MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > Phoenix, Arizona

Phoenix, Arizona

posted 6 years ago by ecarle (14979)
11 replies | jump to latest

Two years and two films before "Psycho," Hitchcock in Vertigo gave us a sweeping shot of San Francisco that much anticipates what he would do for the opening of Psycho:

Its a sweeping shot of San Francisco circa 1957, in color, and used to show "the passage of time" between Scottie's stay at the asylum and his release amongst the populace. The role of the shot is to convey that passage of time...but it is also meant to "sell" the beauty of the City by the Bay and to give it to us from a different angle -- up in the hills behind the City looking out towards the Bay.

Joe Stefano had written an over-ambitious, blocks-long helicopter shot to open Psycho, but Hitchcock -- having tried it using a 1959 chopper and camera --found the image too wobbly -- gave up and sent his second unit guys back to Phoenix to essentially re-do the SF shot from Vertigo. A slow series of pans, left to right, left to right, with the camera also slowly zooming in and descending down, with dissolves helping get us where we need to go: into the window of a fake building on the Universal backlot and into the sex lives of Marion and Sam.

Before the camera reaches the Universal backlot, we DO get a lingering look at Phoenix, Arizona circa 1959, and I find this shot mesmerizing...a very big part of "setting the mood for Psycho."

To some extent, its Herrmann's great music that makes the shot so great -- Herrmann instinctively creates music that "slowly descends" with the camera. But it is sad music, too -- getting us in the mood for a scene that will begin erotic, and slowly be smothered by the sad realities of money troubles and personal pain.

Anyway, behold Phoenix, 1959(at 2:43 on Friday, December 11): there is a skyline, there is a cityscape, but it is really much smaller than San Francisco's(and captured more "close in" than the Vertigo SF shot, so as to "fill the frame.") It takes a few viewings(and one of them should DEFINITELY be on the big screen) to suss out the details, but they are there: a large radio antenna atop one building, A rotating sign on another(is it the old "Flying A" gas station logo, or something else? I can never tell). At least one building is the skeleton of a building "under construction"(perhaps it survived and is still standing.) And I think the "Westward Ho" hotel sign is visible?(If not here, in the remake, more on that later.)

As the camera continues its left to right trajectory, I always note that one of the buildings HAS to be a movie theater. The camera slides alongside the building and you can make out the "big part"(where the screen would be) and the "smaller part"(where the audience would sit.) What movie was playing at this theater in 1959? Would Psycho play there in 1960?

As the camera draws closer to the REAL building in Phoenix where Sam and Marion would be trysting, I always note: one, maybe two cars, stopping and then driving slowly down the street. This always amuses me: I'll bet that driver/drivers had no idea whatsoever that in 6 months time they'd start to be part of an opening shot of a blockbuster movie that would be seen round the world and for decades to come. They just drove down a street in Phoenix, is all.

I"ve only been to Phoenix twice in my life. Once as a kid, before I even knew of Psycho(though I think it was in 1963, not long after the movie came out.) And then once in 2009, where I went there on business and made a point of trying to "check out" the Psycho locales. I conclusively found the building where Sam and Marion tryst; and I conclusively stood in the intersection where Marion is seen by her boss. I even looked in front of me, to get Marion's POV of the intersection(the street that famously had 1959 Xmas decorations on it): the street was the same, but maybe only one building was the same down that street.

That was my biggest "takeaway" regarding Phoenix in 2009 versus Phoenix in 1959: it seemed that most of the buildings Hitchcock's crew filmed in 1959...were gone. I may be wrong, but most of them seemed much newer to me.

Looking again at the Psycho Phoenix opening after that 2009 visit to Phoenix, I became newly impressed by Psycho: among its other great acheivements, Psycho captured a city that had long since been destroyed and rebuilt. A "ghost city" of the one we have today.

When Van Sant made his Psycho remake in 1998, he could get the helicopter shot easily that Hitchcock could not get. And its weird: the shot seems to start high above "today's Phoenix"(not a building in the shot existed in 1959) then floats down past those newer buildings and into the window of the "Westward Ho" hotel that WAS visible in Hitchcock's original. Perhaps Van Sant wanted to make sure that Psycho 1998 had a least one building that was in Psycho 1960.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

But the Van Sant shot is "computerized" so that the helicopter flies right down to the window(no dissolve) and right THROUGH the window -- I expect Hitchcock would have filmed it just this way(with CGI trickery) had CGI been available in 1960. (Though somebody noticed that the Van Sant CGI shot gives us Phoenix streets without a single car on them.)

