See also: Psychosis (homonymy)

Psychose is an American of Alfred Hitchcock, in Noir and white film, left in 1960.

Summary

With Phoenix in Arizona, one Friday, December 11 between 12 and 14 hours, Marion Crane and Sam Loomis clandestinely find in a room of Adam' S Hotel. They like but the lack of money prohibits the marriage to them: Sam, divorced, must pay an alimony with his wife and its small shop of hardware does not enable him to offer to Marion the easy life that it wishes for her. Marion, for its part, on the run does not accept any more this made life of meetings.

Also, of return to her office after having attended a real transaction carried out by her owner, George Lowery, it does not deposit at the bank them: 40000 dollars of the customer Tom Cassidy which are entrusted to him, returns to it, packs its bags and leaves Phoenix conveys some in the intention to join his/her lover, Sam, in Fairdale with the money.

It rolls long hours until the tiredness of night control obliges it to stop on the side. It spends the night in its vehicle and is awaked by a suspicious police officer who controls his papers. Arrived in the following city, she judges more careful to change car and to pay in cash her purchase with the great astonishment of the salesman and under the glance inquisitor of the police officer who supervises it by far. She carries on her road when a pouring rain the constrained one to stop in a motel to spend the night there. This one is held by Norman Bates and its mother. Marion is the single customer.

Norman chooses for Marion a room contiguous to its office then, very attentive, invites it to share with him a frugal meal there. Marion accepts. Norman goes then towards the house which draws up above it motel to prepare the collation. Shouts are made hear in the night and Marion understands that the mother of Norman reproaches her son for inviting the young woman. With its return, he asks him to excuse his mother “who is sick”. After a long discussion, which makes become aware with Marion that its escape is an error and that Norman lives under the cut of his/her mother, two young people separate. Marion calculates what it will have to refund with its owner, then strips itself. By a hole made in the partition, Norman épie the young woman who takes a shower. Brutally a silhouette threatening of old woman emerges then who strikes Marion with stabs and disappears. Norman, returned in all haste, discovers, horrified, the murder made by his/her mother. It cleans the shower and erases the traces of the crime then it immerses in a marsh close the car and the body to Marion.

Later, in Fairdale, Sam Loomis receives the visit of Leïla, the sister of Marion, anxious not to have a news then that of Arbogast, private detective, engaged by the owner of Marion to find them: 40000 disappeared dollars. Arbogast understands that Sam and Leïla are not the accomplices of Marion and puts itself in the search of this one by making the turn of the town halls. Its investigation leads it to the motel of the Packsaddlled ones. He questions Norman then, made suspicious by the contradictory declarations of Norman, decides to speak with the mother about this last. He penetrates in the house and climbs when the mother of Norman appears abruptly on the stage and stabs it with death.

Leïla and Sam, without news of the detective, alert the Chambers sheriff who teaches them that the mother of Norman gave herself death ten years before, after having poisoned his lover. They then decide to go to their turn to the motel the Packsaddlled ones. After a stormy discussion, Norman strikes Sam whereas Leïla penetrates in the house and ends up discovering in the cellar the body momifié Mrs Bates. Norman, equipped as a woman, emerges suddenly while holding up a knife, ready to stab Leïla. Sam intervenes in extremis and neutralizes it. A psychiatrist, Doctor Richman, explains to Sam and Leïla the schizophrenia of Norman Bates, which one entirely sees from now on had by the personality of his mother.

Data sheet

  • original Title: Psycho

  • Realization: Alfred Hitchcock
  • Scenario: Joseph Stefano, adapted of a novel of Robert Bloch, inspired of actual facts (the serial killer ED Gein).
  • Music: Bernard Herrmann
  • Production: Alfred Hitchcock, (realized with its team of turning TV and its financial means without the assistance of Paramount Pictures)
  • Lasted: 109 minutes
  • Kind: Police officer
  • Format: Black and white - Mono (Westrex Recording System)
  • Dates of turning: November 30th 1959 with the 1960
  • Coming out date: The United States: June 16th 1960 France: November 2nd 1960
  • Film prohibited with less than 12 years at the time of its exit in France

Distribution

Around film

Caméo

  • At the 6th minute, Alfred Hitchcock waits in front of the agency with a hat of cow-boy.

Secrecies of turning

  • For the plan of opening, Hitchcock planned to turn starting from a helicopter. But at that time, systems of stabilization such as Wescam did not exist yet, and the camera trembled terribly, making the plan unusable. It had then the idea of this panoramic horizontal, associated with a zoom before approaching the building, then with these progressive connections until the camera penetrates in the hotel room.
  • the house of film always exists and one can see it at the time of the visit of the studios Universal. One learns there on this occasion that the liquid used to simulate blood in Psychose was chocolate, which belongs to the small advantages that allows turning in black and white. It is besides not to show the red color of blood that Hitchcock chose to make its film in black and white.
  • For the scene of the murder in the shower, a female lining was used for many plans. Hitchcock thought that it was preferable to engage an already accustomed girl with being naked in front of a public to ask Janet Leigh to turn these plans. This lining enabled them above all to test the translucidity of the curtain of shower (to check if the naked body were well dissimulated by the curtain and capacity thus to choose the most adequate plans) and to be able to film the plans where Norman rolls up the body of the victim in the curtain, then transports it in the car.
  • This scene required seven days of turning and seventy positions of camera. The cutting of the scene partly aimed at avoiding any problem with the censure: no plan showing the centres of the actress or the knife gashing her body are visible, and the assembly causes at the spectator the contrary impression, so that during a projection in company of a member of the censure, this one was persuaded to have seen a center during the murder.
  • At the time of the turning of this scene, Anthony Perkins was in New York and it is the actress Margo Epper who played the role of Mrs. Bates.
For the murder of Arbogast, it was another actress, Mitzi Koenstner. Perkins finally put the wig of Mrs. Bates only in the scene or it tries to kill Lila.
  • For the plan where the eye of Janet Leigh is tallied approximately plane, the actress had to start again many times the catch, the fact of having to hold the open eye without moving being a difficult exercise. During a projection-test, Alma, the woman of Hitchcock, was the only one to notice that Janet Leigh always breathes after its murder (its throat undulates slightly).
  • the choice of the head of Mrs. Bates was a true martyrdom for Janet Leigh: Hitchcock took it by surprised and each time placed a new head behind it, so that it cannot miss it when it would be turned over. It could thus choose that which had torn off the most horrible cry with Leigh.
  • It is the last film where Patricia Hitchcock plays for her father.

