My First Watching Of Psyco By Alfred Hitchcock
I was ten years old and my life was ruined. Or so it seemed at the time. I remember my first experience with Psycho sharper than almost any memory of that period in my life. I'd checked it out from the library, ignorantly assuming a film from 1960 couldn't be frightening. However, the bullets I inevitably perspired that night would suggest otherwise. With a swing of the shower curtain and a screech of Bernard Herrmann's horrifying score, Psycho leaped from the screen and into my nightmares.
When Marion Crane's murder is over, Hitchcock resorts to complete silence, because he knows he's grabbed our attention. As an impressionable ten-year-old, I became invested in the movie like never before. I distinctly recall tucking my legs above the couch, for fear Norman Bates would jump out from beneath and grab them. With every brilliantly-designed instance of suspense and shock, my interest in the movie gradually built to levels I doubt will ever be surpassed. Arbogast's murder on the staircase nearly had me in tears. It all leads up to the shocking, and predictable, conclusion which ties up the movie with a pretty ribbon. But long after "THE END" appeared on the screen, I wasn’t prepared to let the movie leave me. I sat transfixed, staring at the black screen, hoping there would be special features so I would have an excuse not to go upstairs (who knew what terrors lurked up there?).
It was downright fear that kept me in my living room. Eventually my mother insisted I go to bed, and, reluctantly and tentatively, I stumbled upstairs, checking both ways as I made my way up the staircase. The hallways were filled with shadows and the light-switch was several feet away. I lacked the courage to switch it on, so I simply sat on the staircase for thirty minutes until my mother walked by and did it herself. Washing up before bed was an even greater ordeal. The entire time I kept one eye on the shower, never allowing myself to blink. Then I dashed into bed, and pulled the sheets over my head. I closed my eyes. There I lay for hours and hours. I must've fallen asleep at some point, because I awoke the next morning with my entire pillow, sheet and mattress drenched in sweat.
Now, I'd already been intrigued by movies (in fact this was my seventh Hitchcock) but no film had ever resonated with me quite this much. I realized the power of the medium. Psycho is a detail-driven film and every viewing reveals knew secrets to me. After ten years, seven subsequent viewings and a completion of Hitchcock’s 52-movie filmography, I’m still finding this movie rewarding.
Perhaps it’s the playful arcs of his camera, the red herrings or maybe it’s just Hitchcock’s black comedy, slowly surfacing like the car being tugged from the black swamp. This is carefully calculated horror, where every maneuver the film makes serves a higher perhaps, whether it’s a clever diversion or essential to the narrative.