Still, what we've got in the original Psycho is what Hitchcock gave us: a rather bland and sleepy city, on the edge of a desert, in the listless torpor of a Friday afternoon in which workers are taking long lunch hours and getting to go home early(funny, we have the same feelings on Fridays in 2018, some of us do. Some things never change.)

And I've always felt that -- somehow -- the rather listless and empty Phoenix Arizona of Psycho 1960 fits EXACTLY with the horrors ahead. This is not beautiful San Francisco or exciting New York City(both of which got plenty of movie coverage.) This is a rather desolate "half-baked city" and sets the emotional stage for the bleakness which will haunt Psycho even as its surface tale delivers great big screamable shocks.

As a kid who saw the first half hour of Psycho on TV, and nothing more for a few years -- I always thought that ALL of Psycho took place in Arizona, that Marion simply drove 100 miles or so and found the Bates Motel and house off of a DESERT highway. That vision was so set in my head that when I finally read Hitchcock telling Truffaut that "the location of the story is in Northern California" and then saw the movie, I had to "re-set my mind for California, not Arizona," as the home of the Bates Motel.

Perhaps that early-age mix-up is why I always felt that Phoenix and the Bates Motel were "connected" somehow.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Recall this, too:

In Robert Bloch's novel, Mary Crane sets out from Dallas, Texas and drives north on her journey(sister Lila is buying in Fort Worth, Texas, not Tucson Arizona.) Bloch's book never pinpoints what state the Bates Motel is in, but Kansas and Missouri are two guesses(Oklahoma and Illinois are referenced as NOT being the right state.)

Hitchcock started over. I expect he "worked backwards." He wanted the Bates Motel to be in Northern California, because he intimately KNEW Northern California(and had used it in Shadow of a Doubt and Vertigo, along with Central California filing in for Indiana in NXNW.)

So if Marion Crane is going to end up near Redding California(not far from the Oregon border)...where should she start from?

The choices (surrounding northern California) would seem to be Portland, Oregon; Reno, Nevada(north) or Las Vegas Nevada(south); Southern California cities like Los Angeles and San Diego -- and Phoenix, Arizona. He made his choice accordingly and perhaps got some thematic elements to boot: The phoenix is a bird(in a movie littered with a bird named Crane,and bird symbols), and it is a mythic bird that rises from the ashes(ala Mrs. Bates.)

Once Hitchcock decided on Phoenix, Arizona as Marion's starting point for the horror.. he sent assistant Hilton Green on a drive from Phoenix to Southern California, using the route Marion would use. I'm not sure where he had Hilton Green STOP his drive -- Gorman(where the cop questions Marion)? Bakersfield(where she buys the next car)? But Hitchcock went from the "whim" of deciding upon Phoenix as the start point for his movie to the "detail work" of getting down pat what a journey from Phoenix to California would entail.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

One more thing about Phoenix, Arizona: none of the Psycho actors went there to film scenes, nor did Hitchcock to direct them. All the Phoenix footage is second-unit. And yet the Universal soundstage work for the hotel room where Sam and Marion tryst; and the real estate office(with Cassidy and Hitchcock wore cowboy hats, and Cassidy a bolo Western tie, against a desert photo backdrop); and even Marion's anonymous room(where she packs and embezzles the cash) all SUGGEST Phoenix Arizona in our minds. The atmosphere is Southwestern, desert-like, dusty...and indicative of a land where men wear cowboy hats. Its all in our minds.

I"ve looked , over the years, to find other movies in which Phoenix, Arizona figured, and only found a few:

The Gauntlet, a 1977 Clint Eastwood action movie which opens with the camera floating over Phoenix from above -- none of the flavor of Hitchocck's opening. The story moves to Vegas and a journey back to Phoenix, and I can see a LITTLE of Hitchcock's Phoenix in the final scenes.

Used Cars, a 1980 comedy set in a used car lot "on the outskirts of Phoenix," maybe Scottsdale? Still, this movie gives us a sense of " a city surrounded by desert."

Bad Santa, a 2003 movie in which Phoenix is represented by suburban tract homes and a shopping center as you might find in any city in the United States. Hitchcock's Phoenix is long gone. American cities are "homogenized." Perhaps the only "Phoenix-like" aspect to Bad Santa is how the suburban tract homes have a "desert pueblo" theme to them.

