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| Psycho (1960) | |
| Plot Synopsis (continued)
[Saturday night] The two decide to talk to Fairvale's Deputy Sheriff Al Chambers (John McIntire) and his wife (Lurene Tuttle) at their home - they find them in their night-robes. They explain that Lila's sister ran away from Phoenix (because "she stole some money...forty thousand dollars") and was traced to the Bates Motel by private detective Arbogast. Mrs. Chambers is dumbfounded when they mention a "Mrs. Bates" - "Norman took a wife?" An over-anxious Lila believes "there's something wrong out there" because Arbogast has inexplicably disappeared after reporting he was "dissatisfied and he was going back there." The common-sense country sheriff is also suspicious, but questions the integrity of the detective. He speculates that Arbogast might have obtained a "hot lead" from Norman, stalled them with a phone call, and then took off alone after Marion:
The sheriff believes that Norman didn't answer Sam's cries deliberately: "This fellow lives like a hermit. You must remember that bad business out there about 10 years ago." Lila persuades Chambers to call Norman on the phone to confirm the sheriff's theory. Norman answers and supportively explains that Arbogast was there but left. There is a particularly stunning set of remarks made by Sheriff Chambers and his wife when they dispel the claims of both Sam and Arbogast about Norman's living 'mother.' In a double murder-suicide ten years earlier, Mrs. Bates poisoned her unfaithful lover and then took her own life:
During their argumentative dialogue, the camera pans up the stairway to above the bedroom door and then to a disorienting, spiraling overhead shot as Norman emerges with his mother in his arms and carries the frail figure down the staircase to the basement fruit cellar. [The audience is equally imbalanced and disoriented - who is the woman that he argues with and carries downstairs, immediately after the Sheriff revealed that Mrs. Bates is buried in a grave?] [Sunday, December 20] Churchbells sound to indicate the end of the Sunday services at the small-town Fairvale Church. On the steps in front of the spire-topped church, the Sheriff tells Lila and Sam that he found "nothing" but Norman at the Bates Motel when he visited earlier in the morning:
The Sheriff suggests that they file a "missing person" report later that afternoon in his office: "The sooner you drop this in the lap of the law, that's the sooner you stand a chance of your sister being picked up." To "make it nicer," his wife suggests they do their reporting at their house around dinner time. Disbelieving and unsatisfied, Lila and Sam decide to return to the motel on their own to see if Arbogast ran out on them. To "fool" Norman, they plan to register as guests - as "man and wife" - and then "search every inch of the place, inside and out." After they arrive at the motel, Norman spies on them from the upstairs window and Lila notices someone there. When Norman speaks to them about registering for a room, they explain that they are journeying to San Francisco, but don't like the looks of the weather: "It looks like a bad day coming, doesn't it?"
Lila is suspicious that Norman, the motel manager of this "useless business," had a motive "to get out, to get a new business somewhere else - 40 thousand dollars." They are both anxious to search for clues that Arbogast had uncovered and evidence of the missing $40,000:
They begin at Cabin One where they find two major clues. Sam notices that the shower curtain is missing and Lila finds a scrap of paper stuck to the inside of the toilet bowl, showing a notation - some figure has been added to or subtracted from $40,000. That might prove that Norman found out about the money. Lila is convinced that the "old woman, whoever she is, she told Arbogast something. I want her to tell us the same thing." They plan to split up and have Sam divert Norman's attention and keep him occupied within the office while Lila sneaks up to explore the house - she confidently assures Sam: "I can handle a sick old woman." The camera subjectively tracks her climbing progress up the hill, both with eerie point-of-view shots and backward-tracking shots as the gothic house looms larger and she confronts its horror. She anxiously enters the solemn, archaic hallway of "Mother's House." In this final scary sequence, with parallel editing cutting back and forth between the motel office and Lila's assault on Norman's private world in the house, Sam abrasively corners Norman in the motel office's entrance. He aggressively and mercilessly banters away with the much-quieter, timid motel manager - challenging ('baiting') him to confess that he would "get away" given the right chance:
Lila first sees a black cupid statue in the hallway, and then a painting of a maiden at the top of the stairs. She enters Mrs. Bates' Victorian, baroque, stuffy, upstairs bedroom. She notes the ornate fixtures and strangely preserved, Victorian artifacts including an antique dry washbasin, a nude goddess statuette, a cold fireplace and empty chair, an armoire-wardrobe with old-fashioned, high-necked women's clothes neatly hung, a vanity table with large mirror, hairbrush and comb. There's also a jewelry box (a bronzed sculpture of two crossed, lace-cuffed hands clasped in prayer) on the dressing table. She gasps, seeing herself in multiple reflections in an opposing full-length mirror, but is relieved that the nightmarish apparition is only herself. She touches the deep-curved, indented imprint of a single reclining figure in the large double bed - Norman's "only world." In the office, Sam doubts Norman's contentedness and acceptance of his poverty - assuming that he would "unload this place...to get out from under" if he had the money:
The shot cuts back to the motel office, where Sam continues his pleasantries to question a now-frightened Norman who stands confrontationally across from him [they are remarkably similar - almost mirror reflections of each other as they stand across the counter from each other]:
Realizing that the girl Sam came with has disappeared (he deduces that she may be in the house) and that he has been set up in a diversionary trap, Norman struggles with Sam, knocks him out, and races up the hill. As Lila is coming down the stairs, she looks out the curtained front door window and sees Norman rushing toward her. She runs around and hides behind the stairs in the stairwell leading to the basement steps - she is framed behind the 'bars' of the stairs. As Norman goes upstairs, Lila decides to tiptoe down into the darkness of the cellar [symbolically going deeper into the hidden secrets of the psyche or Psycho-path] - sensing that Norman's mother might be located there.
