"Psycho" and the "Magnetic Porch"

One of the aspects of Psycho that is part of its famous "hypnotic mood" is how the character MOVE. They move with a certain grace, and Hitchcock's camera flows along with them -- sometimes cutting, sometimes not, but creating a powerful "musical" effect (APART from Bernard Herrmann's score) that is easy on the eyes and powerful on the mind.

Case in point: "The Magnetic Porch."

Three examples:

ONE: When Marion first arrives in the rain at the Bates Motel , and gets out of her car, and finds the office dark and locked...she walks to the left of the office door and the camera follows her to the edge of the porch. She stops. She looks up.

POV shot: The Bates Mansion. It had been SOMEWHAT visible in the night rain -- rather like two fiery eyes glaring beams of A fog(if not THE fog) . But now that Marion is at the edge of the porch, Hitchcock allows US to take in the Bates Mansion in all its soon-to-be-classic forever glory. The wet rain on the side of the house gives the house a feel of "reptilian skin" in the black and white photography -- and then we can see the bright window, upstairs to the left.

Back to Marion, her eyes adjusting.

POV: "Medium shot close-up." A shadowy woman in the window -- but NOT a shadow. We can make out her human figure, we can SEE the flowery pattern on her gray, high necked dress. We can SEE the bun of gray hair atop her head. And we can FEEL the weird, inhuman, unnatural flow of her body across the window. Human, but not human. Good thing she's "way up there." Good thing isn't down HERE. She's spooky.

But soon, Marion is off the porch in her car, honking her horn, and Norman comes down the hill.

TWO: Its later that same night. Marion and Norman have had their chat in the parlor. Marion has begged off for the night. Norman has gone to his parlor peephole and spied on Marion taking off her clothes and putting on her robe(her shower is imminent but not immediate.)

Now, a certain trance-like dislocation fills Norman's face as he turns away from the peephole and replaces the picture.

And the camera catches him as HE reaches the porch and HE moves along the porch to the left -- just as Marion did -- and HE beholds the house on the hill. POV: The rain has stopped but clouds float along behind it -- the view is messier now.

Norman steps off the porch and walks up to the house, clouds scudding in backdrop to the shot.

THREE: Detective Arbogast gets TWO walks along the porch. The first one is just after Norman and he leave the office after their "friendly chat." Arbogast moves along the porch to the left -- as Marion and Norman did before him, and beholds the house.

POV -- one of the two POV shots of the house in the picture. Arbogast gets both of them. There is no rain obscuring his view of the house (it is Saturday night, one week after the rainy Saturday night during which Marion died.) He can see that Mother in the window, too -- but does not move as she did when Marion saw her. And Hitchocck doesn't give Arbogast a "Medium close-up POV shot" to look more closely at the window. He sees what he sees from his vantage point, that's all.

Norman walks along the porch to the left and meets Arbogast at "the fatal edge" : "Something wrong?...I must have one of those faces you just can't help believing.

Norman and Arbogast have their final conversation -- which becomes a confrontation. Norman sends Arbogast away.

...but Arbogast comes back again(after phoning Lila and Sam with his vital plot information), ambles about the parlor and the office, steps out on the porch and..

...again walks to the left, and AGAIN stops at the edge and AGAIN gets a great POV view of the house on the hill -- crystal clear gray sky behind it, no rain, no clouds.

Arbogast steps off the porch -- launching himself with one hand -- and walks up to that house, now IN the frame with it as he climbs the stone steps in the best shot in the whole movie(says I) ...all atmosphere and theme: a modern day man(in coat and tie and hat) will now enter a ghost world of Gothic horror.

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And here's the thing: Hitchcock, using what some have called the "Hitchcock rhyme" effect -- has used pretty much the SAME shots of Marion walking down that porch to the edge, Norman walking down that porch to the edge and Arbogast walking down that porch to the edge, and each time "taking in" that house.

Its a magnetic porch...it pulls the characters along to do important things. Life changing things.

And two of the people who walk on the magnetic porch -- Marion and Arbogast -- get horribly killed.

And one of the people who walks on the magnetic porch -- Norman -- finds his reclusive life destroyed.

That's a helluva porch.

CONT