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Psycho And the Most Controversial Expository Scene in the History of the American Motion Picture

posted 2 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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This is meant to be a "companion post" to the post "Psycho and the Greatest Lie in the History of the American Motion Picture."

My intent here is to leave one --now two -- maybe three "anchor posts for reference" designed to take up those aspects of Psycho that have been so historic and "bedrock" to an interpretation of Psycho that they come up around here time and time again.

And I'd like to put them to rest, and leave them here for reference.

"Psycho and the Greatest Lie in the History of the American Motion Picture" was meant to prove that decades of critics writing "Hitchcock surprised audiences by killing off his star in the shower scene before the movie was half over" was a lie. Because Hitchcock made a trailer in 1960 that basically said: "Come see my new movie about a bloody murder in a shower." When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

"Psycho and the Most Controversial Expository Scene in the History of the American Motion Picture" shall be about: The Psychiatrist Scene.

Sometimes I have called this "The Shrink Scene" which seems to have met with resistance. "Shrink" means typing a shorter word, but I suppose it can be perjorative. I intend to alternate..shrink scene, psychiatrist scene. Whatever feels right at the moment. I certainly don't intend "shrink" to be insultling, just..shorter.

The Shrink Scene is rather the Yin to the shower scene Yang. One scene took seven days to film(the shower scene.) One scene took less than ONE day to film(the shrink scene.) The scene that took seven days to film runs about 45 seconds. The scene that took one day to film is the longest scene in the movie(well, one of them.) One scene is "cinema at its most spectacular." The other scene is "static, the camera stays firm while one man pontificates."

The Shrink Scene is, quite simply, an expository dump at the end of a movie that was, overall, an exercise in "pure cinema." Psycho has one stretch of screen time -- from when Marion leaves the parlor to when Marion's car sinks in a swamp -- that goes on for nine minutes with but one sentence of dialogue("Mother, Oh God, Mother, Blood, Blood!") Much else of the film is silent -- Marion's drive, Arbogast's walk around the motel and up the stairs; Lila's exploration of the house, etc.

But the shrink scene is just one guy talking FOREVER, it seems. One internet wag called it the "Joe the Explainer Scene."

What's funny is that TV audiences -- if not movie audiences -- were very familiar with this kind of scene in 1960. Perry Mason would end every episode (practically) with Perry at his desk explaining to his secretary Della Street and his private investigator Paul Drake how he figured out who the real killer was. And though he did no explaining, Hitchcock himself always came on at the end of his episodes to tell us how the cops caught the killer(who got away with it on screen.)

I think what bugs people about The Shrink Scene is how it slaps a "TV episode banality" at the end (the NEAR end) of an otherwise shocking, dazzling cinematic masterpiece. It seems to be a scene that insults the entire movie that came before it.

That is , IF you don't like the scene. But I DO like the scene and...I'll get to that.

Hitchcock had a white lie that rather indicts the Shrink Scene. He often said "other peoples movies are photographs of people talking," but that HIS movies had "pure cinema" -- montage, camera movements, great angles, lighting and composition. Still, there are a LOT of scenes of people talking in Hitchcock movies. Wheter "mystery exposition," romantic banter, or one-liners, people talk a lot in Hitchcock movies.

And in the two movies before Psycho have significant exposition dumps too: in Vertigo, its near the beginning: Gavin Elster gives "the case of the haunted wife" to detective James Stewart and talks a LOT. In North by Northwest, it is near the middle: CIA boss Leo G. Carroll explains to his staff -- and the audience -- exactly what has been going on with Cary Grant's adventure and how it is focused on a man who doesn't exist(we didn't know that, now we DO, but Cary still does NOT. Suspense).

In Psycho, the exposition scene comes at the end. It had to come SOMETIME. The audience needed an explanation. The mystery needed a solution.

To make the argument I wish to make IN FAVOR of the shrink scene, I need to open with two arguments made AGAINST the shrink scene.

The first was made by screenwriter William Goldman, in his seminal 1982 book "Adventures in the Screen Trade." Goldman won two Oscars -- Best Original Screenplay(Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) and Best Adapted Screenplay(All the President's Men.) He knows of what he speaks except -- those screenplays aren't all that special really. The Butch script is all great one-liners and scarce on narrative; President's Men is rather a retelling of a news story(anybody remember the great lines?)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

In his chapter on "Endings," Goldman praises the ending of North by Northwest(by Ernest Lehman) to high heaven: up on Mount Rushmore, about 11 plots climax at once and suddenly we're on a honeymoon train back to New York and its all done in 30 SECONDS.

