Psycho (1960) * * * *

 

Directed by:  Alfred Hitchcock

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

Yes, Psycho's shower scene will live for all time as the definitive moment for the film and a watershed moment in movie history.   Please don't read further if anything I write going forward could be construed as a spoiler.   Marion Crane (Leigh) is the movie's protagonist and up until her untimely stabbing death while taking a shower, Psycho was about her attempts to get away with stealing a suitcase full of ill-gotten money.  She pulls into the run-down Bates Motel in the middle of nowhere, chats with the motel's owner Norman Bates (Perkins), and plots her next move.   She won't get very far, as Norman (dressed as his mother), stabs her to death while she showers.   

Janet Leigh receives top billing and was indeed the "star" of Psycho, until she disappears halfway through the movie in one of many twists Psycho offers.   Hitchcock delighted in pulling the rug out from under moviegoers.    Once Leigh leaves the scene, Psycho becomes Anthony Perkins' movie.  His iconic Norman Bates is then fully seen.   At first, Norman is a shy, awkward presence who looks at the ground, stumbles over words, and seems harmless.   We then learn how wounded and disturbed he is.  He is clearly under his mother's thumb, who lives (maybe) in the ominous, spooky house on the hill overlooking and dwarfing the motel.  

Psycho isn't simply a movie about a killer.   The murders are not the story, but why Norman Bates commits them.   He is haunted and tortured by a mother who may not even be alive.   The violence is in response to his inner torment.   He must lash out at someone and soon the unfortunate victims pile up.  The brilliance in the Perkins performance is that we identify and even somewhat pity a tormented soul who can't be at peace.  If Perkins played Norman as pure evil, then Psycho becomes a Halloween sequel made twenty years earlier. 

Psycho relies on pure Hitchcock themes of guilt and how a past taints the present.   The icy blonde, the fear of being caught, and with the Bernard Hermann score ratcheting up the suspense; Psycho is almost the definitive Hitchcock.   The question is:  What is the bigger surprise?   Killing off the star halfway through the movie or establishing her killer as the more sympathetic of the two?