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The Topography of Psycho

posted 4 months ago by roger1 (2543)
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Though like Psycho itself, Alfred Hitchcock's theatrical trailer for Psycho upon its original release in 1960, has faded in views, it has been called "The Greatest Trailer Ever Made" and in some ways, it certainly lives up to that reputation. It is part of "The Legend of Psycho" and demonstrates exactly the kind of personal power Hitchcock had in 1960. He was a very famous movie director who, at the time of Psycho's release, was coming off a major hit(North by Northwest.) He was also a movie PRODUCER, though he never took that credit as others did("Produced and Directed by")...Hitch knew that a Director was a star and a producer less so.

But Hitchcock was something else in 1960...a very, very major TV SERIES STAR. On camera. If his movie director peers were John Ford and Howard Hawks and Billy Wilder, his TV peers were Jackie Gleason, Lucille Ball, and James Arness. Hell, the weekly TV series probably brought more eyeballs to Hitchcock than his movies.

And he truly crafted a "character" on TV. His voice, mainly (British but something funnier and more lugubrious than the usual British accent). But also his girth(rather manageable in the 50s and 60s when the show was on the air...he was heavier both before the show began and after.) And also his face(it could look amusing, it could look scary.) And his omniprescent black suit and tie(you might call Hitch "the Original Blues Brother." Though sometimes he wore a tuxedo or dinner jacket in his role.

Hitchcock eventually incorporated his TV character into his movie trailers. It wasn't for as long as you might think. James Stewart(looking out at the camera and at US in staged scenes) is the host for the trailers of Rear Window(1954) and The Man Who Knew Too Much(1956.) Hitchcock duplicates his opening appearance(far away in shadow) in The Wrong Man(1956) to make his first narrator appearance for The Wrong Man.

Htichcock does not appear in the trailer for Vertigo. (Perhaps because he wanted it to be a serious art film in reception.)

Finally, with the TV show peaking, "TV star Alfred Hitchcock" personally fronted the trailers for North by Northwest, Psycho, The Birds, and Marnie.

But he backed away from putting himself front and center for Torn Curtain(only a photograph is shown of him) or Topaz(he speaks briefly on screen.) An aged and overweight Hitchcock gamely returned to the trailer for his comeback hit "Frenzy" in a nostalgic attempt to bring back the era of Psycho and the TV show for his new movie about a mad killer. And he appeared pretty extensively in his Family Plot trailer.

But the Psycho trailer is the peak of ALL the trailers, the one in which movie and man merge and film history is rather "locked in" for one of the greatest movies ever made.

The trailer for "North by Northwest" the year before had rather set the stage for the "Psycho trailer." In North by Northwest, Hitchcock plays up the "2,000 mile chase across the United States from New York to Mount Rushmore" by portraying himself as the proprietor of the "Alfred Hitchcock Travel Agency," looking to book US on this great chase. NXNW was a summer blockbuster before the term was coined(as was Psycho a year later) and Hitchcock actually references the summer season in his NXNW trailer, comparing his movie as a favorable alternative to getting sand in ones clothes or a charley horse from a hike.

There are scenes from North by Northwest in the North by Northwest trailer(though the trailer prefers not to show us exactly WHAT is chasing Cary Grant on the prarie-- you have to see the movie to find out!) And at the end of the trailer, Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, and James Mason each get a close up.

One year later -- for Psycho -- Hitchcock is not so generous. HIs Psycho trailer has NO scenes from the movie, NO shots of stars Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles and John Gavin. Their names are rather unceremoniously slapped on in a group at the end of the trailer(along with Martin Balsam and John MacIntire.)

No, HITCHCOCK is famously the sole star of his Psycho trailer - along with two other "stars" of the movie:

The Bates Motel and The Bates Mansion.

The trailer opens on a high shot of Hitchcock, looking down on him as he stands in front of the Bates Motel(all in daylight, its usually filmed at night in the movie.) In a great camera move that would have been great in the movie, but is perhaps greater here, as Hitchcock talks and walks screen left, the camera SWOOPS down onto Hitch, moves left with him and...as if introducing a big new star...shifts to REVEAL the Bates Mansion in all its evil looming glory. You can almost feel the 1960 audience collectively murmuring "wow" when they saw that house on the hill for the first time.

