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From SCIFIPEDIA
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Psycho What are the roots for the twisted bit of film magic called Psycho (Universal, 1960). It was – at the time – an unlikely film from the famed director at his peak. Psycho comes after Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (MGM, 1959), a giddy suspenseful romp through America with the ever debonair Cary Grant and the cool but lovely blond Eva Maria Saint. But, to the attentive, there are clues to what would come even there. Note for example (with the hindsight of irony) Cary Grant’s relationship with his mother who he even refers to as ‘Mother’ in a way that even Norman Bates would admire. Then there is that blond, one of a string of Hitchcokian cool blonds that he admired and also enjoyed putting through torturous paces (culminating in his flinging birds at a terrified Tippi Hedren in The Birds.) Cary Grant’s character in North by Northwest is innocent; he merely stands up at the wrong time and gets sucked into a massive and convoluted plot. Just a little twist of fate, not unlike the rain that forces Janet Leigh’s Marion Crane to pull off the road to stay at the now-seldom-used Bates Motel.
Hitchcock did a number of things to break with the color fantasy of North by Northwest. First, he dispensed with the color. This new film, base on Robert Bloch's novel and with a script by Joseph Stefano, would be a feast of grays. Then he used the fast-paced crew from his TV show, an economic move to be sure but also one that removed the film from the glitz and glitter of a normal Hitchcock production. And what was the tale he shaped? One where he played with the audience in an entirely new way. Where before had an audience been so seduced into rooting for a maniac as when we wait breathlessly for a victim’s car to slip into the swamp while a nervous Norman Bates watches? And, certainly, no film had ever played with the voyeurism and latent sexuality of Psycho, nothing even came close. Here Hitchcock could indulge all his paranoia and terrible fear that bad things can happen to people for no reason.
He didn’t do it alone. Robert Bloch’s novel provided the ‘Ed Gein’ style tale (though Bloch certainly never realized the financial rewards that the Psycho franchise provided Universal.) The screenplay by Stefano, and the performances by Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh, were completely compelling. But there is one additional factor that surely takes an equal place in making Psycho an icon of horror….Bernard Herrmann’s music, an amazing soundtrack with a spare chamber orchestra sound to match the intense visuals. Haunting, powerful, it is the greatest of Hermann’s many great scores, and for this grisly tale of Psycho, so close to Hitch’s heart…it was perfect.
2008, SCI FI. All rights reserved.
