Lecture 3 - Psycho

A. Themes in Psycho

• Inspired by the Chirstian emphasis on sin/offence and redemption/rebirth
• Hitchcock’s own Catholic background

Psycho focuses on:

1. Sin without the possibility of redemption
2. False, ironic resurrection
3. Descent

A1. Sin, Guilt & Surveillance

• Norman and Marion are characters that both commit crimes and experience guilt

• Both experience a constant sense of being under surveillance

  	Internal Surveillance	External Surveillance
  Marion	Her own guilt is watching her	Her Boss sees her driving away
  		Policeman follows her
  Norman	Mother is watching

A1-i. Surveillance by the Policeman

• Policeman: a figure of the Law
• Techniques used for framing:
  • Straight-on angle, in-your-face
  • Point-of-view shot: also scrutinizing audience
• Dark sunglasses:
  • Harder to relate to authority figure
  • Gives sense of inscrutability
  • Anxiety heightens as you can’t tell what he’s thinking

A1-ii. Surveillance by Mother

Norman’s crime

To mother, Norman’s crime is his sexual attraction towards women and desire for them (his sexuality itself)

• Sexuality automatically linked to guilt and shame
  • Betrayal of Mother
  • Prudish 19th-century Victorian morality sees sex as dirty, disgusting, shameful
• Leans into broader view that male sexuality is highly problematic and mired in guilt and shame

"No! I tell you no! I won’t have you bringing strange young girls in for supper!
By candlelight, I suppose, in the cheap, erotic fashion of young men with
cheap erotic minds! And then what, after supper? Music? Whispers… As if men
don’t desire strangers. I refuse to speak of disgusting things because they
disgust me." - Mother

"He was always bad…" - Mother

Portrayal of Surveillance

• Voices in Norman’s head (similar to Marion)
• Mise-en-scene

E.g.
1. Taxidermized owl looming over Norman during the conversation scene with Marion
2. Light/silhouette from the mansion window overlooking the motel

A2. Resurrection

E.g.
1. Car being raised from swamp  -> a failed, false regeneration
2. Taxidermy
3. Mother                       -> physical body, Norman's mind
4. Phoenix, Arizona             -> bird that cyclically regenerates

A3. Descent

• This world has no upward movement of rebirth, regeneration
• Motif of descent dominates film
• Nether realm of Mother’s grave exerts the most power

B. Psychoanalyzing Norman/Mother

B1. Norman’s relationship with Mother

B1-i. Mother

• Clinging, domineering and possessive
• Possesses Norman both without and within
• Some resonance with Hitchcock’s own relationship with his mother

B1-ii. Norman

• Equally clingy and possessive, unwilling to let go of Mother
  • Murders her and her lover
  • Uses her corpse to maintain an illusion of a childhood world consisting of just himself and Mother
• Psychologist’s explanation:
  • Norman is still a child who clings to childhood world and cannot grow up (similar to Charles Foster Kane)
  • Most dominant parts of him are child-like
• Another explanation:
  • Norman resurrects Mother to maintain the façade of the mother-son relationship

B2. Killing Marion

B2-i. First reason for murder

• “Mother” in Norman kills Marion because she might take Norman away
• Mother then retains possession of her son

B2-ii. Second reason for murder

• Norman, rather than Mother, is the one who kills Marion
• Stabbing is a sexual act
  • Norman is so ashamed of his sexuality that it cannot appear in the normal form but in the displaced form of the stabbing
  • His sexuality is so repressed that this is the only way he can relate to women (both love and hate)
  • Attack as a displaced form of rape
    • Attack has the intensity of a sexual encounter with the knife as a phallic object
  • Reflects both his sexual desire but also his hatred of that desire
    • Ambivalence of male sexuality: Desire, yet guilt and hatred of this desire

C. Manipulating the Audience

C1. The MacGuffin

A red herring, a diversionary plot device that misleads and distracts the audience from the main point

Psycho’s MacGuffin: Marion’s storyline

• Note that it is still an important counterpart to Norman’s story

C2. Voyeurism

E.g. Opening Scene
- Scene transitions into a dark room where Mariona & Sam are carrying out their affair
- Camera moves through a window at the side of a building

