Psycho

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“A secretary on the run for embezzlement takes refuge at a secluded California motel owned by a repressed man and his overbearing mother.”

Most people forget about this movie’s true plot and stick to the shower kill. But let’s talk the genius of this movie, shall we? Not only does it star Janet Leigh (the mother of the famous scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis) but the performance by Anthony Perkins nearly cost him a career for how on point it was. The cinematography was so ahead of it’s time that I cannot put all of the best scenes together in this post.

“You know what I do about unhappiness? I buy it off.” Best line ever. Fight me.

There is a lot of color play – even for a black and white film. Her undergarments are black, signifying that she’s not innocent. She’s a villain as well. That doesn’t mean she deserves to die, it’s just something Hitchcock does to play with your subconscious.

Marion’s paranoia seeps into us as she drives, trying to get as far between her office and the missing money as possible. I love the scene with her and the patrolman. She’s a woman in a hurry. And in that era, policing wasn’t the tricky, thing it was today. The license check was a look-see since running through a computer was impossible. But you could still be suspicious.

Then we find the Bates Motel. Muwah-ha-ha-ha.

Bad cheesiness, I know.

I cannot express enough how much camera angles are used in this. Perception is reality and Hitchcock enjoys to play with our reality. Just the way Norman’s eye is lit as he watches Marion through the peep hole pulls us to his view with him.

And then we have the infamous knife scene. It was actually a bunch of different angles meshed together and if you notice, we never actually see the knife penetrate her or see her bleeding. Just the aftermath. The flashes of images let you feel the chaos of the kill itself.

SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT

I mean, if you don’t know the outcome of this movie, you may have led a very sheltered life. Norman’s trauma from his mother led to a split in his psyche that kept his tormentor alive even though her rotting corpse was the only thing real.

The most creepy (and beautifully acted) portion is the very last scene where Norman looks dead into the camera and gives us that smile.

There is a reason this is a classic and often imitated.