Hitchcock's narrative line here is great as the house looms into view:

"The motel has, as an adjunct, an old house which is...if I may say so, a bit more sinister than the motel."

CONT

[–] roger1 (2543) 4 months ago

Hitchcock then pauses and points at the house and intones, "And IN this house, the most dire, horrible events took place."

Ah, the first hook is placed into the audience. And once one has seen Psycho, we realize that Hitchcock wasn't kidding. The shower murder may have taken place at the motel, but the staircase murder took place in the house. As did, no doubt, Norman's difficult carrying of Arbogast's corpse to his car for swamp burial. As did, no doubt, the poisoning of Mrs. Bates and her lover(given sickening, graphic presentation in Psycho IV: The Beginning.) As did, no doubt(in the kitchen? In a bathroom? In the fruit cellar?) the gutting of Mrs. Bates corpse and the stuffing of chemicals and sawdust into it . "Dire and horrible events," indeed.

Hitchcock advances on the house making a pointed comment: "The house is up for sale now. Though I can't imagine who would buy it." People DO buy houses where murders were committed(I know someone who did) -- they are cheaper on the market. But the Bates House would be quite a buy given what happened THERE.

Hitchcock enters the house, "directing the audience" almost immediately: "Even in daylight, this house looks sinister." (He's accounting for the fact that he had to film this trailer in the daylight hours."

What lies ahead is Hitchcock giving away the entire staircase murder("She met the victim at the top, and in a flash there was the knife" -- the knife DOES flash here in the scene). As he will conclude the trailer by giving away the shower murder(and scaring us pretty good, given the screaming lady and screaming Herrmann violins that end the trailer.)

But the real fascination of Hitchcock's Psycho trailer to me is how it "illustrates how his promotional showmanship mind worked." Hitch was surrounded with production people, writers, and PR people but I'd like to think that it was HIS idea to film this trailer just this way.

CONT

[–] roger1 (2543) 4 months ago

Because I think Hitchcock realized that Robert Bloch's novel Psycho had given him the greatest setting for a horror movie yet devised(and never really equalled except maybe by the Overlook Hotel in The Shining.)

The motel ALONE could have been scary enough -- a modern convenience of the highway(even the old highway), here converted into something backwater, isolated...creepy. With no customers and no one nearby for miles.

The house ALONE could have been scary enough -- more Old House than Old Mansion, but certainly with a Gothic look and perched high up on a hill to overlook the motel and to hold the world at baby.

But in COMBINATION, the Bates Motel and the Bates Mansion doubled the terror and were unbeatable for atmosphere. They were also visually arresting. As Hitchocck told Truffaut: "The horizontal motel and the vertical house. That's our composition."

They became thematic and symbolic structures, too. The motel represented Norman -- presenting himself as "normal " to the world of the few customers, normal all, who took a room there. The house represented Mother ...old, of another age, watching over her son from above...dangerous. Within the house itself, floors of Ego and Id(the fruit cellar) are symbolic, to. Though the motel could be ego and the entire house Id, too.

A woman is horribly murdered at the motel(Murder Number One -- in the slippery deathtrap of a motel room shower.) A man is horribly murdered up at the house(Murder Number Two -- on the teetering deathtrap of a long staircase.) Mother COMES DOWN to the motel to kill Marion. Arbogast GOES UP to the house to get killed by Mother. Its a matter of murders and settings that contrast and yet rhyme. And cinematic as hell. (WE are trapped in that shower frenzy of bladed, bloody death, WE fall down that staircase.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (2543) 4 months ago

But back to Hitchcock's mindset here. Though Psycho plays for about 30 minutes before we get to the Bates Motel and mansion, and though Psycho sometimes "jumps over to the small town normalcy of Fairvale," MOST of Psycho takes place in the terrifying arena of the Bates Property.

And thus, the movie trailer practically wrote itself. Hitchcock establishes the two main structures of Psycho -- the motel and the house -- and then explores rooms in them.

And the message becomes clear: EVERY room in the Bates Motel hold the potential for horror and death; EVERY room in the Bates Mansion holds the potential for horror and death.

