MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > Psycho and Blue Velvet

Psycho and Blue Velvet

posted 2 months ago by swanstep (2631)
9 replies | jump to latest

I actually wrote a long post on the connections between P and BV, laying the predicate for presenting interesting BV material on a Psycho board. But I managed through sheer clumsiness to delete all that hard work, so I'll have to go with a very minimal prologue.

While Hitch doesn't appear to have shot any set-ups that didn't appear in the final cut of Psycho, Lynch notoriously shot a ton of stuff (e.g., Jeffrey at college, Dorothy Vallen's suicide attempt, 'nipples on fire', etc.) that didn't make the final cut of BV. Much of that long-rumored stuff finally appeared on a recent blu-ray, and is now available on youtube in a couple of ways.

1. Intelligently integrated into a 50 mins longer, unofficial extended cut of BV here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q6gQbrEKyU
and
2. As one long blu-ray-extra file here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UCZaIBQ3rc

Note that the official cut of BV is viewable on youtube here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMdSGCVhJgc

My own view is all of the additional material detracts from the original and was rightly totally omitted from the official final cut by Lynch. Sometimes constraints such as being obligated to deliver a two hour movie are a Director's friend and I think that that's definitely the case here as it was for Aliens (1986) from the same year. See whether you agree.

[–] roger1 (2493) 2 months ago

I actually wrote a long post on the connections between P and BV, laying the predicate for presenting interesting BV material on a Psycho board. But I managed through sheer clumsiness to delete all that hard work,

--

I HATE when that happens, swanstep! And it has happened to me. My sympathies.

Some movie website had a little animated cartoon -- lasting ten seconds or so -- called (I think) "The Accidental Delete," in which a cartoon man accidentally deletes his work and rams his head up and down onto his keyboard in anger until his head explodes. Funny -- the emotion is expressed just right.

---

so I'll have to go with a very minimal prologue.

--

..and...it works

---
While Hitch doesn't appear to have shot any set-ups that didn't appear in the final cut of Psycho,

---

Let's play here, first. In a modern world where DVDS so often have one, two, three...TEN "deleted scenes" as "extras -- there are precious few deleted scenes available from Hitchcock's work.

Before getting to Psycho, I'll note these:

ONE: Vertigo. A scene shot -- with a minimum of focus -- as an "alternative ending" to Vertigo. Its on "recent" Vertigo DVDs(from 2000 on ) and it is done in one shot, in one take: Scottie returns to Midge's apartment at night, evidently some days after the bell tower tragedy climax. So we "learn" that Scottie did NOT jump, that he WILL reconcile with Midge(who left the released movie at the 2/3 mark "forever") and (via a radio news report) that Gavin Elster WILL be extradited from Europe for the murder. There is no dialogue; Stewart and Bel Geddes certainly act well, but the whole thing looks like nobody believes in it. It WAS stunning to first see this scene about 30 years after I first saw Vertigo.

CONT

[–] roger1 (2493) 2 months ago

TWO: The Birds. A scene meant to go right AFTER Mrs. Brenner sees "the farmer with the pecked out eyes" BEFORE her truck gets back to the Brenner home. This is an exposition scene between Mitch and Melanie that ends in a kiss(in a movie that sorely needed more kissing between Mitch and Melanie but survived with only ONE.)

Only script pages(the full scene) and some photographs remain of this scene.

THREE: Torn Curtain. Hitchcock told Truffaut of this scene and eventually it, too surfaced with script pages(the full scene) and some photographs: Some time after Paul Newman has killed the security man Gromek in the farmhouse, Newman and Julie Andrews are taken on a tour of a factory by the East Germans and there they find: Gromek's BROTHER! Same actor, wearing a white wig and moustache. I guess its a scene about Paul Newman's guilt. The brother cuts a sausage with a big butcher knife(ala the one that killed his brother) and asks Newman to take the sausage to his brother. The scene reads rather contrived and "added on" to me. It was rightfully cut. (Note: an unmade version of Psycho II was pitched in which Martin Balsam was to play Arbogast's brother -- a psychiatrist. Supposedly Balsam agreed to the part. It was never made, they made the version we saw in 1983, instead.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (2493) 2 months ago

FOUR. Topaz. Now here is a situation where -- thanks to DVDs -- the WORLD got to see not one, but TWO deleted scenes that were EACH meant to be the same scene: the final scene of Topaz.

When I saw Topaz first-run at Christmas of 1969, the ending I saw was abrupt, mildly satisfying at best. A sudden cut to a man seen from behind, entering a home. Then a gunshot. Suicide. The End.

Famously, this shot (meant to be of the character played by Michael Piccoli) was actually an un-used shot of another character(played by Phillipe Noiret) entering Piccoli's house. The " suicide of the bad guy" had NOT been scripted and shot -- just this "desperate tacked on ending."