Around the exit

  • the trailer of film showed Hitchcock visiting the motel and the house of Packsaddlled, while reporting the events terrifying which had proceeded there, without however saying some too much. He stresses for example the importance of the table which hides the hole in the wall, without to raise it.

  • At the end of the trailer, it visits the room n°1, and is risked inside the bathroom. The curtain is then drawn. After having indicated that an important index is hidden in the basin of the WC, it opens the curtain of a dry blow, revealing, in the place of Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, which starts to shout.

  • At the time of the exit of film, Hitchcock sought a means of obliging the spectators not to penetrate in the room after the beginning of film. He wanted to thus prevent that the latecomers who did not attend the murder of Janet Leigh do not start with impatienter not to see it arriving at the écran.
    Il concludes finally an agreement with the directors from the big rooms of cinema so that any late spectator obligatorily sees himself refusing the entry in room. In the entry of the majority of the big rooms a sign appeared where was registered, under the effigy of Hitchcock:

We will not let to you waste your pleasure! You must see Psychose of the beginning to the end to appreciate it correctly. Consequently, do not hope to be allowed in the cinema after the beginning of one of the meetings of film. Nobody, and I say anybody well, not even the brother of the director, the president of the United States or the Queen of England! (God the bénisse !)
The whole followed by a signature of Hitchcock.
  • an anecdote tells that New Yorkean journalists wanted to prove that it was only about abusive publicity by sending an expectant mother accompanied by a so-called husband to the one of the meetings of film. Of course, they arrived late and her husband asked, on a begging air, if one could let it return. The director of the cinema answered him politely: “Congratulations for this happy event, but we cannot let to you penetrate in the room. Your wife can sit down comfortably in my office until the next meeting. ”

Various details

  • For this black film and white, Bernard Hermann composes a music only for string instruments, which contributes effectively to the environment of film.

  • It acted of first film where one can see toilets with the screen, thing which was formerly prohibited by the censure.

  • the film cost eight hundred and thousand dollars and brought back thirteen million in two years of them. The low costs of production of film come mainly owing to the fact that Hitchcock engaged of the technicians resulting from television to turn (who worked on his series Alfred Hitchcock present ) what enabled him to work very quickly and to lower costs; moreover the majority of the scenes are turned in studio, in an almost single decoration.

(Sources: Documentary on Psychosis of Laurent Bouzereau and delivers Truffaut/Hitchcock, Gallimard editions)

Continuations and remake

  • 23 years after film, the fashion of the continuations starting to become extensive, leaves Psychose II ( Psycho II ) Richard Franklin, always with Anthony Perkins in the role of Norman Bates .

  • the public having answered favorably, Anthony Perkins moves itself later three years in 1986 in Psychose III ( Psycho III ), which will be a failure.
  • In 1987 is carried out a telefilm, Bates Motel , directed by Richard Rothstein, in which Bud Cort plays the part of a companion of cell of Norman Bates heir to the motel… Perkins having declined the proposal, Norman is incarnated here fugitively by the stuntman who doubled it in Psycho II and III, Kurt Paul. This film was supposed being the pilot of a series which was not turned.
  • the subject being obviously exhausted, it is at the beginnings of Norman Bates that in 1990 is devoted the prequel Psychose IV ( Psycho IV: The Beginning ), telefilm of Mick Garris, with Anthony Perkins but also Henry Thomas in the role of adolescent Norman.
  • In 1998, the film is the subject of a Remake: Psycho signed Gus Van Sant, taking again almost plane for plan the original, but turned colors. The film will be a commercial failure.

Comment

Hitchcock approaches the case of a schizophrenic killer who could not complete the work of mourning of his mother. But it sends before its spectator on a series of false tracks rich in suspense. One was going to see there for the first time a high-speed motorboat dying before even half of film.

Coincidence: the same year, Michelangelo Antonioni leaves its film Avventura in which the high-speed motorboat, Lea Massari (Monica Vitti was then an unknown factor for the public), disappears as of first half an hour, leaving the disorientated spectators, just like were to it those of Psychose .

Media

  • the film resulting from Internet site Watchmovies

  • Trailer of the film (visit of the places of the intrigue with accompanying notes by Hitchcock)
  • Extracted vidéos:
    • First extract (lasted: 01 min 56 S)
    • Second extract (lasted: 43 S)
    • Third extract (lasted: 08 min 48 S)
    • Fourth extract (lasted: 05 min 13 S)

External bonds

  • Psychosis on Internet Movie Database
  • detailed Analysis of the film through the interactive network which connects put in images, decoration, music, characters and dialog
  • Ebauche of analysis Extrait Appearance
  • Dossier on Psycho II and Psycho III

Simple: Psycho

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