Hitchcock is first shown in front of the motel, but that great swooping camera move takes him to the house and he explores the rooms of the house before those of the motel. So we get:

Hitchcock in the foyer of the house, with its Cupid Statue so ominous.
Hitchcock at the staircase, showing off its Gothic look and steepness.
Hitchcock in Mother's room, taking the walking tour that Lila Crane would take(and instilling "audience need to see the movie" by opening Mother's cabinet, recoiling in disgust...and not showing us what is in there.)
Hitchcock on the second floor landing(where Arbogast's face gets slashed before the staircase fall) and taking opening a door into a room that is never mentioned in the movie -- "the BAWTH--ROOM," Hitchcock intones. This second floor Bates House bathroom isn't in Psycho.but it did make it into Psycho II.
Hitchcock mentioning -- but not showing...Norman's room.

Hitch then takes the audience down to the motel.

CONT

[–] roger1 (2543) 4 months ago

We see Norman's parlor with Hitch but he here calls it "his hideaway." An interesting switch. "They had a private supper here," Hitchcock allludes. And then he goes all ham -- pointing at the painting(of rape actually) and saying "this painting is VERY important -- BECAUSE...well, let's go on to Cabin One." A bit B-movieish and overdone but, Hitch is clearing having fun here. We have to come to the theater to find out why that painting is important.

Hitchcock pauses in the motel office(so small, yet so important to three scenes -- Marion checking in, Arbogast's interrogation, Sam's further interrogation) before walkiing outisde on the porch to Cabin One.

This is the "main event" towards which the entire trailer is leading. Again, Hitchcock intones "The BAWTHROOM," and he takes care to lift up the toilet lid(without being able to SHOW the entire toilet) and says "an important clue was found...down there." And now he and we are in the bathroom of Cabin One together as Hitchcock has real fun "All cleaned up now. You should have seen the BLOOD. The whole, the whole place was covered..."

And leading up to a pulling of the shower curtain, Herrmann's screeching strings coming up(I'll bet the 1960 trailer audience screamed) and a woman in the shower screaming(Vera Miles, not Janet Leigh with the Greatest Logo of All Time -- the slashed PSYCHO covering Vera's face as we cut to the cast names finally.

I've written elsewhere of how this trailer "puts the lie" to the idea that Hitch wanted to surprise people whith the shower murder -- no, he wanted to SELL the shower murder in advance.

But that's not quite so important for this post.

What's important for this post is that Hitchocck realized that the best way to sell Psycho was to sell "the topography of Psycho" -- the motel, the house, the staircase, the bedrooms, the parlor, the office, Cabin One, the shower.

CONT

[–] roger1 (2543) 4 months ago

Also interesting: Hitchcock entirely skipped two vital locations -- the fruit cellar and the swamp -- and he only mentions Norman's badroom(with its mix of childhood and twisted adulthood) in passing.

Well, the trailer clocks out at a very long six minutes -- maybe Hitch filmed bits in the fruit celalr and by the swamp and had to cut them.

The trailer infers - properly -- that EVERY room in the Bates House and the Bates Motel is a place of mystery and horror. And Hitchcock gives away the game as to which rooms are the deadliest -- where the traps of death spring.

I suppose it was fairly egotistical of Hitchcock not to show any scenes from his movie and (worse still) not to give his star actors any shots -- I mean Perkins, Leigh, Miles and Gavin were great looking people...the kind that draw you to the theater.

But he was playing up his "TV host persona" -- which had been, after all, a more macabre persona than his directorial one of romance and , often, espionage.

Hitch pretty much did this again in his trailer for The Birds, which found him all alone in a typical Universal studios soundstage room set, talking WAY too long, with WAY too much UNinteresting dialogue, about the history of man's mistreatment of the birds. No clips from the movie, no shots of his stars (Rod Taylor, Suzanne Pleshette, Jessica Tandy and new discovery Tippi Hedren)...until, at the very end, Hedren herself comes running into the room in terror as bird sounds rise on the soundtrack("They're COMING!") Those last 30 seconds are pretty exciting and a little scary, but Hitchcock hogs up too much of the other 90%.

No, rather like Psycho stood alone, above and apart from other Hitchcock films, its trailer was "one of a kind" too. The Birds trailer couldn't match it. And Hitchcock would only TRY to match it by "hosting " the Frenzy trailer -- and showing clips from THAT film.

Hitchcock's guided tour of "the topography of Psycho" remains as unique, unrepeatable and memorable as Psycho.