That's not the end of the movie. Not only has the murder taken a big number of shots edited into a small number of seconds that feel much longer and accompanied that with a relentless screeching of violins at the top of their range which seem to sound like widened eyes, a sequence which deftly convinces us that we've seen a lot more stabbing and a more nakedness than we have, but we've just witnessed the killing off of a character we've had half a movie engaging with.
Well, it happened in Robert Bloch's novel, Hitchcock must have relished the disruption. His love of gimmickry stretched back to the beginning of his career and would continue to its end. This one allowed the publicity to try the line about cinemas refusing entry to people who tried to come in after a certain point in the run time. But the word was that he killed off his star. The story after this is the investigation by Marion's sister Lila and the reluctant boyfriend Sam, along with private eye hired by Marion's boss. There is plenty of plot to go from that point and it's where the intrigue finds its compulsion in the question of what Norman's game is and what his mother has to do with it.
But as plotty as it gets Psycho is more about that crushed attempt at a family that were the Bates. There is a lot more to this in the novel but most of that is narrated backstory and would have necessitated either an unacceptable narration or flashbacks which might have served to drain tension and pace. Hitchcock's adaptation concentrates on the effect of the family's demise on the rest of the world as it meets it in the form of Marion and the interest in discovering her fate. Norman and his wild mother are the sharp splinter of an old dead tree that yet can tear and kill.
Anthony Perkins is perfectly cast. His skittish nerves, fragile movements in conversation with strangers remind us of the living relatives of the birds that Norman has stuffed and mounted on the walls. Then, his assured motion in cleaning up after his mother's atrocities give us a different side. We are to learn the most about Norman of all the characters, some of it in a direct lecture by a psychiatrist but as much if not more in these moments of contrast, pragmatism and panic, predation and prey. The shrink at the end sets up the final moment of reconciliation of the facets but it is Tony making the hairs on the back of our neck stand up.
Of the other cast, they are perfectly functional with the exception of Martin Balsam as the detective Arbogast whose worldly face and effortless manipulative powers give him a forbidding strength of his own. I haven't forgotten Janet Leigh as Marion whose intensity belies the good girl grown up. She must stare at us from behind the wheel of her car, emoting as the thoughts of her predicament sound in her head. At one point her face breaks very slightly into something like a wicked smile as she considers one consequence of her theft. I wonder if original audiences thought that this expression made her the Psycho of the title. Her interaction with Norman Bates involves a slight purging for both, a night time conversation that might bond or separate through its awkwardness, it is the closest thing to freedom that anyone in the film gets.
There is a lot to discover about the production of Psycho and I'd recommend you pursue any extras on physical media that you find, or other sources. I won't go over it too much here but to mention a few things. First, Hitchcock effectively paid for it himself. This is why, between Vertigo and The Birds, Psycho is in black and white. The fact that he determined it to be a kind of modern gothic black and white with cinematographer John Russell, is down to his ingenuity. I cannot happily imagine this film in colour. The lower budget allowed for the casting of a few names lower on the pecking order of Hollywood but who came through strongly. It allowed him the shower scene as the original backers Paramount retreated and Hitchcock had to get creative with studio affiliation. It also allowed him to call in the talents of composer Bernard Herrmann whose extraordinary strings-only ride through frenzied violence earned him a doubling of his fee from Hitchcock. Psycho is almost an independent film and features the best of the limitations that suggests.
I first saw this at school. Mr Bowman, an English teacher who took us for an elective on film writing in year eleven, was delighted to screen it against the screen in one of the chemistry classrooms which had tiered seating where we also saw our anti-drug and anti-sex instructional films. At sixteen, it was the most violent film I'd ever seen. Sonny, a darkly narcissistic bully, was sobered by it and blamed the screaming music for its effect. By that stage the local commercial tv station was playing movies like Zabriskie Point and Husbands with the swearing left in. My Nana had spoken of how subtle Hitchcock had been in suggesting rather than showing his violence. She must have seen Psycho but it would have been too inconvenient an example for her lesson. Then again, she was the one who bought me the novel.
Psycho didn't quite change my life, though I was heavily affected by it, but it opened doors that held confrontations soon to become riches. The decade to follow featured a revival of Hitchcock's mid and late period movies as they went back into cinemas, on tv and into home video. We discovered his black comedy The Trouble With Harry, the might of Rear Window and the bizarreness of Spellbound. Psycho wasn't there. It remained a byword for the extreme mainstream. Anthony Perkins presented an Oscar, standing beside Janet Leigh, and joked about taking the rap for the shower scene killing. A vocalisation of the screeching strings still signifies imagined psychosis. But for me, to see it again, I cannot look away from its sadness, that sense of bad paths chosen or compelled that can only lead to great destruction. Marion turns off the main highway to her final stop. Norman lets his mother in to deal with the crisis he cannot confront. In psycho we acknowledge the broken and the bruised of us, their silencing force and their comforting masks. For me, it is Hitchcock's masterpiece.
