It has been a while since I’ve watched The movie but I remember when Norman discovers Marion’s body he’s repulsed and knocks a picture of the wall in which the camera focuses on it but why? To me it seems very out of place and it’s never explained.
share@squishy. The shot you mention is interesting. I don't think myself that it needs any *deep* explanation, rather having the fast cutaway to the floor probably just serves broadly technical (flow and performace quality) purposes:
(a) it changes the feel of the scene, making it more agitated than just holding on Perkins would; arguably it helps put us more in Norman's agitated head and shoes
(b) it allows Hitchcock to reset and get the perfect beginning frame of the long six seconds as shaking Norman with his hand over his mouth composes himself. Perhaps when Hitch tried to do Norman's running from right to left into the bathroom door-frame then spinning back to the right and hold for six seconds all in one shot something was not quite right (I'm guessing that it's hard to hit a mark exactly after spinning back to the right).
That said, bird imagery plays a part in Psycho - Norman not only stuffs birds (foreshadowing what we'll learn he's done to his mom) he's visually identified with a bird of prey in the parlor scene and later in conversation with Arbogast. It's not *that* much of a stretch to see Norman/Mother as a big bird of prey pecking a smaller bird (Marion) to death, which is what his knocking a pretty bird picture off the wall recapitulates or echoes.
Observe too how Hitch and Perkins streamline things from Stefano's script:
Norman pauses a moment in the doorway, glances about the room, hears the shower going, sees the bathroom door is open. He goes to the bathroom, looks in, sees the body. Slowly. almost carefully, he raises his hands to his face, covers his eyes, turns his face away. Then he crosses to the window, looks out at the house. Shot is so angled that we see the bedside table with the newspaper on it.Here Norman sees the body then looks out the window, then sits and thinks on the bed for a bit, then goes over to the window again, closing it. The finished scene is tighter, more noirish/man-under-pressure-ish; we're in tight on Norman and the clattering bird picture and stay tight on Norman pulling himself together. As composed Norman starts operating on the room and wider world to enact the cover-up, we too take wider views of the surroundings. Stefano's script is great but Hitch's directorial instincts (esp. with a master actor like Perkins to work with) about how to shape a scene to put us more in Norman's shoes are even better. share
After a moment, Norman moves from the window, sinks onto the edge of the bed.
FRESH ANGLE - BEHIND NORMAN
Norman sitting on bed, the bathroom in b.g. of shot. We can see only the hand of the dead girl lying along the tile floor . Norman presses his eyes, fights to find a way out of his dilemma. Slowly, a kind of settling comes upon him, the peace that comes with decision.
Norman rises, goes to the window. looks out, and then, with resolutlon, closes the window and draws the curtain across it...
I like this script to film comparison, swanstep. Psycho the movie versus Psycho the script are really quite an educational project.
For some reason, I'm flashing to script versus scene when Marion stands outside Cabin One and invites Norman to bring their meal into the Cabin("As long as you've made us suppoer, we might as well eat it."). There are different kinds of "precision" to what Stefano writes on the page, and what Hitchcock transfers to film.
The "theme" of the brief moment is that Marion, in inviting Norman into the Cabin, is demonstrating a mild flirtatiousness...she is inviting this young man into her "bedchamber" and motel rooms are pretty famous as places where people have furtive sex. She is not at all(I think) inviting Norman in with any serious intent to make out with him, let alone have sex with him...but she likes "taking control of the situation" and inviting Norman into the intimacy of her room. She's toying with him a bit -- all of this AFTER she heard mother's tirade about "not feeing her ugly appetite with my food...or my son!" In a way, Marion is challenging Mother directly , here.
So the script says this:
MARY: Don't worry about it. (A warm smile.) But as long as you've made us supper, we might as well eat it.
She begins to back into her room. Norman starts to follow, hesitates as he sees the total picture of an attractive young woman and a motel room. Bringing down the tray of food, in defiance of his mother's orders, is about the limit of his defiance for one day. He cannot go into Mary's room.