But...accept no substitutes. Hitchcock's Phoenix Arizona...however briefly seen, is THE Phoenix Arizona of the movies: atmospheric, thematic, important to the narrative.

[–] MizhuB (165) 6 years ago

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

I don't know, ecarle. I don't associate the two sweeping shots. BECAUSE in Vertigo, the shot comes approximately halfway through the movie, and is shown solely to demonstrate the passage of time. We already know the story takes place in SF. The actors have already been filmed all over the city, and continue to be so after that shot. Vertigo is full of San Francisco.

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Fair enough. One thing I would like to observe is that one of the "positives" of Vertigo is that Hitchcock was really looking to focus ON San Francisco as the setting of the story(and some areas north and south of it, but mainly SF.)

It is said that Hitchcock had a love affair with San Francisco. He bought a second home in Santa Cruz about 80 miles(I'm guessing) south -- near the Mission San Juan Bautista -- and he travelled up to SF for fine dining often.

So here is Vertigo, in Technicolor and VistaVision, touring all around the city -- from the POV of Scottie's car a lot --but also over to the Golden Gate bridge and the various museums and missions in town. Not to mention the view of Coit Tower("a phallic symbol" said Hitch) from Scottie's apartment.

Versus the movie-long in-depth tour of SF in Vertigo, the rather perfunctory second-unit shots of Phoenix at the beginning of Psycho, are indeed, "functional stuff." But I find that they function WELL. The opening pans to the right and down, have a certain bleak and almost ominous quality to them; as a few Hitchcock scholars noted, the camera seems to hunt around until it SELECTS the window with Sam and Marion, as if to say: "something fateful starts HERE."

And indeed that "something fateful starts HERE" aspect to the Phoenix cityscape in Psycho is indeed different from the "many months have passed" role of the SF cityscape in SF.

So....my mind changes. A bit. Personally I like BOTH sweeping shots, but I like the Psycho one better. Because Phoenix Arizona is such a unique and original city for a movie to begin in.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

The sweeping shot of Phoenix in Psycho is at the beginning, and is only an establishing shot. And it depends on dissolves. I realize this is a limitation of the technology (and probably budget) available for Psycho, but I don't think the two are related.

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Again, fair enough. And I can't remember: there are no dissolves in that SF shot? Interesting either way.

Heck, the budget was so low on Psycho that Hitchcock couldn't/wouldn't send a crew back to shoot the Phoenix streets without the Xmas decorations -- so we got a "December movie" with no other references to Xmas!

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And the only other actual shots of Phoenix are, as you say, second unit.

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Its interesting. After spending so much time filming the streets in San Francisco, and then filming scenes in NYC, Chicago and the Mount Rushmore area for NXNW....Hitch goes second unit for Psycho.

He filmed The Birds briefly in SF and then on location in Bodega Bay, but both Marnie and Torn Curtain suffer from second unit work and "background plates" to convey the East Coast of the US(Marnie) and East Germany(Torn Curtain.)

Hitch got a bit better after that. He flew his tired bones over to Copenhagen and Paris for some location work for Topaz, supervised directly by him. And he flew his tired bones over to London and STAYED there to film all of Frenzy -- mainly in the Covent Garden area, but at a few other locales too(the authenticity of the London locales probably contributed to its good reviews.)

Then back up to SF for parts of Family Plot -- without ever calling the city San Francisco -- because OTHER parts were filmed in Los Angeles and MERGED with the SF footage to create a fictional city. One of the weirdest Hitchcock decisions ever-- I can only figure he didn't want to do a "San Francisco movie" to compete with -- and lose to -- Vertigo.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

In the remake, there were two things I noticed about that opening shot when I saw it. One, the helicopter was reflected in a high rise building.

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Hmmm. Didn't catch that! To my DVD...

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And two, as I recall, there was ONE car driving up the street. At 2:43 p.m. in a busy city like Phoenix? The amount of traffic was more realistic in the original.

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Well, its only a few cars in the original, but they were REAL. One car in the Van Sant, huh? No money for more?

Note: the POV shot from Marion's car of her boss looking at her, in the remake, was filmed on the streets of Pasadena , California. Not Phoenix. The giveaway is a brick clock tower in the distance.

Back on the "60 vs 98" Psycho beat, even with a helicopter shot that worked and CGI technology, Van Sant's Phoenix opening shot seemed to lack the bleak, ominous emotion of Hitchcock's original, which also, today, carries the nostalgia of 1959 with it -- Phoenix was a much more lonely city then.

