Synopsis: Marion Crane is unhappy in her job in
Arizona real estate office and frustrated in her romance with
hardware store manager Sam Loomis. One afternoon, Marion is given
$40,000 in cash to be deposited in the bank. Minutes later, impulse
has taken over and Marion takes off with the cash, hoping to leave
Phoenix for good .
Whenever anyone speaks about Psycho, the first
images that come to mind are those of Janet Leigh being hacked to
death in the shower. The scene is so famous that even people who
have not seen the movie are aware of it. Bernard Herrmann's
strident, discordant music has been used in countless other movies
to denote the appearance of a "psycho." The brilliance of
the scene lies in the editing. Those who go frame-by-frame through
it will note how much is left to the imagination. We see a knife,
blood (actually chocolate syrup), water, and a woman's naked body
(with certain parts strategically concealed from the camera), but
only briefly is the penetration of the blade into the flesh shown.
The full horror of the murder is only hinted at on-screen. It takes
the power of the viewer's imagination to fill in the blanks.
(Presumably, that's the reason why so many of today's unimaginative
movie-goers, who are accustomed to having a screenful of gore
presented for their consumption, find Psycho tame.) It's not
surprising that the movie generated a wave of shower phobia - some
people, made aware of their vulnerability during a shower, started
taking baths. (Janet Leigh is one such victim -- she claims that she
never took a shower again after making the film.) By James
Berardinelli
Seeing the shower scene today, several things
stand out. Unlike modern horror films, "Psycho" never
shows the knife striking flesh. There are no wounds. There is blood,
but not gallons of it. Hitchcock shot in black and white because he
felt the audience could not stand so much blood in color (the 1998
Gus Van Sant remake specifically repudiates that theory). The
slashing chords of Bernard Herrmann's soundtrack substitute for more
grisly sound effects. The closing shots are not graphic but
symbolic, as blood and water spin down the drain, and the camera
cuts to a closeup, the same size, of Marion's unmoving eyeball. This
remains the most effective slashing in movie history, suggesting
that situation and artistry are more important than graphic details.
By Roger Ebert
