Alfred Hitchcock: Psycho review
...where, where she meets Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) proprietor of the hotel, a shy-but-kind man who lives with his aged, over-protective, deranged mother. He offers her a room, a meal and someone to talk to. After talking to Norman about the traps of life, Marion decides to return work and confess her crime. Events of the night, which involve the jealous rage of Norman’s twisted mother, stop Marion’s plans. Missing for a week, sister Lila Crane (Vera Miles) becomes concerned for Marion’s well-being enlists the aid of a police investigator Milton Arbogast (Martin Balsam) and lover Sam to find Marion. They discover a series of startling facts. When Alfred Hitchcock produced Psycho in 1960, it contained the most violence and nudity in a motion picture film ever created by Hollywood. Audiences around the globe were shocked, and to Alfred Hitchcock’s amusement, it produced an epidemic of shower phobia (Janet Leigh, who plays Marion Crane, is a self confessed sufferer), after witnessing the famous shower scene. In the 1960s, attitudes were different, morals were different, fashion was different, technology was different and movies were obviously different. Censorship laws in the 1960s were very strict. Alfred Hitchcock chose not to use colour, because he feared that the censors would not allow the more true-to-life blood during this period. With Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock experimented in cinematic taboos, pushing the censorship envelope. For example, Janet Leigh is shown in her underwear on more than one occasion, and, during the famous shower scene, its possible to see traces of flesh. In the 1960s, social attitudes were different. For example, a woman having an affair with a man before marriage was totally unacceptable. Not many women in the 1960s owned cars, or worked for a company, or even lived by themselves; women weren’t independent, and males were seen as the dominant figure in any relationship, and women took the role as a housewife. Norman Bates is seen putting bed sheets in the hotel cabins, this was very unusual for a man to do the upkeep; it was the woman’s responsibility to overtake this role. The mother and son relationship is crossed in the film with Norman murdering his own mother; as the saying goes ‘mother knows best’, there was only utter respect for a mother, and this type of crime would have been intolerable. Concerning historical context, the technology used in the 1960s for filmmaking wouldn’t have been advanced as it is today. Although, some of the technology used in the original Psycho was considered ahead of its time in terms of technology, such as rear-screen projection and matte photography. But there were some technological constraints for Alfred Hitchcock when he was producing the film. For example, Alfred Hitchcock could not achieve a shot of the cheap motel in Phoenix via a helicopter, because this type of technology was newly created, consequently the scene didn’t come off. But in the new version of Psycho (1998), director Gus Van Sant had the sufficient technology to recreate the scene, according to Hitchcock’s vision. ‘I felt that, sure, there were film students, cinephiles and people in the business who were familiar with Psycho but there was also a whole generation of movie-goers who probably hadn’t seen it,’ he says. ‘I thought this was a way of popularizing a classic, a way I’d never seen before. It was like staging a contemporary production of a classic play while remaining true to the original.’ – Gus Van Sant ‘Psycho is perfect to refashion as a modern piece. Reflections are a major theme in the original, with mirrors everywhere, characters who reflect each other. This version holds up a mirror to the original film: it’s sort of its schizophrenic twin.’ – Gus Van Sant In 1998, Gus Van Sant placed himself under intense scrutiny (particularly by older audiences, critics, film buffs and in general people who have seen the original Psycho) when he announced that he was to produce a remake of the classic, Psycho. He wanted to do a remake of Psycho, because he wanted to pay tribute to Alfred Hitchcock; as it is one of his favourites, it was his ‘appropriation art’; he wanted to do this film with his own creativity, to bring it to a contemporary audience; to attract younger audiences, and to maybe allure them to see the older version of Psycho. There are many similarities and differences between the two versions of Psycho. The new version of Psycho is a shot-for-shot remake, but instead using contemporary filmmaking techniques and technologies to update a nearly identical script. The big differences are that the new version is...