[–] MizhuB (165) 6 years ago

Oh, I don't disagree that the opening shots of Psycho zero in on a particular spot that seems to indicate 'Here's where it all starts'. Given what he had to work with, Hitch established that perfectly.

Or that the second-unit stuff is very functional. Of course, there's that shot of Christmas decorations in the street in December after Cassidy has declared 'It's as hot as fresh milk! You girls oughtta get your boss to air-condition you up. He can afford it today!'

My sister lives in Santa Cruz. About an hour's drive (60 miles or so) south of SF. I was there years ago, but had no knowledge that Hitch had a home there. If I'd known, I would have gone by his address. (Although I've looked it up on Google Maps, and there's not much visible from the street). San Juan Bautista is about 35 miles south of her. She's been there. I haven't.

It's kind of funny. Living in and around an area so rich in movie history, she really hasn't visited many locations at all.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Oh, I don't disagree that the opening shots of Psycho zero in on a particular spot that seems to indicate 'Here's where it all starts'. Given what he had to work with, Hitch established that perfectly.

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Yes! He's also quoting himself a bit here -- "Rope" opens without a cityscape, but the camera DOES go through a window - -actually magically "through" a heavy curtain hiding the act -- to show a strangling being completed. That's even more "secretive" than what Sam and Marion are doing. As Hitchocck said, "Self-plagiarism is style."

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Or that the second-unit stuff is very functional. Of course, there's that shot of Christmas decorations in the street in December after Cassidy has declared 'It's as hot as fresh milk! You girls oughtta get your boss to air-condition you up. He can afford it today!'

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Hot as fresh milk on December 11. But we've had some folks on this board say that Phoenix CAN be hot in December, and I've been in San Diego in 80 degree heat in December.

I expect that Hitchcock thought long and hard before slapping the words "December 11" on Psycho to accommodate the Xmas decorations in the one shot. He probably thought: "So what if nobody mentions Xmas or has Xmas decorations up?" . He wasn't going to spend money essentially out of his own pocket to make the fix. The script posits the story taking place in "late summer," its a summer storm that brings Marion to the Bates Motel. It makes more sense as a winter storm, I guess.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

My sister lives in Santa Cruz. About an hour's drive (60 miles or so) south of SF.

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Aha. 60 miles.

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I was there years ago, but had no knowledge that Hitch had a home there.

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Yep. His main home was in Beverly Hills, but many weekends a driver would take Alma and him up to Santa Cruz. For about 1/3 of the way, he drove as Marion Crane drove in Psycho - -that's where he got the idea for that sequence. And Hitch also saw the open prarie, near Bakersfield , where he would stage the Indiana crop duster scene in NXNW.

The Santa Cruz/Carmel/Monterey area he used mainly for Vertigo, but the ocean cliffs there(and near Big Sur) stood in for England in Rebecca and Suspicion. And they were "matted in" to the Glen Cove cliff drunk driving scene in NXNW(said some native New Yorkers: "there are no cliffs in Glen Cove!")

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If I'd known, I would have gone by his address. (Although I've looked it up on Google Maps, and there's not much visible from the street).

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I"ve never known of the location. Guess I got to look it up. It was Hitch's "home away from home," but I think he sold it some years before his death -- he couldn't make the trip after awhile, even with a driver.

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San Juan Bautista is about 35 miles south of her. She's been there. I haven't.

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Well, if she's there...maybe you can visit. Always remember though: there is no bell tower on the Mission! It was a matte painting!

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It's kind of funny. Living in and around an area so rich in movie history, she really hasn't visited many locations at all.

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I once agreed to "play tourist" and took a Carmel/Monterey bus tour of movie locations in the area -- they had TVs playing scenes on the ceiling of the bus. We'd watch scenes from Vertigo -- and go there. Also scenes from One Eyed Jacks(Brando), A Summer Place(standing in for New England), and well...some other movies.

[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Imagine Hitchcock filming scenes from Vertigo and then being driven...home to Santa Cruz(maybe even from San Francisco.)

Related: Hitchocck filmed much of The Birds in the real town of Bodega Bay, but didn't stay on location. Each day as filming ended, he would be driven south 60 miles to San Francisco, and then be driven back up the next morning. It is said that people lined parts of the highway to wave at him, hoping for autographs. Post-Psycho and with the TV show, he was a Big Deal. A star.