A Long Hard Look At 'Psycho' by Durgnat Raymond; Miller Henry K.;

Author:Durgnat, Raymond; Miller, Henry K.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BFI Publishing
Published: 2010-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

An Accumulation of Emotions

As Hitchcock well knows, all movies, all texts, are geared to the mind of a beholder, in whose eye, all beauty, all meaning and all horror lie. After all, no movie, no text tel quel, contains any ideas or any experience whatsoever; its very signifiers are abstract forms, semantically null and void, if no mind brings meaning to them. Minds hold meanings; texts can only provoke them.

By this point in a film, every scene involves not only itself but also the whole film so far. It carries an accumulation of meanings, ideas and emotions, which, though now invisible on the screen, continue powerful in audience thought. Though powerful, they’re not constant and are gradually fading, although at different speeds, depending on what follows and whether they’re revived by some allusion, often indirect ones, like ‘echo-motifs’, or our knowledge that the money is folded into the newspaper, a fact established earlier, in big close-ups, along with Marion’s briskly counting hands. This ‘accumulation’ of previous scenes and signs can have no sign, since it’s a relation and an interaction between many, many signs.

After the surprise slaughter, the 1960 spectator needed a good few minutes to recover. Most Hollywood films alternated climax and relaxation (the successive climaxes lifting the relaxations to gradually higher plateaux of suspense until the grand climax). Sometimes, comic relief provides the relaxation, but that would be out of order here: so soon after the murder shock, it might well provoke disgust. A routine move would be, ‘Meanwhile, back at Lowery’s office…’. Hitchcock allows minimal relaxation and stays with the body, simply changing ‘key’, from hysteric scherzo in shrill whites, to sombre, heavy, creepy. In one respect the scene is a ‘relaxation’ – in another, it drops the spectator from the frying pan into the fire.

In Which the Spectator Goes from Bad to Worse

Marion’s theft was a sad little caper, and, after identifying with her (critically and with much misgiving), for 30 minutes or so, we’re violently deprived of her narrative POV.39 Norman is now the only identification on upfront offer, and it’s a far more guilty, hopeless and morally disturbing one. It gets evermore disturbing as Norman seems to change from a pitiable victim in an impossible predicament, to cool, candy-chewing complacency. Hitchcock draws us deep into moral perversity, through three successive ‘markers’.

1.Hitchcock’s Marnie principle – our sympathy with people trying to resolve difficult problems, as in all those ‘crime caper’ films (some comic, some tragic, some nasty, some moralistic, some charmingly naughty). This conflicts with our feelings about Marion – we still identify with her (and we can indeed identify with the dead, and demand justice for them, demand revenge, libidinally).

2.Norman not noticing $38k and tossing it into the swamp inspires some of us to an entirely amoral dismay. ‘What a waste! I could have done with that money!’

3.As Hitchcock coolly observes, most spectators share Norman’s relief when Marion’s car resumes its sinking into the swamp. Our relief coincides with Norman’s maximum nastiness (candy and

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