NORMAN: It might be nicer...and warmer... in the office.
Without waiting for approval or disapproval, he turns, hurries to the office. Mary looks after him, her face showing amused sympathy, then follows.
IN THE MOVIE:
Stefano's rather precise description of what's going on here "internally"("..is about the limit of his defiance for one day") and how Mary(Marion) reacts at the end of this moment ("her face showing amused sympathy") are rather precisely mimicked by the performances of Perkins and Leigh in this scene.
Where Hitchcock comes in: On the page, this is a "generalized" dramatic scene(with touches of humor and sexiness), but Hitchcock makes sure to make it his. When Marion invites Norman into the room, Hitchcock gives us a low angle POV(from Marion's POV) looking slightly up at Norman, who is considering her offer, and lowering his head slightly. Then Hitchcock cuts to a slightly elevated POV from Norman's angle, on Marion, arms folded and standing in the doorway of the lit motel room. Her expression isn't quite sexy, but it isn't quite neutral either. I take it for "Well, you've been invited into her motel room by a pretty woman, what are you going to do about it?" But it is the POV shots and angles of this moment that makes it Hitchcock. Stefano has written the moment perfectly, Perkins and Leigh are acting it perfectly, but Hitchcock is there with his angles, his POV shots, the TIMING of those shots, and it all comes satisfyingly together. I would also say that Stefano, Perkins, Leigh and Hitchcock are a TEAM , here , but under Hitchcock's general control. For instance, while Leigh captures Stefano's script perfectly in how she watches Norman walk away ("amused sympathy"), I expect Hitchcock gave Leigh some direction on expression and pose for the high angle POV shot of her in the motel doorway.
Rather like Van Sant's Psycho, Stefano's screenplay for Psycho is ALMOST a shot for shot, scene by scene match-up of the movie, but there are differences along the way, such as Stefano writing that Arbogast "dashes furtively up the hill" to Mother's house where Hitchcock chooses to let Arbogast take his time in a measured and suspense-building walk. There are lots of little changes like that from script to screen with Psycho.
I think some more of these "script versus movie" analyses would be interesting. Whenever appropriate.
(a) it changes the feel of the scene, making it more agitated than just holding on Perkins would; arguably it helps put us more in Norman's agitated head and shoes
---
Yes. I've always liked the shot for how it feels like "punctuation." The bird photo falls solidly to the floor with a "splat" sound effect. Hitchcock always liked the little details...and Psycho is FILLED with them. Like Marion's uneaten lunch in the hotel room at the beginning. New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther in his Psycho review felt that Hitchcock was "more given over to small details in Psycho than in his other films," and I think maybe he was right. Crowther meant it as a criticism(he felt this slowed the beginning of the movie down.) I see it as a plus. The small scale Psycho allows for a lot of precision insert shots, signifying, well...a hell of a lot.
And isn't it nifty how the picture falls "perfectly" "bird side up." I wonder if that required some takes, or (more likely)if the photo was weighted to fall just right.
---
(b) it allows Hitchcock to reset and get the perfect beginning frame of the long six seconds as shaking Norman with his hand over his mouth composes himself. Perhaps when Hitch tried to do Norman's running from right to left into the bathroom door-frame then spinning back to the right and hold for six seconds all in one shot something was not quite right (I'm guessing that it's hard to hit a mark exactly after spinning back to the right).
---
That there's some nifty analysis as to the "whys and wherefores of screen action and movement." Rather like as, in the same film, how people keep sliding across the front seat of their cars and exiting on the passenger side. Or the precision of how many lurching steps Mother takes to get to Arbogast on the landing....(practiced many times in the evening after shooting days, by doubles.)
That said, bird imagery plays a part in Psycho - Norman not only stuffs birds (foreshadowing what we'll learn he's done to his mom) he's visually identified with a bird of prey in the parlor scene and later in conversation with Arbogast. It's not *that* much of a stretch to see Norman/Mother as a big bird of prey pecking a smaller bird (Marion) to death, which is what his knocking a pretty bird picture off the wall recapitulates or echoes.
