Psico (Edição Comemorativa 2 Discos)

Info About (Probably) The Best Hitchcock Movie:

Psycho is a 1960 American suspense horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock starring Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, John Gavin, and Janet Leigh. The screenplay is by Joseph Stefano, based on the 1959 novel of the same name by Robert Bloch loosely inspired by the crimes of Wisconsin murderer and grave robber Ed Gein.^[1]
The film centers on the encounter between a secretary, Marion Crane (Leigh), who ends up at a secluded motel after embezzling money from her employer, and the motel's disturbed owner-manager, Norman Bates (Perkins), and its aftermath.^[2] When originally made, the film was seen as a departure from Hitchcock's previous film North by Northwest, having been filmed on a low budget, with a television crew and in black and white. Psycho initially received mixed reviews, but outstanding box office returns prompted reconsideration which led to overwhelming critical acclaim and four Academy Award nominations, including Best Supporting Actress for Leigh and Best Director for Hitchcock.
It is now considered one of Hitchcock's best films^[3] and praised as a work of cinematic art by international film critics and film scholars. Ranked among the greatest films of all time, it set a new level of acceptability for violence, deviant behavior and sexuality in American films.^[4] After Hitchcock's death in 1980, Universal Studios began producing follow-ups: three sequels, a remake, a television movie spin-off, and a TV series.
In 1992, the US Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.

Plot

Marion Crane and her boyfriend meet for a secret romantic rendezvous during lunch hour at a hotel in Phoenix, Arizona. They then talk about how they can barely afford to get married. Upon Marion's return to work at a realtor's office, a client comes in with $40,000 in cash to purchase a house for his daughter. The money is entrusted to Marion, who decides to steal it and skip town.
On the road, she pulls over to sleep and is awaken by a policeman who can tell something is wrong. The policeman lets her go, but upon arriving in another town, Marion pulls into a used car dealership and hastily exchanges her car for another one. Driving during a rainy night, Marion pulls up to the Bates Motel, a remote lodging that has recently lost business due to a diversion of the main highway. The proprietor, youthful but nervous Norman Bates, invites her to a light dinner in the parlor. Norman discloses that his mother is mentally ill, but he becomes irate and bristles when Marion suggests that she should be institutionalized. The conversation induces Marion to decide to return to Phoenix and return the stolen money. Marion later takes a shower in her room, during which a shadowy figure comes and stabs her to death. Norman bursts into the bathroom and discovers Marion's dead body. He wraps the body in the shower curtain and cleans up the bathroom. He puts Marion's body in the trunk of her car and sinks it in a nearby swamp.
In Phoenix, Marion's sister Lila and boyfriend Sam Loomis are concerned about her disappearance. A detective named Arbogast confirms Marion is suspected of having stolen $40,000 from her employer. Arbogast eventually finds the Bates Motel, where Norman's evasiveness and stammering arouse his suspicions. Arbogast later enters the Bates' residence, looking for Norman's mother. A figure emerges from her room and murders Arbogast.
Fearing something has happened to Arbogast, Sam and Lila go to the town of Fairvale and talk with the local sheriff. He is puzzled by the detective's claim that he was planning to talk to Norman's mother, stating that Mrs. Bates died years ago, along with her lover, in a murder-suicide. Norman, seen from above, carries his mother down to the cellar of their house as she verbally protests the arrangement.
Sam and Lila rent a room at the Bates Motel and search the cabin that Marion stayed in. Lila finds a scrap of paper with "$40,000" written on it while Sam notes that the bathtub has no shower curtain. Sam distracts Norman while Lila sneaks into the house, looking for Mrs. Bates. Norman subdues Sam and chases Lila. Seeing Norman approaching, Lila hides in the cellar and discovers Mrs. Bates sitting in a rocking chair. The chair rotates to reveal a desiccated corpse, the preserved body of Mrs. Bates. A figure enters the basement, wearing a dress and wig while wielding a large knife, revealing Norman to be the murderer all along. Sam enters and saves Lila.
After Norman's arrest, a psychiatrist who interviewed Norman reveals that Norman had murdered his mother and her lover years ago, and later developed a split personality to erase the crime from his memory. At times, he is able to function as Norman, but other times the mother personality completely dominates him. Norman is now locked into his mother's identity permanently. Mrs. Bates, in a voice-over, talks about how harmless she is, and how it was really Norman, not her, who committed the murders. The final scene shows Marion's car being recovered from the swamp.

