A young woman (Janet Leigh) who embezzled $40 000 from her employer headed to Farevale to start a new life with her boyfriend. Unable to reach there because of the rain, he decided to spend the night in a motel whose owner hides terrible secrets.
So it is true what people say. This is a real masterpiece, probably Hitchcock’s best. Some plot points in the beginning are meant to mislead you and it really works. At first, one thinks the story revolves around the stolen money hence the presence of secondary actors (the boss, the boyfriend, the policeman and the private investigator, etc.). It’s after about half an hour, when our man Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) appears that things take another turn and become even more interesting. While Norman appears to be welcoming and warm, the initial conversation between him and Marion reveals part of the main character’s personality: the mother. The dialogue is long but so well-constructed that you wouldn’t see time fly. It is followed by the infamous shower scene the movie is best known for.
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| Norman (Perkins) and Marion (Leigh) in Psycho |
There’s something about Norman
(The plot is known to everyone hence I think no spoiler alert is needed). I always try to keep myself from making comparisons but the first time I saw Norman when he said « We have twelve vacancies, twelve cabins twelve vacancies » with a big smile, I noticed a little resemblance to Christian Bale alias Patrick Bateman…anyway, back to the point. Well, Tony Perkins must have worked a lot his character and his efforts paid off. Some little details about him show progressively who he is although they seem non significant at first glance: stammering, mood swings, etc. The biggest thing that stroke me was the way he walks in a scene when he went upstairs: like a woman. The ending reveals the secrets that Norman has been hiding for years.
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| Pyscho's shower scene: this is mother in action |
Lawyer: I got the whole story but not from Norman, I got it from his mother. Norman Bates no longer exists. He only half existed to begin with. And now the other half is taking over, probably for all time…
Lila: Did he kill my sister?
Lawyer: Yes…and no
(…) To understand that the way I understood it hearing it from the mother, that is from the mother half of Norman’s mind, we have to go back ten years, to the time when Norman murdered his mother and her lover. He was already dangerously disturbed, had been ever since his father died. His mother was a clinging demanding woman and for years the two of them lived as if there was no one else the world. Then she made a man and it seemed to Norman that she threw him over this man. That pushed him over the thin line and he killed them both. Matricide is probably the most unbearable crime of all, most unbearable for a son to commit. So he had to erase the crime at least in his own mind. He stole her corpse; a weighted coffin was buried. He hid the body in the fruit cellar even treated it to keep it as well as it would keep, and that still wasn’t enough. She was there but she was a corpse so he began to think and speak for her, give her half his life so to speak. At times, he could be both personalities carrying on conversations. At other times, the mother took over completely and he was never all Norman, but he was often only mother. And because he was so pathologically jealous of her, he assumes that she was jealous of him, therefore, if he felt a strong attraction to any other woman, the mother side of him would go wild. (To Lila) When he met your sister, he was touched by her, aroused by her, he wanted her. That sets off the jealous mother and mother killed the girl. After the murder, Norman returned as if from a deep sleep and like a dutiful son, covered up traces of the crime he was convinced his mother committed.
(…)A man who dresses in women’s clothing in order to achieve a sexual change or satisfaction is a transvestite. But in Norman’s case, he was simply doing everything possible to keep alive the illusion of his mother being alive. And when reality came to close, when danger or desire threatened that illusion, he dressed up, even to a cheap wig he bought. He’d walk about the house, sit in a chair, he tried to be his mother and now he is…
Mother: it’s sad when a mother has to speak the words that condemn her own son but I couldn’t allow them to believe that I would commit murder. They’ll put him away now as I should have years ago. He was always bad and in the end, he intended to tell them I killed those girls and that man as if I could do anything except just sit and stare like one of his stuffed birds. Now they know I can’t even move a finger, no I won’t but just sit here and be quiet just in case they do suspect me. They’re probably watching me, let them, let them see what kind of person I am. I’m not even going to swap that fly. I hope they are watching. They’ll see, they’ll see, and they’ll know and they’ll say that “she won’t even harm a fly”.
To conclude I’d like to say this: Tony Perkins is always and will be THE Norman Bates which means the 1998 remake was unnecessary.
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