But that ending was BETTER than the two endings previousliy shot:

ONE: Piccoli challenges our hero Andre to a shooting duel in an empty Paris racing stadium. It is clear that Piccoli -- a crack shot -- will KILL Andre. But a Commie sniper kills Piccoli first. The scene has a lot of time and care put into it -- evidently this was the climax that Hitchcock WANTED -- but it was unbelievable, literally incredible , start to finish. Our hero agrees to a DUEL? A duel in which he will INEVITABLY be killed?(Its like agreeing to be executed.)

TWO: An ending in which the villain gets away, waving to the hero as he boards a plane to Moscow. Audiences would have hated THAT. So we got the suicide.

Topaz was in circulation with ONLY the suicide ending for all of the 70's and 80s. I don't think the other two endings appeared until the 90s.

The question is raised: if DVDs are "going away" in the future...however will deleted scenes be shown?(Directors like to have the option to show them.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (2493) 2 months ago

Which brings us to Psycho.

Swanstep wrote:

Hitch doesn't appear to have shot any set-ups that didn't appear in the final cut of Psycho,

---

..and that is true. And yet, back in 2020, Universal released to theaters (for one weekend) and then to DVD the now famous "German Version Director's Cut" -- perhaps with the least amount of "additional footage" in a director's cut EVER: about 30 seconds total, over three scenes. Rather like seeing that Vertigo alternative ending decades later, there was still a jolt seeing:

A few seconds of "Janet Leigh side-boob" as Norman spied on her pre-shower.
More than a few seconds of blood on Norman's hands (that additional long take on the blood IS creepy; its Marion's blood on Norman's hands.)
A few seconds -- two more downward stabs -- onto the unseen Arbogast (suspicious to me, looks like "repeated film" but it certainly makes Mother's attack more "psycho-iish." A slaughter.)

Joseph Stefano's SCRIPT has about five short scenes that were evidently never shot for the movie, all interesting, and two key ones deleted:

Driving out to the Bates Motel, Sam and Lila talk about Marion, their unwillingness to acknowledge she's dead -- and good back story on Marion and Lila as "adult orphan sisters." (Hitch didn't want the suspense accleration to the climax slowed down.)

AFTER sinking Marion's car in the swamp, more happens: Norman hoses down the tire tracks, goes up to Mother room, finds her bloody clothes outside her door and burns them in a furnace in the cellar. Final shot of scene: smoke rising from the roof of the Bates House. A great shot -- but the shot of the car sinking in the swamp was more final, and this cut scene would have had "the overhead shot of the landing outside of mother's room" too EARLY.

CONT

[–] roger1 (2493) 2 months ago

Lynch notoriously shot a ton of stuff (e.g., Jeffrey at college, Dorothy Vallen's suicide attempt, 'nipples on fire', etc.) that didn't make the final cut of BV. Much of that long-rumored stuff finally appeared on a recent blu-ray, and is now available on youtube in a couple of ways.

1. Intelligently integrated into a 50 mins longer, unofficial extended cut of BV here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q6gQbrEKyU

---
FIFTY MINUTES longer! That's a lot of unseen material and I personally think that reflects too little attention to proper scripting -- even of an art film.

That said, one often reads -- with famous directors at least -- things like "the first cut ran four and a half hours, and he cut it down to two" or something ridicuous like that. One feels that these guys (and gals) just enjoyed filming and actors acting so much that "anything goes."

Now, Hitchcock had a famous sayhing that turned out to be one of his usual "publicity canards": "The movie is finished when the script is finished, and it is all in my head. I wish I didn't have to flim the movie."

Well, consider Exhibit A AGAINST that. The "finished" Psycho script had that scene with Sam and Llla in the car and Norman's burning of mother's clothes and other scenes that weren't even filmed. So that script was NOT the final movie -- Hitchcock DID have to make additional decisions (not to film certain scenes at all) and make adjustments to the tale.

CONT

[–] roger1 (2493) 2 months ago

My own view is all of the additional material detracts from the original and was rightly totally omitted from the official final cut by Lynch. Sometimes constraints such as being obligated to deliver a two hour movie are a Director's friend and I think that that's definitely the case here as it was for Aliens (1986) from the same year. See whether you agree.

---

An interesting invitation, and one that I'll probably accept.

Blue Velvet was a big deal in the 80's. With QT talking of "the stink of the 50s and the stink of the 80's" as manifesting in timid, self-censored movies...you can't say that about Blue Velvet. Whatever its art-film incoherence was, one COULD make out the contours of a movie with nudity(mainly that of the daughter of Hitchocck muse Ingrid Bergman, Isabella Rossellini) and violence(Dennis Hopper's psychopathic local crime boss) and sado-masochism and voyeurism (with a slightly Anthony Perkins-like Kyle MacLachlan peeping on Isabella from the closet) and even the satisfying dispatch of the villain at the end.

