Rating of
4/4
Psycho
SteelCity99 - wrote on 04/21/18
The hidden beauty of the controversial horror genre has a great advantage. It can symbolize the deepest human fears, including delusion and paranoia, through a monstrous entity or creation. It can bring to the screen terrifying stories of serial killers for the pure fun of scaring audiences. It can visually release supernatural phenomena, extracting most of the shock value from the inexplicableness of the events depicted. In the case of Psycho, the film does not belong to any of the mainstream horror categories. Alfred Hitchcock, the absolute and definitive master of suspense, is the mastermind behind the camera. Interestingly enough, Psycho is strictly his first horror film. The main reason that explains this absolute masterpiece not being in any of the most popularized and mainly lame horror divisions is the fact that it is, along with Henri-Georges Clouzot's Les Diaboliques (1955), one of the most influential thrillers ever committed to celluloid. It goes beyond the definition of a thriller, becoming arguably the best American film of the 60s and a landmark in suspenseful filmmaking. Temporarily leaving the usual plot elements related to international conspiracies and mistaken identities, Hitchcock redefines a horror subgenre in its entirety, promising a new age for slasher films that would be constituted by flicks like Bob Clark's Black Christmas (1974), Dario Argento's Profondo Rosso (1975) and John Carpenter's Halloween (1978).
The famous plot opens with the story of Marion Crane, a Phoenix office worker who is fed up with having to sneak with her lover, Sam Loomis, during lunch breaks. Although both plan to get married, their impossibility can be found in Sam's money going to alimony. One day, she decides to steal $40,000 from her employer's client and to impulsively leave town in order to start a new life. After getting caught in a storm, she pulls into The Bates Motel, a motel managed by a polite and seemingly peaceful young man. Norman fixes Marion a dinner and has a conversation with her, until she decides to take a shower... The film received 4 Academy Award nominations for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White and Best Director, unfairly losing the last Oscar against Billy Wilder for his film The Apartment (1960).
Psycho has a different filmmaking style. Alfred Hitchcock avoids grandiloquence and pretentiousness, replacing such inadequate means with an extraordinary attention to detail. The gestures, the atmosphere, the facial reactions, the shadows, the meaning of the surrounding objects that go from a bloody bathtub to dissected animals and a car being submerged in a river, are all elements of a breathtakingly terrifying and suspenseful thriller that owns a minimalist perspective. It is also one of those films that audaciously challenged a conventional screenplay structure. After the most memorable and stylish opening credits in cinema history are displayed, which would be followed by an innovative camera work and a grand cinematography, we are firstly introduced with the typically ambitious and unsatisfied woman, a character perfectly played by actress Janet Leigh, becoming a cinema icon of a memorable facial expression of inconceivable terror. As the story goes on, the plot point makes it appearance and her destiny course makes a 180-degree turn. What supposedly were insignificant details and elements to several directors ended up being highly important and atmospheric through the eyes of the master of suspense.
Technically speaking, the film is a shining triumph of unparalleled boldness. The shower death scene is not only one of the best and most famous, brilliant, suspenseful, heart-bumping and original film sequences ever shot; it is also one of the most innovative. Just like Orson Welles attempted to handle spaces differently in Citizen Kane (1941), an auteur that had followed the steps that Fritz Lang had left behind in M (1931), Hitchcock employs an extraordinarily precise editing, a rivetingly fast pace, merciless portrayals of black-colored blood artistically contrasted with the whitish area of the bathroom, and a gorgeously shocking aftermath, featuring a dying Janet Leigh ripping the shower curtain with her hand so she can breath for the last time before collapsing over the edge of the bathtub. A beautiful and spellbinding close-up of her eye follows, zooming out from her shocked face with an opened mouth and a cold stare towards the macabre camera. Before this scene took place, we were able to claustrophobically see through the curtain the shadow of terror slowly walking towards the shower holding a knife. Up to this point, the film has barely concluded the first half of the story, yet we have already been subject to controversial plot elements: deceit, financial materialism, sex, violence, blood and murder, all of them cautiously introduced with Norma's depraved voyeurism and his mental desperation because of the constant commands he receives from his authoritarian and non-tender mother. Consequently, this is a psychologically brutal introduction for the viewer to endure the second half: terror, the investigation that external and partially irrelevant characters make about Marion's mysterious disappearance, more assassinations, delusions, obsession, unexpected "jumpy" scenes that attack the heart and one of the best and most unpredictable twist endings in cinema history.
Independently from the shock value that Hitchcock applied to the plot in order to emphasize how underrated the horror genre has been throughout the decades, its technical and structural relevance have remained untouched, mainly because of the great popularity and blockbuster status it gained. It even gives the impression of reaching a supernatural tone because of its razor-sharp screenplay, its unique direction and its atmospheric gloominess, despite Psycho not being a fantasy flick. Its brilliance and overall effectiveness have several sources. One of them is Hitchcock opening the film with a realistic world, that is, an urban environment that the viewer can find believable. Another one is him proceeding with a plot point that represents what may be a common case: a marriage disabled because of financial situations. Giving us the impression that we have already empathized with what seems to be the main character, the screenplay exterminates her in an excruciating manner that had been rarely seen in cinema and the film suddenly switches leading and supporting roles. The film is plagued with extraordinary performances: a mysteriously bizarre Anthony Perkins, a determined Vera Miles and an iconic Janet Leigh. All of this is wonderfully enhanced with Bernard Herrmann's masterfully perfect musical score. Under modern standards, Psycho may not seem scary; however, seen with the right eyes may result in one of the scariest experiences that cinema could offer.
100/100
