Psycho

Iconic

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Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is probably one of the most iconic movies in the history of cinema. If ‘Jaws’ made you afraid to go into the sea, then this movie must have given the chills to anyone who stepped into a shower during the initial days of its release. This is the movie that is most identified as Hitchcock-ian in its suspense and treatment.

The movie starts off with the two lovers, Marion Crane and Sam Loomis, sharing an intimate moment at a downtown motel room in Phoenix, Arizona. We learn that Sam is a divorcee and because of his alimony payments his finances are none too good. Unless his financial state improves he will not be able to marry Marion.

Desperate to improve the situation that they are currently in Marion steals $ 40,000 from her place of work and absconds to find Sam, who lives in a California town, by embarking on a road trip. Marion is raked by the guilt of her stealing the money and becomes paranoid along the way. Her behavior attracts attention including that of a police officer, who finds her dozing off in her car that is pulled over to the side of a road. She even changes her car and buys a new one at a second hand dealership in a bid to avoid attention and continues on her journey to meet Sam.

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As night falls Marion finds herself driving in the dark and totally exhausted. To add to her woes there is a pouring rain too. She gets off the road and finds a motel called “Bates Motel”. There she meets Norman Bates, the young owner who looks after the hotel. She learns that he lives along with his ailing mother in the mansion near the motel. She feels sorry for Norman because she believes that he is wasting his time at the sinking motel. As she retires to her room and begins to take a shower a shadowy woman like figure appears with a knife and stabs her to death.

Norman finds the body and believes that his mother murdered Marion. He quickly disposes off the body, along with the car and all her belongings (including the money, which Norman has no knowledge of) in a swamp nearby. He also wipes out all evidence of the heinous crime. Thus Norman believes that mother is well protected. But what he does not know that there are people looking for Marion who would soon reach the Bates Motel with disconcerting questions. How they reach there and what becomes of them as well as Norman Bates forms the rest of the movie.

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I have often wondered what it would have been like to have watched the movie during the times when it was first released. It must have been quite a shock for the audience to see the biggest box office draw in the movie killed off with more than half the movie still to come. Even before I had watched the movie I had already been exposed to various scenes and references to it in pop culture. So it, in a way, robbed me of the feeling of surprise in seeing one of the most iconic scenes in cinema history. Mind you, that didn’t in anyway reduce the terror of the brutality in that famous shower scene.

Alfred Hitchcock is at his peak as a storyteller in this movie. He knew that for the audience to truly appreciate the movie they will have to come into the cinema halls with no inkling of what is to come. So he went to elaborate lengths to ensure that the movie’s suspense and twists were not revealed. He implored the audience not to do so in almost all the posters. Even critics were denied private screenings in a bid to preserve the plot. He also enforced a ‘no late admission policy’, which denied late comers from entering the cinema hall. He contented that the audience would be unhappy if they entered late and not see Janet Leigh, the star of the movie and who plays Marion in it.

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Hitchcock shot this movie entirely in black and white as he thought that the audience would be put off by the color of blood in the shower sequence. Irrespective of whether he is right or not, there is no denying that having it shot in black and white enhanced the creepiness of the entire setting of Bates motel and the Bates mansion. In the hands of Hitchcock every shadow takes on a horrifying identity and enabled him to create the proper feel of the movie. And the music just enhanced the horror of the shower scene. So much so that it is as identifiable as the scene itself. What made it even more iconic were its quick cuts and the symbolisms used in the shot like that of the blood going down the drain or the close up of Marion's open eyes which conveyed nothing but horror.

The actors all do a brilliant job in the movie. So much so that most of them became typecast in their roles. Anthony Perkins who plays the role of Norman Bates played it so effectively that he almost defined the way it should be played. It was as if he was living the role rather than playing it. As a tragic offshoot he found that he couldn’t get any work other than those that had a similar characterization of Norman Bates.

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He also uses innovative narrative techniques. When the movie starts we are led to believe that its main focus is on the relationship between Marion and her lover. Then we feel that the story is about Marion’s theft and her subsequent guilt over. It is not until Marion is killed that we realize that the main protagonist of the movie was not Marion in the first place. Hitchcock keeps us all on tender hooks till the very end, with an astounding revelation in the climax. Psycho is truly one of the most thrilling and iconic movies of all time.