Goldman then goes on to praise Psycho as his favorite Hitchcock picture, but with a "hitch" . The shower scene is a glory. Goldman also remembers his 1960 crowd screaming away at the fruit cellar climax and...
Wrote goldman:

"..but (the fruit cellar) is not the ending. The ending is a full seven minutes away. And five of those minutes are taken up with one of the great snooze scenes, in which the local shrink comes in and delivers this agonizingly primitive course in Freud, where he tells us Perkins is a nut-cake. Well, we've been pretty clued into that fact by this time."

(Hah. Well, I'll deal with that.)

Goldman continues: "I can only guess why this doesn't mar the movie. I think the high points are so extraordinary that we're more than satisfied. We'll forgive anything. When I saw the movie in 1960, I remember the audience screamed so much during the basement sequence that they were almost relieved that there was nothing left to jolt them. There was nervous chit-chat and laughter all the way from the basement to the end. Nobody listened to the psychiatrist.:

(Hmm. Nobody LISTENED to the psychiatrist. And I can attest when I saw Jaws, we lost almost all the dialogue in a scene after the guy's head popped out of the boat-- people were STILL screaming while Dreyfuss and Scheider tried to convince the mayor to close the beaches. Maybe.)

Goldman concludes: "In any case, Psycho , for me, remains unique. The most important minutes of the film(the ending) are sophomoric, and the movie remains a glory. Amazing. Maybe only Hitchocck could have pulled it off."

END

Hold that thought.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

With William Goldman's classic diss of the shrink scene out of the way, I can move on to the other major writer to diss it:

Roger Ebert.

Goldman was a proven, established, Oscar winning screenwriter, so you could take his attack on the shrink scene as knowledgeable. Ebert, not so much.

I got my head handed to my on another board when I noted that Ebert was considered a "failed screenwriter" by a successful(but bad) screenwriter named Joe Ezsteras (who wrote Basic Instinct , Jagged Edge, and a bunch of lousy knockoffs of them.) All Ebert ever wrote was part of the screenplay to Russ Meyer's "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls."

I will concede that Roger Ebert is now the most famous film critic who ever lived, and the richest while he was alive(TV syndication.) He won a Pulitizer Prize for his newspaper criticism. Personally, I think he was a great WRITER...he could be funny, he could be incisive, he managed to find something to write every week about every movie he saw(that's hard.)

But Ebert could also be a bit lazy, a bit derivative, a bit of a "follow the leader" kind of writer who just re-wrote what others had written before. I think he read William Goldman's piece above because here is Ebert (in his Great Movies essay on Psycho), circa 1998(on the original 1960 film):

"For thoughtful viewers, however, an equal surprise is still waiting. That is the mystery of why Hitchcock marred the ending of a masterpiece with a sequence that is grotesquely out of place. After the murders have been solved, there is an inexplicable scene during which the long-winded psychiatrist (Simon Oakland) lectures the assembled survivors on the causes of Norman's psychopathic behavior. This is an anticlimax taken almost to the point of parody."

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Ebert continues:

"If I were bold enough to reedit Hitchcock's film, I would include only the doctor's first explanation of Norman's dual personality: 'Norman Bates no longer exists. He only half existed to begin with. And now, the other half has taken over, probably for all time.' Then I would cut out everything else the psychiatrist says, and cut to the shots of Norman wrapped in the blanket while his mother's voice speaks..."

(Er: While I give Ebert points for trying, I think his "reedit" proves why he was a failed screenwriter. More anon.)

Ebert concludes: "Those edits, I believe, would have made "Psycho" very nearly perfect. I have never encountered a single convincing defense of the psychiatric blather. Truffaut tactfully avoids it in his famous interview."

AND: In his review of Van Sant's Psycho in 1998, Ebert adds this to the mix:

"By having a psychiatrist (Robert Forster) reproduce a five-minute speech of clinical diagnosis at the end of the film, Van Sant demonstrates that a completely unnecessary scene in the original , if reproduced, will be completely unnecessary in the remake as well."

END

Well, there you have it. One Oscar wining screenwriter (William Goldman) and one rich and famous critic(Roger Ebert) agree: The shrink scene was terrible, overlong, "marred" a masterpiece(both men used that phrase) and...wait for it: unnecessary.

