Another week, another 50 year-old film at the revival house. Actu­ally this week it was two vin­tage films: on Fri­day, John Ford’s 1962 West­ern, The Man Who Shot Lib­erty Valence and this evening, Psy­cho (1960), the orig­i­nal “slasher” pic­ture, the influ­ence of which over the Hol­ly­wood hor­ror film in the sub­se­quent half cen­tury can not be over­stated. There would have been no Hal­loween, no Scream, no Scary Movie had Hitch­cock not stolen away with the crew from his TV series to shoot this remark­able film in 45 days for just over $800,000.

Cer­tainly Psy­cho is one the most exhaus­tively scru­ti­nized films in his­tory. At one time there was even an analy­sis of the film in print com­prised of stills from every shot repro­duced in sequence with commentary.

Psy­cho has been so thor­oughly cul­tur­ally assim­i­lated that one need only screech in imi­ta­tion of Bernard Herrmann’s score or men­tion the Bates Motel to induce a shud­der among the squeamish.

Despite a half cen­tury of hor­ror and gore, spat­ter and snuff inspired by Psy­cho, it remains a shat­ter­ing yet per­versely sat­is­fy­ing expe­ri­ence for audi­ences. Speak­ing per­son­ally, only the psy­cho­an­a­lytic epi­logue dates the film now. I found it as unset­tling as I did thirty years ago. I would be delighted to hear the com­ments of any­one who may have seen the film upon its ini­tial release. I can not imag­ine the expe­ri­ence of see­ing Psy­cho cold in 1960, when Ben Hur, Pil­low Talk and Some Like it Hot were the year’s big films and typ­i­cal exam­ples of the era’s pop­u­lar tastes.

Exam­in­ing it again this evening, I found its basic nar­ra­tive struc­ture fas­ci­nat­ing. As in Robert Bloch’s novel, the film yanks the viewer’s sym­pa­thy abruptly from one char­ac­ter to another. We first fol­low Mar­ion Crane the fugi­tive. Then we are com­pelled to empathize with Nor­man Bates; who doesn’t share Norman’s anx­i­ety when the corpse-laden auto he has dri­ven into the swamp momen­tary halts its descent under the mire? Next we are allied with the detec­tive Arbo­gast as he attempts to unravel the mys­tery. Each exploit famil­iar tropes to seduce us — the good-hearted run­away tale, the mur­der caper, the detec­tive story — but sub­se­quently betray our expec­ta­tions and dis­ori­ents us. Finally we are paired with Marion’s lover and her rather stri­dent sis­ter (minor and unde­vel­oped char­ac­ters) as they con­front Nor­man and his mother in the denouement.

Upon exam­i­na­tion, none of the char­ac­ters is par­tic­u­larly like­able. Their behav­ior is insen­si­tive, decep­tive, or sim­ply crim­i­nal. Motives are murky and no one seems to entirely trust any­one else. By any com­mer­cial stan­dards and cer­tainly Hollywood’s of the era, the char­ac­ters and struc­ture are brazenly uncon­ven­tional. It is lit­tle won­der that the stu­dios refused to finance the pic­ture.^[1] It’s bizarre; it breaks nearly every dra­matic tenet since Aris­to­tle pro­posed his uni­ties. Yet it suc­ceeds and remains an extra­or­di­nary model of cin­e­matic econ­omy and emo­tional impact. So much so that it inspired a “shot by shot” remake by Gus Van Sant in 1998. While not truly an edi­to­r­ial or cin­ema­graphic dupli­cate of the orig­i­nal it is a remark­able and, to the best of my knowl­edge, unpar­al­leled cin­e­matic exper­i­ment – some­thing qual­i­ta­tively dis­tinct from a “remake” yet more than an “update”. Nei­ther homage nor exploita­tive knock-off it might be described as an auda­cious, sin­cere and noble if ulti­mately futile probe of cin­e­matic magic. On the other hand, per­haps it informed Van Sant’s later work; Ele­phant (2003) is also rad­i­cally uncon­ven­tional in struc­ture, seem­ingly devoid of empa­thy. It flouts com­mon story logic and char­ac­ter devel­op­ment. In Ele­phant, we are per­versely curi­ous about the mur­der­ers’ method­i­cal prepa­ra­tions then revolted when their vio­lence erupts. The nar­ra­tive indicts our own voyeuris­tic attrac­tion to cin­e­matic (and real) vio­lence by dwelling on its banal­ity by by deny­ing us any “jus­tice” or “expla­na­tions”. This unadorned and arbi­trary bru­tal­ity is shock­ing and pro­foundly dis­turb­ing – just as in Psy­cho.^[2]

The stu­dio had it right in 1960. Psy­cho should never have worked. Nor should have Ele­phant 43 years later.

Pay no atten­tion to that man behind the camera.

1. ^[1] Hitch­cock pro­duced it him­self and waived his director’s fee for par­tial own­er­ship. The film was by far the most prof­itable of his career. ↩
2. ^[2] One can’t help but believe that Psy­cho would have been a stronger film with­out the final explana­tory scene. It is note­wor­thy that Van Sant choose to greatly abbre­vi­ate this in his ver­sion of the story but with­out it, we might have been denied the deli­cious final image of Nor­man. ↩