One usually expects a whodunnit to follow the oft beaten path, or that’s how most people view murder stories as they unfold on screen. With Hitchcock, its different. The first thing that one notices about Psycho (1960) is the sheer paucity of people or characters in the narrative. Minimalist. As the drama jostles its way forward, the realism of the plot hits home. There isn’t a necessity of having any extra characters. The ones that are there captivate you and how. There’s the runaway petty thief, Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), the woman who keeps a straight face while scampering away from town with a stash of cash, $ 40,000 no less, all belonging to her employer’s client. So, what does Ms Crane do next? She keeps the suspicious cop at bay, dusts off the queries of the curious garage salesman and heads away into a cash-rich future? Not really!
Alighting out of her rental car, away from the highway, Ms Crane comes across a run-down motel and…..Norman Bates. Good ol’ Norman Bates. He lives alone…well…with his “mentally ill” mother and runs (if twelve out of twelve empty cabins is called business) the Bates Motel, hidden away from the glare of the headlights speeding along the highway. As Norman Bates, Anthony Perkins is unmatched. He fumbles and stammers his way through the scene where Ms Crane is munching on a light dinner brought around by, why, Bates himself, betraying just a hint of his satanic, psychotic personality. Absolute brilliance. Then, Ms Crane is killed, stabbed repeatedly by what appears to be an apparition (ostensibly Bates’ mother) and Bates cleans up, pushing her car away into a slush pond, completely oblivious of the cash that the woman was carrying. One remembers Bates peeping through a hole in the parlour wall as Ms Crane undresses.
In obvious panic, Ms Crane’s sister hires the services of private investigator Arbogast…to find her lost sister…and , of course, the stolen money! The detective, arriving at the Bates motel, encounters…well who else but Norman Bates. The bumbling Bates, reveals after considerable cajoling that Ms Crane did come in to spend the night. Unsatisfied with the responses, Arbogast decides to check in on the old mother to know if she met the woman. He, too never returns. Bates is again found standing by the slush pond, apparently smiling to himself.
Its now the turn of the other Ms Crane and Marion Cranes’ boyfriend Sam to take a trip to the Bates Motel. Before that they meet the town Sheriff, only to be told that Norman Bates’ old mother died years ago. Convinced that the man at the counter at the motel has something to do with the disappearance of her sister, Lila Crane ventures (much to the dismay of Norman Bates) into his large house, to find his ailing old mother. The rest is one of the best pre-climax and climax scenes ever shot in a psycho thriller. The explanation for Bates’ crimes is even more macabre. Utterly psychotic and hideously neurotic who keeps stuffed dead birds in his parlour, Bates smiles devilishly into the camera as the police cracks the cases, one by one (apparently he killed more people than Just Ms Crane and the detective). Psycho can be watched for a feral performance by Perkins and, of course, the mind-boggling justification of his heinous crimes. Bates’ body harbours two personalities, that of his mother apart from his own. After murdering his mother and her lover years ago, he does not bury his mother’s body, but keeps it in the old house. Whenever, Bates, the man, is sexually drawn to another woman, the “mother” takes charge, compelling Bates to kill the object of his desire.
The plot is a case study of the portrayal of desire, especially physical desire, on celluloid. With the murders and the pychosis in the background, Psycho is pure genius exploration of the human mind and the animal desires that is contains.
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