If The Birds is Alfred Hitchcock's most philosophical and technically challenging movie, Psycho is the most evident, even brazen, proof of the Leytonstone's director genius, an impossible movie bet that he won hands down!
Against the decision of Paramount, which regarded the filming of the Robert Bloch's 1959 novel of the same name, loosely inspired by a real murderer and grave robber, "too repulsive", Hitchcock defied the major and went ahead to fulfil his contractual obligation for a last film with the studio by purchasing the rights of the novel, producing the film with his own money, shooting in black and white after four years he had abandoned this feature, using his TV crew and the Universal studios, which he would then join for The Birds, his next film three years later.
But Hitchcock slap in the face of the film establishment was even harsher, punching below the belt of the Motion Picture Production Code, which set the cinema morale of the time, from the very start, with the opening scene showing and openly acknowledging, if not celebrating, an extra-marital affair and half-naked affair, and culminating later on in the pivotal shower sequence, with its nudity and the trailblazing slasher, Grand Guignol effects, used again at the end of the film to reveal Norman's mother, or, more trivially, showing for the first time in American movies a toilet flushing. He didn't stop here, though, introducing a strict and unusual "no late admission" policy for the film screenings, inspired by Clouzot's Les Diaboliques, not to mention the game-changer of eliminating the female lead, a false protagonist, just before half of movie running time, leaving a very controversial Norman Bates as the only main character. Unlikely for Hitchcock, Norman Bates persona is rather closely modelled on the real source of Robert Bloch's novel, Wisconsin killer Ed Gein, who like Norman Bates was a solitary murderer living in an isolated rural location, had a deceased and domineering mother to whom he had built a sealed off shrine in his residence and dressed in her clothes.
Notwithstanding all these idiosyncratic deviations, Psycho was an immediate success at the box office and still today is Hitchcock's' movie with the highest cumulative worldwide gross, forcing also part of the critics, originally puzzled by the film, to appreciate its unconventional values and the Academy to nominate it for four Oscars, giving none though and ignoring Anthony Perkins amazing performance.
In fact, one of the marvels of Psycho is indeed Anthony Perkins rendering of Norman Bates, making the character the ultimate psycho-murdered, a perverse icon of film history. While homosexuality had already been implied in Rope, Norman Bates' gender dysphoria becomes in Psycho the key element of the story, sublimely as well as subliminally played, most likely helped by his own sexual preferences, by Anthony Perkins, who subtly but unnoticeably reveals it early on during his dinner conversation with Marion, and it is actually plainly explained and theorised, even if maybe too didactically, at the end of the movie, just before the final, haunting close-up on Anthony Perkins' deranged look and female-voiced thoughts, themselves worth an Oscar. Regrettably
A daring, innovative masterpiece that went a long way to seal the 50s cinematography, opening the door for the more controversial 60s.
Against the decision of Paramount, which regarded the filming of the Robert Bloch's 1959 novel of the same name, loosely inspired by a real murderer and grave robber, "too repulsive", Hitchcock defied the major and went ahead to fulfil his contractual obligation for a last film with the studio by purchasing the rights of the novel, producing the film with his own money, shooting in black and white after four years he had abandoned this feature, using his TV crew and the Universal studios, which he would then join for The Birds, his next film three years later.
But Hitchcock slap in the face of the film establishment was even harsher, punching below the belt of the Motion Picture Production Code, which set the cinema morale of the time, from the very start, with the opening scene showing and openly acknowledging, if not celebrating, an extra-marital affair and half-naked affair, and culminating later on in the pivotal shower sequence, with its nudity and the trailblazing slasher, Grand Guignol effects, used again at the end of the film to reveal Norman's mother, or, more trivially, showing for the first time in American movies a toilet flushing. He didn't stop here, though, introducing a strict and unusual "no late admission" policy for the film screenings, inspired by Clouzot's Les Diaboliques, not to mention the game-changer of eliminating the female lead, a false protagonist, just before half of movie running time, leaving a very controversial Norman Bates as the only main character. Unlikely for Hitchcock, Norman Bates persona is rather closely modelled on the real source of Robert Bloch's novel, Wisconsin killer Ed Gein, who like Norman Bates was a solitary murderer living in an isolated rural location, had a deceased and domineering mother to whom he had built a sealed off shrine in his residence and dressed in her clothes.
Notwithstanding all these idiosyncratic deviations, Psycho was an immediate success at the box office and still today is Hitchcock's' movie with the highest cumulative worldwide gross, forcing also part of the critics, originally puzzled by the film, to appreciate its unconventional values and the Academy to nominate it for four Oscars, giving none though and ignoring Anthony Perkins amazing performance.
In fact, one of the marvels of Psycho is indeed Anthony Perkins rendering of Norman Bates, making the character the ultimate psycho-murdered, a perverse icon of film history. While homosexuality had already been implied in Rope, Norman Bates' gender dysphoria becomes in Psycho the key element of the story, sublimely as well as subliminally played, most likely helped by his own sexual preferences, by Anthony Perkins, who subtly but unnoticeably reveals it early on during his dinner conversation with Marion, and it is actually plainly explained and theorised, even if maybe too didactically, at the end of the movie, just before the final, haunting close-up on Anthony Perkins' deranged look and female-voiced thoughts, themselves worth an Oscar. Regrettably
A daring, innovative masterpiece that went a long way to seal the 50s cinematography, opening the door for the more controversial 60s.