Alfred Hitchcock: North by Northwest

The Granddad of James Bond

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This is one of the most entertaining movies of all time. The highlight of the movie is its screenplay which is charming, witty, fun and at the same time as Hitchcock-ian in its thrills as any other. Alfred Hitchcock weaves a story of an ‘everyman’ caught in a bizarre and extraordinary situation and his adventures thereof. It is a cinegoer’s delight as it provides pure entertainment and does not have any pretense about its substance.

The plot is about a Madison Avenue advertising executive, Roger Thornhill, who is mistaken for a secret agent called George Kaplan. He is seized by two thugs at a hotel and taken to their boss Lester Townsend. There he is interrogated by Townsend, who is agitated that Roger is steadfast in his denial of being George Kaplan. He therefore orders that Roger be disposed off and to make it look like an accident. Roger is therefore forcefully given a large quantity of bourbon and is put in a stolen car, intending to stage a fatal accident.

However Roger escapes when he is caught by the police and taken into custody for drunken driving. When the next day he brings the police and his mother to the house of Townsend he is surprised to find that the entire setting of the house has been changed from what it was the previous night. Furthermore no one believes his side of the story when a lady of the house reveals that Townsend is in fact a UN diplomat.

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In an effort to prove his innocence Roger visits George Kaplan’s hotel room only to find that the actual George Kaplan is much shorter in height than him. He also finds a picture of Townsend there. In the meanwhile we are shown a meeting of some secret agents where it is revealed to us that George Kaplan is a non-existent spy whom the intelligence agency has created to divert the attention of the enemy.

When Roger reaches the UN he finds out that the man he so far took to be Townsend is someone else. The real Townsend is about to reveal the true identity of Roger’s real abductor when one of the men who earlier tried to kill Roger murders Townsend by throwing a knife. Townsend falls over onto Roger’s arms and Roger inadvertently picks up the knife from Townsend’s body. Everybody thinks that Roger had murdered Townsend and from then on he leads the life of a fugitive.

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While on the run from the law Roger decides to follow Kaplan’s itinerary and go to Chicago. He therefore sneaks into a train to Chicago as there is massive manhunt on for his alleged murder of Townsend. While aboard the train he meets a beautiful young blonde named Eve Kendall, who overtly flirts with him and also goes out of her way to help him escape from the law. Who is this lady and what are her true intentions? Who are the people that are after Roger? Will Roger be able to get out of this mess in one piece? All this forms the rest of the story.

As we have said earlier the highlight of this movie is its screenplay. It is witty, charming and exciting all at the same time. It is a movie that has everything in it; witty dialogues, romance, thrills, action, espionage, mistaken identity and much more. But still the story is not without its share of holes. Most importantly we never find out why the goons actually mistake Roger to be a fictional George Kaplan. The flimsiest of reasons shown in the movie is how the villain’s henchmen see Roger summon a hotel attendant, who is paging Kaplan, and then promptly kidnaps him assuming that he is Kaplan. Also nobody sees the actual killer throwing the knife at the real Townsend even though the deed is done in a fairly crowded lounge at the UN.

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Despite the holes, the movie works because it concentrates on one thing only: that to provide the audience its share of fun and not dwell too much on the details. So much so that what exactly is contained in the McGuffin, a microfilm hidden in a statue, is never revealed even though everybody seems to be after it. But the real star of the movie is Cary Grant. He goes through the role with the ease of a seasoned professional. He is able to carry off some of the dialogues and its cockiness which any other actor would have found hard pressed to do.

Hitchcock’s direction is also exemplary in the movie. His usage of various techniques and methods is assured and as always is able to capture the full attention of his audience. Two sequences in particular are so well done that they have achieved iconic status in the realms of movie history. One is the scene where Cary Grant is being chased by a crop duster in the middle of nowhere. The other is the climatic Mount Rushmore chase scene where the protagonists try to escape the villains by climbing around the faces of the former presidents.

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Don’t go and watch this movie if you are expecting to take some profound meaning from it, because there aren’t any. Don’t go and watch this movie if you like picking through the complexities of a plot, because there aren’t many. Watch it if you want to have a whale of a time and be captivated by some amazing shots, not to mention Cary Grant.