SIDEBAR: William Goldman and Roger Ebert are both dead now, but when they were alive -- they hated each other. Goldman wrote(and I quote) about Ebert missing a plot point in one of his movies: "And (Ebert) is supposed to be one of the good ones. There are no good ones."

Ouch. Mr. Goldman didn't like critics, period.

Ebert got Goldman back in his review of "The Ghost and the Darkness."

Anyway, Goldman and Ebert hated each other, but they joined in their hatred of the shrink scene.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Ebert wrote:

I have never encountered a single convincing defense of the psychiatric blather.

--

Well, today I'm going to try. I've written some of this before, and some of this elsewhere, but I'm looking to leave my argument here as a legacy. I won't write of it again...I'll just reference this post.

Whether or not the scene is "overlong" is arguable. Its one man talking and it goes on a long time, but I've always felt that Stefano's expert screenwriting here gave the shrink's remarks a "narrative flow," This is the ending not only of a "mystery movie," but of a SUSPENSE movie. Hitchcock defined suspense as "giving the audience information that the characters on screen do not have." WE knew: Marion was dead, the private investigator, too. Lila and Sam did NOT know this, an on the matter of Marion, it was agonizing to watch Lila try to find out.

Well, in the shrink scene...Lila finds out. Sam, too. Hitchcock ends the suspense for them, and for US. We WANTED them to find out. This was VERY necessary. I can't believe that Goldman and Ebert missed this, but...I don't think they were thinking about it.

The shrink's scene covers these matters, broadly:

ONE: End the suspense. Lila and Sam find out that Marion IS dead. (Poor Arbogast is collateral.)
TWO: "The back story of Norman Bates." How he became the monster he is.
THREE: "How Norman's psychosis functions." Not EVERYBODY in 1960 understood the nature of a split personality. And the shrink simplifies matters: When Norman peeped on Marion and saw her nude, she turned him on. Erotic arousal triggered the jealous mother and Mother killed the girl.
FOUR: Predict the future. Norman will be tried. Norman will be institutionalized. Norman will now be mother "probably for all time."

This is a lot of ground to cover, and Stefano's script covers it expertly, if you ask me.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Indeed, this scene was in the NOVEL, too, but it ran longer(pages), and it had a LOT more information. Like how Norman was found catatonic with the bodies of his mother and her boyfriend. Like how Norman wrote Mother's "suicide note" and "literally changed his mind" into Mother while writing it. Like how Norman was put in an institution for some time(THAT's why he knew about "the inside of those places"). Like how Norman had THREE personalities: Norman(the little boy), Norma(the mother), Normal(the man.)

ALL of that got cut from the shrink's speech, which in the book is a story told by Sam to Lila after HE visited the shrnk. Hitchcock and Stefano streamlined the whole thing, whittled it down nicely , gave it all to the shrink to deliver. (Note: Stefano said he wanted the shrink to be a woman, but Hitch decided it should be a man-- maybe because of the sexual information?)

Here comes the most important part. I've written of it before, and I'm amazed that Ebert and Goldman didn't talk of it.

The shrink gives us THREE vital pieces of information. One is ABSOLUTELY necessary to learn. The other two take Psycho to new levels of screen horror for 1960,and informed the film as "the sickest film ever made"(in one critics opinion) to that time.

Here are the three pieces of information:

ONE: Mother did NOT poison her boyfriend and then poisoned herself. NORMAN killed both of them. We COULD have thought that Mother indeed was the suicide killer, and that Norman just brought that corpse to life, but NO: HE was the killer. Norman was the psycho all along.

Had Psycho NOT explained this mystery , it would have been practicing "mystery malpractice."

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

There are stimulating clues along the way:

Norman tells Marion about Mother's boyfriend: "And then he died...and the WAY he died...its nothing to talk about while you're eating."

That's BIG. In this "nice parlor conversation" Norman is raising the spectre of horrible death. What HAPPENED to that boyfriend? When Mother stabs Marion in the shower, our minds race to it: Mother must have stabbed her boyfriend to death, too.

But LATER, the sheriff gives us the new information: Mother poisoned the boyfriend and then poisoned herself. WHAT? But Norman said that ONLY the boyfriend died.