-> Voyeuristic feeling

• Implies film spectatorship as a voyeuristic act
• Film’s theme of guilt is now played out on the viewer
• Viewer is not just an observer but directly implicated in a certain role
• Viewer is made conscious of his voyeurism, of looking into the film
• Just as the viewer watches, he/she too is watched

C3. Shower Murder

• Assumption: film is viewed under the ideal condition of the viewer not having any prior knowledge
• Shower scene is thus shocking and unexpected
  • Hitchcock teases the male viewer
  • Rude shock to his viewing pleasure, especially for a 1960s audience unaccustomed to this level of graphic violence
• Unveiling of the shower curtain
  • Metaphor for a stage reveal
  • Reveals the true film narrative and exposes (ends) the macguffin

D. Film-making in Psycho

D1. Motifs

D1-i. Geometric Blocks

Hitchcock often uses rectangular blocks in his composition.

E.g. 19th-century Bates Mansion vs 20th-century Bates Motel

• Creates visual clash & tension from the start of the film
• Related to constant tension in Norman & Mother’s realtionship

D1-ii. Circles, Spirals & Descent

Descent

E.g. Shower scene: Drainage hole dissolves to Marion's eye

• Spiralling shot: Marion’s hopes spiralling away
• Dark, meaningless abyss sucking away hopes and dreams
• The true world of Psycho juxtaposed against Marion’s eye
• Represents Descent

Surveillance

E.g.
1. Showerhead shot reminiscent of an eye
2. Marion's eye

D1-iii. Taxidermy

• Norman’s hobby: making dead things look alive again
• Form of ironic resurrection

D2. Editing

Relation of shot-to-shot

• Editing can be used to generate interesting ideas
• Editing affects rhythm of the film
• This rhythm is experienced by the viewer subconsciously

E.g. Mee Pok Man (dir. Eric Khoo, 1995)

- Juxtaposition with images of food/eating vs the woman’s body
- Shows how women’s bodies are consumed like slabs of meat in the red light district, animalistic desires

D2-i. Transitions

4 Basic Transitions:

1. Straight cut
2. Dissolve: provides lingering quality
3. Wipe: intrusive, breaks the realism of the film, not frequently used
4. Fade in/out

D2-ii. Editing Types

1. Rhythmic editing: editing based on shot duration
2. Accelerated/decelerated editing
3. Graphic editing: editing based on the graphic or pictorial dimension of the shots
4. Graphic clash/match

D2-iii. Editing in Psycho

Hitchcock’s cinematic principle: letting the pieces of film create the motion

E.g. Marion driving away from Phoenix in the rain

- Rhythm of editing increases
- framing of Marion’s face is tighter

This contributes to Realism

"The placing of the images on the screen, in terms of what you’re expressing, should never be dealt with in a factual manner.  Never!"

"If you are going to show two men fighting with each other, you’re not going to get very much simply by photographing that fight. More often than not the photographic reality is not realistic. The only way to do it is to get into the fight and make the public feel it. In that way you achieve true realism"

- Hitchcock

Shower Murder Scene

• Cinematic cutting up of the scene parallels the cutting up of Marion.
• Use of Rhythmic Editing
  • Quick succession of shots contributes to scene’s brutal energy and perceptual shocks
  • By themselves, the shots are generally static
• Use of Graphic Editing
  • Violence of scene partially contributed to by graphic clashes (or perceptual clashes)
  • Sequence is extremely violent and brutal though there is only 1 shot of a knife in contact with Marion’s body, and the scene is largely bloodless
  • Contrast between Marion and Attacker
    • Graphic contrast between shadowy attacker and Marion in the light
    • Water going in opposite directions as we cut between Marion and the attacker

Argobast’s Murder Scene

• High-angle shot followed by close-up of Argobast’s head

"the main reason for raising the camera so high was to get the contrast between the long shot and the close-up of the big head as the knife came down at him.  It was like music, you see, the high shot with the violins, and suddenly the big head with the brass instruments clashing" - Hitchcock

• Abrupt transition to medium close-up of Argobast’s head gives a perceptual shock that conveys the impact of the stabbing
  • impact of the murder is conveyed cinematically.
• Editing is sensitive to the visual, graphic contrast between the 2 shots

D3. Directorial Styles