The plot is very simple. It is about a lady called Marian Crane played by Janet Leigh who works in an estate agent. She steals $40,000 from her employer and planned to elope to Fairvale, several hundred miles away from her home town, Phoenix. She planned to meet her boyfriend Sam who was unaware of her actions. She travels alone which is highly unusual for women in the 1960’s. This raises some suspicion about her.
About 15 miles away from Fairvale she stops at a remote motel, called the Bates motel. She comes across the owner Norman Bates played by Anthony Perkins. Norman Bates is schizophrenic. This means he has a split personality. Half of him is his mother and the other side is he. He murders Marian Crane dressed as his mother.
Norman Bates is schizophrenic because he killed his mother and her boyfriend. To keep his mother alive in his mind, he took her corpse and preserved it. He was able to do this because he had a hobby of stuffing birds, so he used the chemicals used to preserve the birds to preserve his mother’s corpse. The guilt of murdering his mother drove him to schizophrenia.
Eventually he is caught by Marian Crane’s boyfriend and her sister. In my opinion, the plot is highly convincing and believable.
The shower scene was filmed in a 4sq meter set. The set was so small that the actors were never on set together. During this scene there were over 70 camera shots squeezed together. This is called a fast edited scene. Marian crane was not naked in this scene but she was wearing a flesh coloured body suit.
I think the shower scene can be classed as symbolic. The start of this scene Marian crane decides to face up to her crime and return to Phoenix.
When she enters the showers and starts washing her, it symbolises her washing her crime away. At the start of this scene, she dominates the screen.
One shot away from the murder, her shot is in the corner and because of this our focus is beginning to shift. We see a shadow to the left of her. At this time there is no music and we only hear the sound of water running down from the shower head. This time the camera zooms in on the shower curtain. Marian Crane is completely off the screen and we clearly see a silhouette.
The curtains draw back and a tuneless, screechy music starts up. We see shots of the stab from different camera points of view but each for no longer than two seconds. Also, because both actors were never on set together, we do not actually see the knife go into her flesh but in our imaginations we think we do. This is Hitchcock’s skill as a director.
We do not see any wounds but we see blobs of blood in the bath, we also hear stabbing noises. The blood was chocolate syrup and the stabbing noises were made by a member of the crew off set, stabbing a melon. By seeing the blood in the bath, it draws away attention from the fact that we can’t see the wounds. The fact that she is murdered in the shower, naked and confined in a small space with no escape makes the murder more brutal. The music is tuneless; it makes no sense, just like the murder.
As soon as the murder is over, the music has a tune again and the shots are longer. We see her struggling. A close-up of her hand slipping down the tile symbolises her life slipping away. We see a few seconds of her final moments in life. Her hand reaches up for help, grabbing the curtain. We see an overhead shot of the curtain falling down on her. Finally we see her blood being washed away. The camera follows it all the way down to the plughole, it symbolises her life going down the drain.
At the end of this scene we see the money still wrapped in the newspaper, untouched. It shows this wasn’t a murder for profit.
In my opinion, Psycho is one of the best films I’ve seen. From the beginning it keeps you enthralled and there are unexpected twists and turn which makes the film phenomenal. Although Psycho wouldn’t be classed as a horror film today, it still made me jump in certain scenes. I think Psycho is a classic and I can see why it’s still in the top 10 of best films today.