---
It remains an "accidental irony" of Psycho that it comes right before The Birds in the Hitchcock canon, but at distance of almost three years, which means that Hitchcock wasn't already working on The Birds while finishing up Psycho(in other words, The Birds was not on Hitchcock's mind while he was making Psycho.) And yet, it seems like Hitchcock knew he was going to do "bird movies" back to back. Except he couldn't have known that.
That said, WITHIN Psycho, there seems to have been an overt decision to "push the bird thing." Robert Bloch gave them one building block: Marion CRANE. But in his book, there were no stuffed birds(just one stuffed squirrel, as I recall.) Hitchcock(and Stefano?) added the stuffed birds, and the two bird pictures on the wall of Cabin One, and, indeed, the overall connection of Norman to birds of prey(both sitting under them and attacking as one -- with his beak-like knife, and, in the case of Arbogast, literally swooping down on the man.)
And Marion in the movie comes from Phoenix Arizona. (Dallas in the book.) Phoenix is the bird that rises from the ashes, and, noted one critic, Mrs. Bates has risen from the ashes, too.
This circles around to the idea that Psycho is rife with symbolism(birds, mirrors), but is it too EASY symbolism? Is Hitchcock perhaps the master of "middle brow" art that everybody from high school film class students to armchair auteur spotters can grasp?
Yes...and no! (The psychiatrist's line.)
The symbolism is pretty easy to spot in Psycho...along with the foreshadowing -- a shower head viewed in Marion's bathroom at home, the cop saying "There are plenty of motels in the area, you should have ...just to be safe."
I say: its great, and its profound, and that it is EFFORTLESSY profound is its key plus. These are not "hidden" symbols or symbols that a critic has to "push" to make work . Rather, they are there, and they have meaning both within the story at hand, and as symbols.
Birds....birds of prey..birds as creatures of the night...Norman looking like a bird (and GULPING like a bird as Arbogast questions him). Hitchcock telling Truffaut that the birds "appeal to Perkins' sense of masochism...he sees his guilt reflected in their eyes."
Mirrors. They are everywhere in Psycho..whether actual mirrors or refections in glass, and they effortlessly make the case for Psycho as a study of the duality of Norman's personalities and the "two sides within us all"(like Marion's as a sexual woman, and later as a thief.)
Toilets and waste: The first movie to show a toilet being flushed ...AND with a swamp that connotes a place where things are "flushed down"(cars, people)...there is even a fecal look to the muddy water. Meanwhile, Marion asks California Charlie where the Ladies Room is. Women didn't do that in Hays Code films...at best, they'd ask where the Powder Room is. And then, we go IN there with Marion, though no toilet is shown.
Eyes: Norman's eye at the peephole --as light enters his pupil with an erotic image(of nude Marion) that triggers Mother. The all-seeing eye of the motel showerhead -- overhead. Marion's dead eye mixed in with the drain of the shower. Arbogast's wide open, bugged out eyes as his face is slashed(one critic said that Arbogast, the private eye, is slashed IN the eye, though I think its not a direct hit.) Mother's empty eye sockets -- dark eyes that come to life falsely with the light of the fruit cellar bulb. And Norman's eyes , in the cell, at the end , focused directly on: US. And searing INTO us.
shareA return to:
Mirrors. They are everywhere in Psycho..whether actual mirrors or refections in glass, and they effortlessly make the case for Psycho as a study of the duality of Norman's personalities and the "two sides within us all"(like Marion's as a sexual woman, and later as a thief.)
Have you ever tried a "mirror count" with Psycho?
One set designer said that "Hitchcock asked for a lot of mirrors" on the sets of Psycho. Mirrors can be a problem for camera placement -- you don't want a crew member in the shot -- but Hitchcock wanted them, nonetheless. Plus, he lit some scenes to use natural reflective surfaces. But: let's take a look:
Hotel room scene: Marion gets dressed and ready before a mirror.