The mummy's face dissolves into the next scene set in front of the County Court House - the face appears imprisoned behind the four white pillars holding up the establishment's law and order building. The principal characters have gathered to await the findings of a psychiatrist interviewing Norman.
Sheriff Chambers remarks: "If anyone gets any answers, it'll be the psychiatrist. Even I couldn't get to Norman and he knows me." As a footnote to the entire series of events, the smug and officious police psychiatrist, Dr. Richmond (Simon Oakland) in the Office of the Chief of Police reconstructs or 'explains' the mystery of Norman's schizophrenic psychosis after questioning 'his mother' [Was he 'made a fool of...by a woman'?] - since Norman Bates no longer exists.
Lila asks if it is true that Norman actually killed her sister. The psychiatrist first answers "Yes...and no," but then confirms that Norman was the murderer of Marion, Arbogast, and possibly other individuals (in unsolved missing persons cases) who registered at the hotel and were deposited in the swamp in the vicinity of the motel. Then, he goes on to explain how a "disturbed" Norman had an incestuously possessive and jealous love for his mother, so he poisoned both her and her lover after he discovered them in bed together. [It has been speculated that there's another likely possibility - Mrs. Bates may have killed her own husband and then killed herself. Norman's delusional mind, with his accusatory 'Mother' enshrined inside, may have caused him to become mad to rid him/herself of guilt. The 'Mother' part of him directed him to commit the murders.]:
To wipe clean and obliterate the unbearable, intolerable crime of matricide from his conscience and consciousness, a remorseful Norman developed a split personality. In this way, he could keep the illusion that she was still alive. To make that illusion a physical reality, he dug up and stole her body, and used his taxidermist skills to preserve and stuff her corpse, keep her 'alive,' and then he would ease his loneliness by lying with her in bed:
In his diseased imagination, he would play-act and fantasize that he was his mother - and that she was as jealous of him as he was of her. When attracted to a young woman, Norman would completely become his mother and be jealously and pathologically mad. His "mother" side, escalated to full reality, would stab to death the females he was attracted to - and commit the horribly violent crimes. After the murders, Norman would awaken and appear horrified by his 'mother's' crimes. However, from Norman's pathologically-crazed point of view, the murders were symbolic sexual acts of rape/revenge - his knife a potent phallic symbol against his 'Mother'.
He was a transvestite - "but not exactly." He would act out the "mother" side of the split personality, donning her clothing to keep his illusion of her being alive. Following the disclosure of Norman's crime, his weakened self-identity had been so completely and totally absorbed and possessed by the "mother" side of his split personality that his male Norman side no longer existed. When his two personalities fused, he became his dominant mother's final victim:
A policeman brings a chilled Norman a blanket ("He feels a little chill") - off-screen, a woman's voice responds gratefully: "Thank you." As Norman sits still - staring out into space in his box-like jail cell [a bare "place" with "cruel eyes studying you" - Norman's words to Marion], he is wrapped and insulated from the world and huddled in a blanket. His frail character and self-identity have been fully possessed by his mother. As the camera slowly tracks toward Norman, the voice of "Mother" speaks in Norman's head, and condemns her son for the crimes, while she claims that she is harmless:
The film ends with a dissolve into the dredging of the swamp - Marion's car with her body and the almost-$40,000 in the trunk is hauled trunk-first from the muck by a heavy clanking chain on a winch - she is liberated, withdrawn and reborn from her grave. Horizontal black bars partially, and then completely, cover the final image. |
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Lila
and Sam wait apprehensively in the hardware store for the detective's
return later that Saturday, realizing that it has been three hours
since Arbogast last called [just before his unexpected, horrific
murder]. Lila admits being impatient to the procrastinating Sam: "Are
we just going to sit here and wait?...Patience doesn't run in my
family, Sam." When she demands to go to the motel, Sam volunteers
to go by himself. A dark silhouetted Lila, with a cold wind blowing
through her hair, dissolves into the figure of Norman, standing by
the swamp [after sinking Arbogast and his car?]. He hears Sam's off-screen
call for Arbogast, but doesn't respond. Norman's sinister look into
the camera dissolves back into an image of Lila waiting in the back
office of the hardware store. When Sam returns, she rushes forward
to the camera [her dark, silhouetted image recalls Marion's first
image of the murderer in the shower scene]. He reports his findings:
"No Arbogast, no Bates," but he saw a "sick old lady
unable to answer the door, or unwilling" in the second floor window.