We are DESPERATE to find out the solution to all of this, and its STAGGERING: NORMAN killed his own mother!("Matricide is the most unbearable cfrime of all..most unbearable to the son who commits it.")

And thus, carrying such a burden of guilt...Norman snapped in a big way and "Mother was reborn."

TWO: Norman stole his mother's corpse, gutted it, filled with with taxidermy chemicals and sawdust, and kept "her" around the house.

Staggering. Without this information, we might have guessed that Norman dug up mother's corpse, but we would have though the "skull face" belonged "merely" to a rotting "regular corpse."

NO. Norman not only stole the corpse , he gutted it, and stuffed it. This was unfilmable in 1960 but it entered the audience's MIND and was more horrifiying (perhaps) than the murders we had witnessed. This revelation also retroactively rendered Norman's taxidermy hobby(those birds) ....something much more macabre than it originally seemed to be...and it was pretty macabre.

Much of the psychiatrist's speech is a "campfire horror story" that we see in our minds, and remember in the darkness when we go home. NOTHING is more a part of this than "Norman gutted and stuffed his own mother and kept her around the house." The sickest movie ever made.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

THREE: Norman killed two other "young girls"(women) before Marion.

We did not HAVE to know this, but knowing that Norman had killed young women before gave new meaning to the murder of Marion, to wit:

This was NOT a "one time occurrence" brought on by Marion's arrival at the Bates Motel. Twice before (in ten years) a single woman had stumbled into the Bates Motel alone and died (maybe in that same shower, otherwise...in bed?) Figure that Norman's other customers in those years had been men(travelling farm equipment salesmen?) or old couples(as Norman told Arbogast or) or young couples (having sex in Cabin One as Norman watched and listened?)

No, it was only TWICE that Norman and Mother had opportunity to kill a young woman. And they did.

And this: Norman and Mother got away with the two other killings , but they did NOT get away with killing Marion Crane because...she was an amateur thief, who brought a sharp private detective on her trail..AND a boyfriend who only lived 15 miles away AND a sister who loved her.

Our knowledge of the two other killings (of women) make Marion's story more ironic: Norman's victim this time destroyed HIM.

There's also this: for folks who felt that Norman and Marion "had a connection," I think not: he never says her name again, she's a problem to be hidden, she's "just another murder victim" to this psycho.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Note in passing: the cable TV movie "Psycho IV: The Beginning" used 1990 graphicness to show Norman poisoning Mother and boyfriend("An ugly way to die") and to show Norman stealing Mother's corpse, gutting it and stuffing it. Far less impact "full frontal" in 1990, MUCH more horrifying in our minds in 1960.

Psycho IV also gave us those two earlier female victims, and I don't believe either of them: (1) A topless teenage tart who tries to seduce Norman in Mother's bedroom(while Fourth of July fireworks go off) and gets stabbed trying, and (2) a "30 something older woman floozie" whom Norman(in Mother attire) STRANGLES after trying to neck with her in a car in front of the motel. Strangles? Hey, no, this isn't "Frenzy," -- Norman's a STABBER. Ruins the motif.

No, I don't go with "Psycho IV" (aka "The Psychiatrist Scene: The Movie.") I think the previous two female victims died in Cabin One after being peeped on. Maybe in the shower, maybe in bed.

In summary:

Three key pieces of information:

ONE: Norman poisoned his mother and her boyfriend. (Norman was ALWAYS the Psycho, Norman committed matricide.)
TWO: Norman stole his mother's corpse, gutted it, stuffed it with taxidermy chemicals and sawdust and kept her around.
THREE: Norman killed two other young women before Marion. She wasn't the first victim..but she was the LAST , because investigators followed her and solved the crime.

Isn't it stunning that Roger Ebert AND William Goldman didn't even care to THINK about the importance of this FACTUAL information?

I think in Ebert's case especially, its simple: he had no training beyond "film critic." A film VIEWER who has training in law, science or administration (or reading mystery novels) will notice these facts. All Ebert noticed was that the scene was "long and unnecessary."

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I think William Goldman hated the shrink scene for another reason: Its "primitive course on Freud." Some people take their psychiatry seriously and perhaps Norman's psychosis seemed too "simple" in the description. The world has wondered: could a Norman Bates REALLY exist? With the two personalities?

Well, its a great MOVIE psychosis. Think of all the details the shrink adds: "He was never only Norman, but he was often only Mother." So mother was THERE in the parlor with Marion and on the porch with Arbogast when they were needling Norman.

