shows no signs of diminishing in influence any time soon. Audiences will always be drawn to Psycho because it’s like a Victorian ‘penny dreadful’, but wrapped in Hitchcock’s innate genius. Who could possibly resist?
Horror cinema goes right back to Haxan and Nosferatu in the 1920s, but Psycho (along with Peeping Tom that arrived in the same year) perhaps represents the start of the modern day horror film. Black Christmas, Halloween, Friday the 13th, Scream… they all come back to this. The film is an undoubted masterpiece.