Cast

• Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates
• Janet Leigh as Marion Crane
• Vera Miles as Lila Crane (Marion's sister)
• John Gavin as Sam Loomis (Marion's boyfriend)
• Martin Balsam as Milton Arbogast (private detective)
• John McIntire as Al Chambers (police sheriff)
• Simon Oakland as Dr. Fred Richmond (police psychologist)
• Frank Albertson as Tom Cassidy (the client with $40,000)
• Pat Hitchcock as Caroline (Marion's co-worker)
• Vaughn Taylor as George Lowery (Marion's boss)
• Lurene Tuttle as Mrs. Chambers (Al Chambers wife)
• John Anderson as California Charlie (car dealer)
• Mort Mills as Highway Patrol Officer
• Virginia Gregg, Jeanette Nolan, and Paul Jasmin (uncredited) as voice of Norma Bates (Norman's mother)
• Ted Knight (uncredited) as a policeman guarding Norman Bates

The success of Psycho jump-started Perkins' career, but he soon began to suffer from typecasting.^[5] However, when Perkins was asked whether he would have still taken the role knowing that he would be typecast afterwards, he replied with a definite "yes".^[6]
Until her death, Leigh continued to receive strange and sometimes threatening calls, letters, and even tapes detailing what they would like to do to Marion Crane. One letter was so "grotesque" that she passed it along to the FBI, two of whose agents visited Leigh and told her the culprits had been located and that she should notify the FBI if she received any more letters of that type.^[7]
Norman's mother was voiced by Virginia Gregg, Paul Jasmin, and Jeanette Nolan, who also provided some screams for Lila's discovery of the mother's corpse. The three voices were thoroughly mixed, except for the last speech, which is all Gregg's.^[8]
Anne Dore was chosen by Hitchcock to double for Perkins in the shower sequence in Psycho, since he did not want any of Perkins's physicality to betray his identity at that point in the film. Dore wore the mother's costume and did all the stabbing actions.

Production

The shower scene

The shadowy mother figure from the famous shower scene.

The murder of Janet Leigh's character in the shower is the film's pivotal scene and one of the best-known in all of cinema. As such, it spawned numerous myths and legends. It was shot from December 17 to December 23, 1959, and features 77 different camera angles.^[58] The scene "runs 3 minutes and includes 50 cuts."^[59] Most of the shots are extreme close-ups, except for medium shots in the shower directly before and directly after the murder. The combination of the close shots with their short duration makes the sequence feel more subjective than it would have been if the images were presented alone or in a wider angle, an example of the technique Hitchcock described as "transferring the menace from the screen into the mind of the audience".^[60]