The explanation also explains THIS: there were TWO Mothers: the corpse in the chair, and the killer in Norman's mind. During the fruit cellar climax, we see BOTH of them at the same time. The shrink helps explain this.

I'll diss on the late, great Ebert a little more here:

ONE: Ebert didn't seem to notice that Van Sant's Psycho cuts the psychiatrist's speech in half and makes it a lot shorter. He seemed to think it was the exact same scene. Lazy criticism.

TWO: Ebert's "fixed" speech for the psychiatrist not only lacks the crucial three plot points above, its too SHORT. This happened with the Van Sant cut-down too. NO "expert" would subject waiting relatives to so short a speech. The psychiatrist's speech in the movie HAS to be long enough to cover the flow of the expert's report. I've always felt that just when it feels like the psychiatrist's speech is getting too long...it ends.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Some additional points:

ONE: Psycho was made by Hitchcock on a low budget using TV episode techniques. The film has incredible passages of " pure cinema" all the way through, but Hitchcock ALSO puts in a few "straight TV exposition scenes" (Arbogast in the phone booth, Sam and Lila with the Sheriff) that match not only TV production, but the low budget horror movies of the time. The shrink scene "fits" those scenes (as it fits with Gavin Elster's talk in Vertigo and the CIA man in NXNW.)
And the camera DOES move to follow the shrink's movements and gestures, it is not entirely static. And Hitchcock copies "the missing wall" of the shower scene with the "missing wall" in the DA's office -- we are BEHIND Sam and Lila but there is a wall there. Cinematic.

TWO: What of Simon Oakland's performance. It was a LONG speech, the great Alfred Hitchcock was watching him, he couldn't blow the lines -- Hitchcock fired a guy off of Vertigo who couldn't handle HIS shrink speech(he was replaced by Raymond Bailey of The Beverly Hillbillies.)

I think some of Oakland's bombast and overplaying was nerves over working for Hitch but...it works for the character. This guy is a "small town county contract psychiatrist" - maybe a bit too weak on his Freud. He's a showboat. He's rather callous in telling Lila her sister is dead. We can JUDGE him. In real life, after saying "cut," Hitchcock shook Oakland's hand and said "Thank you. You've just saved my picture.")

THREE: The transvestite stuff. Gets a laugh modernly. But barely made it past the censors in 1960. Here at least was an attempt to discuss sexual issues in the Hays Code era. And no, Norman is NOT a transvestite, is he?

FOUR: How did the psychiatrist KNOW all of this on such short acquaintance of Norman? I'll guess: he read files about the murder-suicide and Norman's time in the institution, he'd studied books on split personality, and he GUESSED the rest. Plus, Mother told him some stuff.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

CONT

FIVE: Items in the DA's office of note:

A map: Shasta County. California. Near the Oregon border, hundreds of miles north of San Francisco and the state capitol in Sacramento. County seat is the city of Redding. Hitchocck specified "near Redding" as the locale of the Bates Motel.

A photo of a motorcycle cop. Reminds us of the highway patrolman.

A fan. Reminds us of the fan in Sam and Marion's hotel room.

A calendar with the number 17. But it should be December 20. Somebody hasn't pulled the pages off yet.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Note in passing: a scene like the shrink scene that I DO find boring is at the end of Murder on the Orient Express(1974) in which Albert Finney's Poirot(hard to understand) goes over the murder case in front of all the suspect(including Anthony Perkins and Martin Balsam). THIS is a boring scene to me, enlivened only by flashbacks to key points and the murder itself. Imagine if Hitchcock had given us flashbacks of Norman gutting mother, or dressing up to kill Marion and Arbogast or shown creeping up on them to kill them...much better NOT to see those. Keeps mother in our mind as the killer we REALLY saw.

Note in passing: Hitchcock was once asked about the shrink scene, and waved it off: "Oh, I think we are just skimming over there." Screenwriter Joe Stefano was asked about it and said that though Hitchcock worried it would be a "hat grabber"(old term -- men and women grabbing their hats and leaving the theater)..."NOBODY grabbed their hats during that scene. They listened intently."

---

And...I think that's it.

With "the greatest lie in movie history" I have proof: the trailer that's all about the shower murder.

With "the most controversial exposition scene in movie history" all I have is an argument. The scene is there for all to see..you like it or you don't. Its too long, or it isn't.