With
a determined look on his face, Norman leaves the motel office and
goes up to the house and stairs (walking effeminately with shifting
hips) to the second floor bedroom - his 'mother's' bedroom. He tells
her that it is time to move her to a new location - the fruit cellar.
The cackling old lady protests vehemently with a macabre joke as
he explains the necessity of the move: 
Sam
and Norman face each other tensely across the front desk. Appearing
assertive and insistent, Sam signs the register and demands a "notarized" receipt
because his trip is: "90 percent business." Without luggage,
Sam reminds Norman that it's odd that they don't have to pay for
their room in advance. After paying ten dollars for the room and
showing themselves to cabin number ten near the end of the porch,
Lila wishes to search cabin number one where Arbogast told her Marion
stayed: "No matter what we're afraid of finding or how much
it may hurt."
[Lila
explores the house in three areas - the bedroom, the attic, and the
cellar - all parts of Norman's segmented personality.] 
On
the third floor, Lila enters Norman's little-boy's room containing
a mysterious, aberrant combination of children's (boy's and girl's
items) and adult's things [signifying Norman's stultified personality
development]. The isolated room contains a rocking chair; another
stuffed bird; a doll, a model car, a toy schoolhouse and a stuffed
teddy bear in a pile on a wall shelf; a stuffed rabbit on Norman's
slept-in single bed; a phonograph record of Beethoven's Er-o-ica
[one letter short of erotica] Third Symphony on a box-like
turntable; and a world globe and small piggy bank safe next to a
stack of books (one of the books has no title or author on its cover).
She turns open the book cover to inspect its contents [is it pornographic,
a book of black magic, Norman's diary perhaps, or is it an album
that contains pictures of the Bates family?].
She
enters a basement door, and then proceeds through a second creaking
door into the fruit cellar, where she sees a lifeless, silent
figure (with her hair drawn back in a bun) facing away from her in
a chair - seated under a glaring bare-bulb light fixture. She walks
up to the body, calling out "Mrs. Bates?" and
taps the woman's shoulder. The body slowly swivels in its chair and
jiggles back and forth as it completes its turn. She has discovered
Norman's perverted and terrible secret and penetrated into his deadly
world where she has found "Mother" - Mrs. Bates - a stuffed,
dried-up, shrunken and withered mummy's skeleton with empty eye sockets
and a wide, toothy grin. Horrified, Lila's wide-open mouth screams
at the preserved corpse. As she draws back her hand, it hits the
suspended light fixture, setting it swinging. It adds an unsettling
set of dancing shadows of light and dark to the scene. As she screams,
violin screeches match her own shrieks as she turns toward the sound
of heavy footsteps.
A
grey-haired woman with a knife wielded in the air suddenly jumps
into the open fruit cellar door frame. 'Mother' pauses there for
a moment and then steps forward to strike. Sam appears behind the
matronly old woman, and grabs, overpowers, and subdues the knife-brandishing
attacker. In the film's dramatic climax, Norman is metamorphosized
and revealed as his "Mother" [Norma?] when his drag disguises
(the wig and dress) are stripped away and ripped off. His body convulses
and spasms (orgasmically?), his eyes squint, and his face grimaces
in pain when his decaying illusion is exposed. His fingers claw upward
and cling to the knife as he collapses to the floor. The 'Norman'
self completely dies, while his macabre 'Mother' self is brought
to life - illustrated by the cadaver's hysterically-laughing face,
with its mummy's eyes 'moving' - animated and resurrected by the
light. The 'living dead' eyes of the corpse that see Lila mock her
- they appear lifelike but they are indeed lifeless. -- Play clip
(excerpt): 
[A
wall calendar behind the psychiatrist reads '17', a discontinuity
error and a Hitchcockian self-reference to his earlier film Number
17 (1932). The date of the final scenes of Psycho should
be December 20. In her first scene, Lila told Sam that Marion left
Phoenix "a week ago yesterday"; the plot climaxed the day
after that, which would be Sunday the 20th.]:
[The
police and, more directly, the film's audience are 'watching' him/her
through the peephole of the door. This scene recalls the scene of
the policeman with dark sunglasses gazing at Marion with his "cruel
eyes." The prison guard is an uncredited role for Ted Knight,
the Ted Baxter character of the popular TV show The Mary Tyler
Moore Show.] With darting eyes, he/she watches a fly crawl across
his/her hand, displaying his/her innocence by sparing the insect's
life. [One can only recall that Marion's life wasn't spared.] As
he looks toward the camera, a grinning smile slowly creeps over his
face - subliminally superimposed by and dissolving into the grinning
skull of his mother's mummified corpse: