Psycho (1960)

As big of an admirer as I am of Alfred Hitchcock, I find certain tendencies of his annoying. His talent is unquestioned, but his tendency to choose nonsensical narratives and cinematic experimentation over sensible plotting and genuine artistry is often grating. When it works, it works brilliantly (Rear Window, North by Northwest), but just as often you'll get nonsense like Spellbound and Under Capricorn which isn't the sum of its pretentious parts. Which brings us to today's subject.

Psycho is probably Hitchcock's most famous and well-loved work (with Rear Window and Vertigo close behind); it's certainly his most influential, providing the template for the "slasher film" which dominated horror through the '70s and '80s. I can definitely understand the acclaim for Vertigo, a film that's fascinating even if it's not very good. But Psycho seems more an exercise in craftsmanship than a great movie. At its center is one of the all-time great movie characters, but everything surrounding him is fairly rote and uninteresting.

Secretary Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) is carrying on a sordid affair with Sam Loomis (John Gavin) and is looking for a way out of her wretched life. She steals $40,000 from her boss (Vaughn Taylor) and flees to Phoenix, stopping at the remote Bates Motel on her way out of town. The hotel proprietor is Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), a nice-enough fellow who seems dominated by his invalid old mother. Marion meets a ghastly fate, and Sam, Marion's sister Lila (Vera Miles) and detective Arbogast (Martin Balsam), not expecting foul play, realize that Norman's mother holds the key to the mystery.

Psycho mostly seems like an artist directing beneath his talent; not as much as To Catch a Thief, but then To Catch a Thief doesn't have long Robin Wood-penned books claiming it an all-time masterpiece (at least I hope not). That Hitchcock deliberately eschewed the Technicolor vistas of his previous films for a chintzy black-and-white B-Movie does not make Psycho a masterpiece. To this cynical viewer, it seems an exercise in bad faith. What he does, he does well, but why do it this way at all?

Compared to Michael Powell's Peeping Tom, released the same year, Psycho is an extremely safe and conventional film, its shocking twist aside. Its simplistic Hollywood morality is rather tiresome: Marion steals from a sleazy businessman and her nebbish of a boss, the cops are creepy as hell and she has a good reason to do it. Sam and Lila are onhand to provide us with bland "conventional" leads. The rough edges of Norman's psychosis are smoothed over by an obnoxious exposition scene, with Simon Oakland's psychiatrist providing an interminable monologue about Norman's psychosis. With a few tweaks, Psycho could easily have been an episode of The Twilight Zone (or Alfred Hitchcock Presents, for that matter). One could easily say this banality enhances the terror once Norman's true nature is revealed, but I'd argue it neuters it.

Psycho's greatest triumph is Norman Bates, who remains one of Hollywood's greatest killers. He seems affable if awkward at first, but his lengthy scene with Marion reveals a disturbed individual, a routine conversation degenerating into a psychiatric examination. Norman embodies all the neuroses only hinted at in previous Hitchcock films, specifically sexual deviancy and transsexuality: the crass shorthand of homosexuality as psychosis becomes something more direct and horrifying. Helped by Anthony Perkins, Norman remains the most compellingly creepy psycho in Hollywood history.

In this regard, Psycho is unquestionably ahead of its time. The characters in the story, and presumably 1960 viewers, couldn't fathom warped sexuality as a motive for crime, with serial killers still a rare phenomenon. Post-WWII America was still innocent enough to be shocked by Howard Unruh's New Jersey killing spree and Ed Gein's sordid antics in Wisconsin. After several decades of far more gruesome serial killers and exploitative horror films, Norman's relatively subdued psychosis remains disturbing, and explains Psycho's enduring reputation.

Hitchcock's direction is excellent. He provides stylish set-pieces - an extreme close-up of Marion's dead eye, the creepy cop (Mort Mills) stalking Marion, Marion's guilt-driven mental musings, Norman's parlor packed with stuffed birds - helped immeasuribly by George Tomasini's frantic editing and Bernard Herrman's shrieking score. The infamous shower scene has been dissected to death, a masterpiece of editing, music and primal terror, but for my money Arbogast's demise is equally striking. Again, there's no quibbling with Hitchcock's technical finesse, even if it's at the service of a lame story.

Anthony Perkins (The Tin Star) is brilliantly subversive casting. After a decade as a bland, pretty boy star, Perkins eclipses his entire career, in an even more shocking turn than Henry Fonda in Once Upon a Time in the West. He captures Norman's in subtle ways, with a nervous laugh and that manifests itself at inopportune moments. The final scene of him alone in a prison cell, his mother's "voice" providing an insight into his thoughts, is more horrifying and enduring than anything else in the film.

Hitchcock handles the other actors just as well. Janet Leigh (Act of Violence) gives her most memorable performance, convincingly desperate and guilt-ridden, and she makes a compelling protagonist for the first third of the film. Martin Balsam (All the President's Men) gives his best performance, and John McIntire (Winchester '73) and Simon Oakland (The Sand Pebbles) make the most of weak parts. Even the wooden John Gavin (Spartacus) and annoying Vera Miles (The Searchers) come off well under Hitch's direction.

I don't mean to sell Psycho as a bad or mediocre film, by any means. It has more than enough virtues to justify watching it, but it's far from Hitchcock's best, either in artistic or entertainment value.