Me, I like it. Me, I think its just long enough.

But mainly: me, I think it has VITAL information that HAD to be given to the audience. Every word was written precisely, every piece of information meant something.

And that information helped MAKE Psycho a masterpiece. People sometimes seem to think that the information about Norman killing Mother and stuffing her corpse was SOMEWHERE ELSE in the movie.

Nope. It is in the vitally important shrink scene.

I rest my case.

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

And in the two movies before Psycho have significant exposition dumps too: in Vertigo, its near the beginning: Gavin Elster gives "the case of the haunted wife" to detective James Stewart and talks a LOT.

--

Moreover, I forgot about a bigger one than THAT: The long speech near the Mission San Juan Bautista by the sneering government official (Henry Jones) in which he declares Madeline's death a suicide ...but brutally places the blame on Scottie.

Its rather the same set up as in Psycho -- a medium shot on the official "explaining everything that has happened"(so far) as others just listen. But it has "dramatic edge," too -- the official is ATTACKING Scottie, and Scottie squirms guiltily with every accusation.

Still, it is very much a scene LIKE the shrink scene in Psycho, and you'd think that Goldman and Ebert would have remembered it.

[–] SandyR (7479) 2 years ago

Don't worry, shrinks should be offended. They're basically professional cultists.

[–] ElizabethJoestar (943) 2 years ago

I've never had a problem with that psychiatrist scene. It is long, but I never found it dreadful or painful to sit through. Back in 1960, the audience might have only been aware of a "primitive" understanding of Freud or at least Hollywood's version of Freud, so perhaps an explanation to what the heck just happened seemed necessary for the time.

Did critics complain about this scene in 1960 or is this more a problem for later audiences?

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I've never had a problem with that psychiatrist scene. It is long, but I never found it dreadful or painful to sit through.

---

Nor I. I must admit, in my several years "chase" to actually get to SEE Psycho(back when I was very young and it was very "verboten" by my parents) I wanted ALL the story I could get. The psychiatrist really opens up a whole other MOVIE with his campfire tale of the horrifying history of Norman Bates. (In fact, it ended up being badly made as Psycho IV The Beginning.)

And this: when Marion Crane drives up that path in the rain to the Bates Motel for the first time in the movie(and in movie HISTORY, what a great monument of a moment when "BATES MOTEL-VACANCY" appears on the screen)...neither she nor we have any idea as to where she is, or who is there, or what will happen. But the psychiatrist tells us that what HAS happened in that motel and that house and that swamp....Marion has no idea the truly horrific WORLD she is entering. The psychiatrist tells us.

---

Back in 1960, the audience might have only been aware of a "primitive" understanding of Freud or at least Hollywood's version of Freud, so perhaps an explanation to what the heck just happened seemed necessary for the time.

--

I think so. I think Hitchcock thought so. The novel had a long chapter that got into the explanation. Hitchcock always had his source novels broken down into treatments, so I expect that Stefano and he "mined" that chapter for "what goes into the movie, what stays out," and came up with a scene --- indeed -- to explain more exactly what we have just witnessed.

I can attest that I went to one revival of Psycho where, during the fruit cellar climax, a young woman talked to the screen near me: "WHAT? What's HE doing there? Why is HE dressed up like the mother?" Total confusion. Needed some explaining.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

The psychiatrist also illuminated a couple of things that became interesting quotes by critic Raymond Durgnat.

Durgnat wrote of the fruit cellar climax, that it surprised audiences: "There aren't no Moms...there are TWO moms," Norman in the dress and the corpse. The psychiatrist explains why.

Durgnat also wrote that the psychiatrist basically tells us that "Nothing to the nth degree" has killed two REAL people with whom we sympathized. That is, "murderous mother" is a mental construct!

---
.

Did critics complain about this scene in 1960 or is this more a problem for later audiences?

--
I collected a series of 1960 reviews in a long post for posterity here, and no, none of them complain about the scene. Very few of them even MENTION it, because to mention it is spoiler of sorts -- I think Variety wrote "a psychiatrist appears at the end to explain Perkins' mental state" ..which was a giveway right there.

No, the complaints about the shrink scene seem to have originated in that William Goldman book(which was quite a popular "tell all" about the movie business AND how to write movies) and the Roger Ebert Great Movies review.