Real Estate office scene: Marion checks her face in a hand mirror.
Marion's room: Marion checks herself out in a mirror.
Cop stop: No mirror..until Marion starts driving again and studies the cop car following her in the rear view mirror.
California Charlie's: A mirror in the Ladies Room as Marion counts out the money.
Bates Motel office: A mirror on the side where customers check in. That mirror will reflect Marion, Arbogast, Sam, and Lila....and it wobbles weirdly when Sam is questioning Norman.
The parlor: When Norman creeps up to his peephole to decide on looking at Marion, his head is reflected in the glass of the bird display -- it looks like Norman has two heads!
Cabin One: A mirror in the bedroom, a mirror on the medicine cabinet in the bathroom.
Cabin One: The dark window outside the cabin. Norman's head and face are reflected as he faces Marion with his food tray -- this is perhaps the biggest "visual clue" to Norman's split personality in the film, outside of his hip-swinging walk up the stairs.
Mother's house: A mirror in the foyer. Crucially, a mirror in Mother's bedroom that reflects Lila and makes her (and us) jump.
The DA's office...the cop who comes in with the blanket is reflected in glass to his right.
That's a lot of mirrors. That's a lot of reflection. That's a lot of doubled personalities.
I don't see it in this thread, but "bird" is a Britishism for an attracctive woman. So the scene is telling us visually what we don't actually learn till the end, that Norman knocked off the bird.
This can also be applied to The Birds. Bodega Bay is subject to a number of bird attacks, but the serenity of the Brenner family is attached by one particular invding bird: Melanie.
@mg. The British use of 'bird' is sort of implicit in my initial reply at "It's not *that* much of a stretch to see Norman/Mother as a big bird of prey pecking a smaller bird (Marion) to death".
I didn't make the point explicit because I've always found the difference in actual usage between US English and UK English in this area to be pretty minimal: 'chick' and 'chicks' are in both dialects. That's the same image only with a slightly sweeter valence.
Women at least occasionally refer to themselves as chicks, cool chicks, hippy chicks, etc. whereas they don't in my experience refer to themselves, even playfully, as 'birds'. That is, 'bird' in UK English has a bit of a stereotypical, predatory, straight male perspective built into it. Birds are what you (a non-Bird) try to pull (pick up), hope to shag (have sex with - but a 'shag' is also a kind of bird: http://nzbirdsonline.org.nz/species/pied-shag), etc..
Women at least occasionally refer to themselves as chicks, cool chicks, hippy chicks, etc. whereas they don't in my experience refer to themselves, even playfully, as 'birds'. That is, 'bird' in UK English has a bit of a stereotypical, predatory, straight male perspective built into it. Birds are what you (a non-Bird) try to pull (pick up), hope to shag (have sex with - but a 'shag' is also a kind of bird
---
Shag is a bird? Someone alert Austin Powers! I always felt that Mike Myers got a lot of comic mileage out of that phrase -- "The Spy Who Shagged Me" -- for instance.
Meanwhile, cut to Hitchcock's Frenzy, famously set in England(London, mainly) and famously full of British phrases like this one:
Uniformed cop(to Rusk): You're one for the birds, can you ask them if they've had a run-in with this sort of chap(the sex maniac who is the Necktie Killer, aka Rusk.)
I always noted that line for a coupla reasons. One was how the line immediately linked Frenzy to both The Birds and to Psycho...the last "great ones" in Hitchcock before Frenzy. (Though I know Marnie has its fans.)
But I was more intrigued -- once I knew that Rusk was the killer -- in that he had a reputation as "one for the birds." A ladies man? Rusk? Is it possible that Rusk managed a few years with "normal" dating and sexual relationships with women before his madness took over and murder was on his mind? Or did Rusk just "fake it" -- always talking about women and dates that really never happened.
Its just one line, but I always remembered it.