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Autuer Criticism: Alfred Hitchcock But Norman's split personality is a lot more complex than simply a nice quiet side and a vicious murderous one. All through his life Norman has wanted love with a young woman, but his mother always put a stop to it. The same thing continues now, even though she is dead. He came to depend on that as a defense mechanism, I guess, to keep himself from becoming involved, and because of his unhealthy attachment to his mother's opinion. Norman's desire for sexual love brings in the voyeuristic theme as strongly as in any other Hitchcock film, and in the traditional sense: Norman spies on Marion taking a shower through a hole in the wall. Pretty soon, this brings "Mother" on the scene, to rid her boy of the temptation. Talk about a poor parental model! With Psycho, Hitchcock pushed it to the absolute limit, both with content and form. The film was not critically popular at the time of its release, most likely because it was simply ahead of its time. It was more sexually explicit that most films; it tied sex to death, which was verboten at the time; it showed more blood and violence than had previous films; it delved deeper in human psychosis with more horrific results than ever before; in fact, Psycho is the first true horror film with a human monster. We are used to this today due to the plethora of serial killer and slasher movies, but all of these films can trace their heritage back to Psycho in one way or another. Killing off his heroine half way through was revolutionary and risky, especially since his casting choices to take over as protagonists were not the most inspired (I tend to forget that John Gavin and Vera Miles are even in the movie). And his use of the eye-catching or trick shot reached its climax in the last shot-I don't care what anyone says, the image of Norman/Mother is ten times more frightening than the shower scene! The shower scene itself, though, is a mastery of editing. Many people are utterly convinced that they saw the knife stabbing Marion, but it never enters the body. It's a trick of editing and chocolate, helped along by some very appropriate music. (It's scenes like this one that make it clear why the Cahier critics were divided on Hitchcock — he didn't have a chance at pleasing the realist crowd!) And again, the final scene, Mrs. Bates' skull superimposed on Norman's face. Just a simple double exposure that tells us so much about Norman. Even without the rather mundane explanation from the doctor concerning multiple personalities, the combination of Mother's monologue and this visual would have made clear the whole conceit of the film. Although Psycho may not be Hitchcock's best film (I would argue for Vertigo or Rear Window any day), it is probably his most important, both in terms of its influence on the film industry and in terms of the fulfillment of Hitchcock's thematic and stylistic arc. This paper originated as an assignment for Introduction to Film Theory and Criticism, Webster University, Fall 2002. The original assignment was to choose a director and look for auteurist tendencies in his work by looking at recurrent themes, visual and formal motifs and then by looking at one film that displayed these themes and motifs. ©Copyright 2002 by Jandy Stone Page last updated 8/1/04. |
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