Now, that Roger Ebert "Great Movies" review will be widely read for years to come. Its on his website FOREVER(originally it was in a hard copy book.) Indeed the Roger Ebert "Great Movies" review of Psycho does "double duty in infamy" (1) It posits the "Hitchcock wanted to surprise everybody with the shower murder" lie AND (2) it attacks the psychiatrist scene. You want a written essay that screws with Psycho for all time? Roger Ebert wrote it!

That said, in the decades since Goldman and Ebert hammered the shrink scene its right here at the internet that new generations have "piled on" about the shrink scene. Chat rooms, YouTube comments.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I've always noted that three particular elements of Psycho seem to always "get the diss":

The psychiatrist scene
Arbogast's "fake process fall down the stairs."
John Gavin's performance (Hitchcock called him "the stiff.")

Well, I couldn't find a 1960 review that found ANY of these elements to be bad. John Gavin was singled out for praise in a couple of reviews, or grouped with Vera Miles and other support as "fine" all together.

Critics didn't give away Arbogast's murder in general, but one wrote "we follow the victim, covered in blood, down the stairs." No mention of process. And -- covered in blood? Well, in 1960 it seemed so.

And the psychiatrist scene was ignored or just stated.

I guess it took the decades after Psycho, as it started to look a bit old fashioned, for those criticisms to arise.

Me personally, I like Gavin's performance -- his best line reading is the angry "Well one of you better tell me what's going on -- and FAST! -- I can only take so much of this") -- and I think Viggo Mortensen's performance of the role in 1998 was worse. I LOVE Arbogast's fall down the stairs -- it makes the scene truly "Hitchcock cinema" and I can tell you that not a kid who "told" me Psycho noticed it was process at ALL. I don't think 1960 critics spotted the process either.

And as for the psychiatrist scene?

As I've described it. Fine by me.

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Don't worry, shrinks should be offended. They're basically professional cultists.

--

Ha...er, well...

...well, this:

Hollywood in general , and Hitchcock in particular, really "dug" on Freud back then. He turned up in a lot of movies, as early as Spellbound in the Hitchcock canon(which practically is 'all about Freud" in its storyline.

But Hitchcock in the late fifties and early 60's REALLY dug on "shrink scenes."

Consider:

In The Wrong Man, a shrink tells Henry Fonda why Vera Miles is catatonic.

In Vertigo, a shrink tells Barbara Bel Geddes why James Stewart is catatonic.

In Psycho, a shrink tells Vera Miles, John Gavin, and others why Anthony Perkins is...psycho, and a little bit catatonic.

Miles, Stewart, and Perkins all spend some time in sanitariums in their movies, Perkins "perhaps for all time"(in 1960 no one could CONCEIVE of Psycho II.)

These "serious" Hitchcock movies suffered from "who played the shrinks" in The Wrong Man and Vertigo, totally by accident. The shrink in The Wrong Man is played by Werner Klemperer -- soon to be Colonel Klink on Hogan's Heroes. The shrink in Vertigo is played by Raymond Bailey -- soon to be Banker Drysdale on The Beverly Hillibillies.

These shrinks got unintentional laughs in revival screenings -- but I'm sure that has abated. Nobody remembers who Klink and Drysdale were. That goes for Ted Baxter from Mary Tyler Moore guarding Norman's cell in Psycho, too. Used to get a big laugh. In recent screenings, no.

At least Simon Oakland, the shrink in Psycho, didn't go on to play a comedy character, he was safe to movie history.

Indeed, Psycho II was written to "bring Oakland back" as the shrink who oversees Norman's release -- and gets killed. But alas, Oakland was too ill to play the role in 1982 and died soon thereafter. Robert Loggia took over the part under a new character name.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

One TV comedy series actor whose comedy role DID pay off in a previous Hitchcock movie?

Edward Platt -- soon to be "The Chief" on Get Smart --- gets two scenes as Cary Grant's lawyer in North by Northwest, trying to help Grant explain that enemy spies kidnapped him and tried to kill him when nobody believes him.

As soon as an exasperated and embarrassed Platt appears on screen beside Grant, the audience laughs WITH the scene. The Chief is as exasperated by Cary Grant as he will be with Don Adams years later. Better still, Platt is in NXNW called "Larrabee" and The Chief on Get Smart would get a dumb assistant(dumber than Don Adams) called "Larrabee." Coincidence, I think not.