After watching Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho my initial reaction is somewhat indifferent. In many ways it "wow-ed" me, but at the same time it also disappointed me. I have been so used to the idea that Psycho is the grand daddy of all thrillers that it almost was too high up on the pedestal.
My personal favorite part of Psycho was the musical score. The main intro song was so chillingly exciting that I can hardly find a word to describe it. The shower scene screeches made an already chilling scene just over the top scary. Also, the odd silence when Norman is cleaning up after Mother is just perfect.
The shower scene is most likely one of the most notable instances in all of American film. The idea behind being attacked while you are the most defenseless and (quite literally) exposed is enough to make anyone lock their bathroom doors for a few years. Hitchcock did a wonderful job of building up the suspense before the shower. This left the audience hoping she was going to survive. I found the idea of the shower scene to be frightening. On the other hand I found myself feeling that it was a little cheesy. There is a scene from an old play-turned-movie called 12 Angry Men in which the characters go over the logistics of stabbing at a downward angle. Eventually it is proven that stabbing someone that way would not do the damage to kill the victim (in that movie). Watching Marion get stabbed like that only made me thing of that scene from 12 Angry Men. It just didn't feel real.
Even though I do say that it didn't feel real, it is exactly that which makes Psycho so effectively scary. Audience and viewers alike are left thinking "how could something like that even happen." The even scarier thought is that Psycho was based off of a serial killer named Ed Gein.
Besides these few nuances, the acting was gripping (especially the unspoken acting), the plot was intriguing (money has nothing to do with death), and the camera work was brilliant (never has a shot of stuffed birds been creepier). Overall, I did like the film. Really the big downfall for me was that it was made in 1960.
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2 comments:
I'm glad you voiced mixed feelings, Patrick. That's my question every time I show this to a new audience. Have 50 years changed audience expectations so much that this movie will fail to work for contemporary viewers? Of course, maybe generalization is impossible. Some people profess to find Psycho intensely creepy, while others find it laughable. Maybe it depends on how sensitive people are to movie violence, suspense, etc.
Well I think 50 years have definitely changed audience expectations! I don’t think it completely changed it though because even though Patrick thought some parts were cheesy, he did acknowledge some creepiness out of it. I think Americans (I say Americans because one of the big reasons their movies do so well abroad is because other countries aren’t as used to the violence so something that may not seem too big to us are frightening to other movies. I should bring a Nigerian movie and show you the violence in them. you would just laugh because of the fakeness and unreality of the violence) are so used to seeing violence that it is not even a big deal anymore you know? The fact that Patrick mentions that he knows that downwards stabbing isn’t even that effective proves that we have been exposed to so many different instances of violence that the producers have to up it again and again in order to scare us silly. Does that kind of make sense? Pat you are the man by the way.
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