I can't say I'm a big fan of either David Lynch or of Blue Velvet though I think I "got" -- and liked -- the core Hitchcockian thematic straight line of Blue Velvet: that in a sunny, homespun, picket fence American small town, hidden within its boundaries was a criminal community composed of low-life psychopaths, thugs, and sexual sadists.

The Hitchcock movie that Blue Velvet was most compared to was NOT Psycho(despire MacLachlan's peeping)..it was Shadow of a Doubt. Idyllic small town with evil within. Of course, in SOAD, the evil comes from the outside(Uncle Charlie, urbanite and world traveller.) In Blue Velvet, we get the sense that the evil's been in the town ALL THE TIME...a nightmare world that one only stumbles into if one goes to the wrong places and does the wrong things.

CONT

[–] roger1 (2493) 2 months ago

A few thoughts on movie length, deleted scenes and "to cut or not to cut."

ONE: I've come to reject the idea that Scorsese's two recent films -- The Irishman and especially Killers of the Flower Moon -- are "too long and should have been cut down." Nope. These movies are as long as Scorsese WANTED them to be(and as "the great Scorsese" he was ALLOWED that), and we have to take that or leave it, and now that I have seen each film I can't really think of a scene that did NOT need to be there, in either one. (I pride myself, BTW, on getting through Killer of the Flower Moon in a theater without ever needing a restroom break. Proper planning.)

TWO: I'm not a big fan of "deleted scenes." Had scenes BEEN cut from The Irishman or Killers of the Flower Moon and then put on DVDs as "deleted scenes," I would no longer give them the respect I give those scenes now. I respect the MOVIE AS RELEASED. The final cut approved by the director. That's it.

THREE: OK. Sometimes the studio "butchers" a movie by requiring a "too short" version to go out to theaters. I count two: Sam Peckinpah's forced release of "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" and Leone's "Once Upon a Time in America" where Roger Ebert(disingenuously, I thought) gave the first cut vesion "one star" and the director's cut four stars. Ebert was clearly using his reviews to express an opinion on film cuts.

Pat Garett is a flawed, erratic film in ANY version(Peckinpah's drinking and drugs are apparent on the screen.) BTW, The Wild Bunch -- a classic by any measure -- was eventually released with ITS missing scenes, but they were minor except for the scene that showed more of why William Holden felt guilty over getting his friend Robert Ryan sent to prison. But even THAT scene was IMPLIED (without being shown) in the original 1969 release as "understood."

CONT

[–] roger1 (2493) 2 months ago

"LA Confidential" was my favorite film of 1997 and my favorite film of the 90's. One reason was the great, multi-layered, Oscar-winning script. When the DVD came out, I was VERY pleased to see: NO deleted scenes on the DVD. Co-writer-director Curtis Hanson seemed to be saying: "There are no deleted scenes for you to see because I relased the story I wanted released. There is nothing to show you other than what I DID show you in the movie itself." Bravo.

"Licorice Pizza" was my favorite movie of 2021 (and COULD end up my favorite of the 2020s, my picks of the other three years to date aren't.) Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson put ONE deleted scene on the disc, and I must say: it should have gone in the movie. Watching the original release now, when they reach the part where the cut scene should be...I MISS the scene. (It demonstrate's Alana's deep love for Gary and jealousy of Gary's romantic life.) I have no idea why it was cut. So I guess I'm breaking my own rule here. THAT deleted scene is part of the movie in my mind now.

Full circle. Me and David Lynch. I saw The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive in theaters, liked all of them -- to a point. I could only get through a few episodes of Twin Peaks but it seems his magnum opus and the NAMES of those folks seem to keep popping up in essays...Laura Palmer and Special Agent Dale Cooper. Also, the hot actresses who emerged from the show.

CONT

[–] roger1 (2493) 2 months ago

I wish I had more affinity for these works. I almost feel like I should. And oh wait, I saw "The Straight Story" which was so marvelously ...straight. (For a David Lynch film..as if to prove that he COULD do it.)

I do rather like a "matched pair" of erotic scenes in Lynch: Willem Dafoe coming on to Laura Dern in screen filiing close up(those TEETH!) in "Wild at Heart" becomes Naomi Watts coming on to Chad Everett(Cassidy in Van Sant's Psycho) during an audition in Mulholland Drive. Talk about two scenes with incredible sexual drive and..no payoff(literally.) Its hard to do scenes like that...for the actors, too.

And I do remember a friend -- a big Lynch fan -- who always liked it when I used this Wild at Heart line on her:

"Peanut, the way your head works is God's own private mystery."

As always..movie lines come through for us in real life.

There is time to "come around again" on David Lynch and these new ultra-long versions of Blue Velvet might be a great starting place.