In order to capture the straight-on shot of the shower head, the camera had to be equipped with a long lens. The inner holes on the shower head were blocked and the camera placed a sufficient distance away so that the water, while appearing to be aimed directly at the lens, actually went around and past it.^[61]
The soundtrack of screeching violins, violas and cellos was an original all-strings piece by composer Bernard Herrmann titled "The Murder". Hitchcock originally intended to have no music for the sequence (and all motel scenes),^[62] but Herrmann insisted he try his composition. Afterward, Hitchcock agreed it vastly intensified the scene, and nearly doubled Herrmann's salary.^[63][64][65] The blood in the scene is reputed to have been Bosco chocolate syrup,^[66] which shows up better on black-and-white film, and has more realistic density than stage blood.^[1] The sound of the knife entering flesh was created by plunging a knife into a casaba melon.^[67][68]
There are varying accounts whether Leigh was in the shower the entire time or a body double was used for some parts of the murder sequence and its aftermath. In an interview with Roger Ebert and in the book Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, Leigh stated she was in the scene the entire time and Hitchcock only used a stand-in for the sequence in which Norman wraps Marion's body in a shower curtain and places it in the trunk of her car.^[69] The 2010 book The Girl in Alfred Hitchcock's Shower by Robert Graysmith contradicts this, identifying Marli Renfro as Leigh's body double for some of the shower scene's shots.^[70]
A popular myth emerged that in order for Leigh's scream in the shower to sound realistic ice-cold water was used. Leigh denied this on numerous occasions, saying the crew was very accommodating supplying hot water throughout the week-long shoot.^[71] All of the screams are Leigh's.^[8]
Another concerns Saul Bass, the graphic designer who created many of the title sequences of Hitchcock's films and storyboarded some of Psycho's scenes, claiming he had directed the shower scene. This was refuted by several figures associated with the film, including Leigh, who stated: "absolutely not! I have emphatically said this in any interview I've ever given. I've said it to his face in front of other people... I was in that shower for seven days, and, believe me, Alfred Hitchcock was right next to his camera for every one of those seventy-odd shots."^[72] Hilton Green, the assistant director, also refutes Bass' claim: "There is not a shot in that movie that I didn't roll the camera for. And I can tell you I never rolled the camera for Mr. Bass."^[72] Roger Ebert, a longtime admirer of Hitchcock's work, summarily dismissed the rumor, stating, "It seems unlikely that a perfectionist with an ego like Hitchcock's would let someone else direct such a scene."^[73]
However, commentators such as Stephen Rebello and Bill Krohn have argued in favor of Bass' contribution to the scene in his capacity as visual consultant and storyboard artist.^[74] Along with designing the opening credits, Bass is termed "Pictorial Consultant" in the credits. When interviewing Hitchcock in 1967, François Truffaut asked about the extent of Bass' contribution, to which Hitchcock replied that in addition to the titles, Bass had provided storyboards for the Arbogast murder (which he claimed to have rejected), but made no mention of Bass providing storyboards for the shower scene.^[75] According to Bill Krohn's Hitchcock At Work, Bass' first claim to have directed the scene was in 1970, when he provided a magazine with 48 drawings used as storyboards as proof of his contribution.^[76]
Krohn's analysis of the production of Psycho in his book Hitchcock at Work, while refuting Bass' claims for directing the scene, notes that these storyboards did introduce key aspects of the final scene—most notably, the fact that the killer appears as a silhouette, and details such as the close-ups of the slashing knife, Leigh's desperate outstretched arm, the shower curtain being torn down, and the transition from the hole of the drainage pipe to Marion Crane's dead eyes. Krohn notes that this final transition is highly reminiscent of the iris titles that Bass created for Vertigo.^[76]
Krohn's research also notes that Hitchcock shot the scene with two cameras: one a BNC Mitchell, the other a handheld camera called an Éclair which Orson Welles had used in Touch of Evil (1958). In order to create an ideal montage for the greatest emotional impact on the audience, Hitchcock shot a lot of footage of this scene which he trimmed down in the editing room. He even brought a Moviola on the set to gauge the footage required. The final sequence, which his editor George Tomasini worked on with Hitchcock's advice, however did not go far beyond the basic structural elements set up by Bass' storyboards.^[76]
According to Donald Spoto in The Dark Side of Genius, Hitchcock's wife, Alma Reville, spotted a blooper in one of the last screenings of Psycho before its official release: after Marion was supposedly dead, one could see her blink. According to Patricia Hitchcock, talking in Laurent Bouzereau's "making of" documentary, Alma spotted that Leigh's character appeared to take a breath. In either case, the postmortem activity was edited out and was never seen by audiences.^[16] Although Marion's eyes should be dilated after her death, the contact lenses necessary for this effect would have required six weeks of acclimatization to wear them, so Hitchcock decided to forgo them.^[77]
It is often claimed that, despite its graphic nature, the "shower scene" never once shows a knife puncturing flesh.^[78][79][80] However, a frame by frame analysis of the sequence shows one shot in which the knife appears to penetrate Leigh's abdomen, but the effect may have been created by lighting and reverse motion.^[81] Leigh herself was so affected by this scene when she saw it, that she no longer took showers unless she absolutely had to; she would lock all the doors and windows and would leave the bathroom and shower door open.^[82] She never realized until she first watched the film "how vulnerable and defenseless one is".^[16]
Leigh and Hitchcock fully discussed what the scene meant:

Marion had decided to go back to Phoenix, come clean, and take the consequence, so when she stepped into the bathtub it was as if she were stepping into the baptismal waters. The spray beating down on her was purifying the corruption from her mind, purging the evil from her soul. She was like a virgin again, tranquil, at peace.^[72]

Film theorist Robin Wood also discusses how the shower washes "away her guilt". He comments upon the "alienation effect" of killing off the "apparent center of the film" with which spectators had identified.^[83]
In April 2013, the scene was voted the best bathroom scene of any film in history, with scenes from Trainspotting and There's Something About Mary coming second and third.^[84]

Soundtrack

Score

Hitchcock insisted that Bernard Herrmann write the score for Psycho despite the composer's refusal to accept a reduced fee for the film's lower budget.^[85] The resulting score, according to Christopher Palmer in The Composer in Hollywood (1990) is "perhaps Herrmann's most spectacular Hitchcock achievement."^[86] Hitchcock was pleased with the tension and drama the score added to the film,^[87] later remarking "33% of the effect of Psycho was due to the music."^[88] The singular contribution of Herrmann's score may be inferred from the film's credit roll, where the composer's name precedes only the director's own, a distinction unprecedented in the annals of commercial cinematic music.
Herrmann used the lowered music budget to his advantage by writing for a string orchestra rather than a full symphonic ensemble,^[85] contrary to Hitchcock's request for a jazz score.^[89] He thought of the single tone color of the all-string soundtrack as a way of reflecting the black-and-white cinematography of the film.^[90] Hollywood composer Fred Steiner, in an analysis of the score to Psycho, points out that string instruments gave Herrmann access to a wider range in tone, dynamics, and instrumental special effects than any other single instrumental group would have.^[91]
The main title music, a tense, hurtling piece, sets the tone of impending violence, and returns three times on the soundtrack.^[92][93] Though nothing shocking occurs during the first 15–20 minutes of the film, the title music remains in the audience's mind, lending tension to these early scenes.^[92] Herrmann also maintains tension through the slower moments in the film through the use of ostinato.^[88]
There were rumors that Herrmann had used electronic means, including amplified bird screeches to achieve the shocking effect of the music in the shower scene. The effect was achieved, however, only with violins in a "screeching, stabbing sound-motion of extraordinary viciousness."^[94] The only electronic amplification employed was in the placing of the microphones close to the instruments, to get a harsher sound.^[94] Besides the emotional impact, the shower scene cue ties the soundtrack to birds.^[94] The association of the shower scene music with birds also telegraphs to the audience that it is Norman, the stuffed-bird collector, who is the murderer rather than his mother.^[94]
Herrmann biographer Steven C. Smith writes that the music for the shower scene is "probably the most famous (and most imitated) cue in film music,"^[90] but Hitchcock was originally opposed to having music in this scene.^[94] When Herrmann played the shower scene cue for Hitchcock, the director approved its use in the film. Herrmann reminded Hitchcock of his instructions not to score this scene, to which Hitchcock replied, "Improper suggestion, my boy, improper suggestion."^[95] This was one of two important disagreements Hitchcock had with Herrmann, in which Herrmann ignored Hitchcock's instructions. The second one, over the score for Torn Curtain (1966), resulted in the end of their professional collaboration.^[96] A survey conducted by PRS for Music, in 2009, showed that the British public consider the score from 'the shower scene' to be the scariest theme from any film.^[97]
To honor the 50th anniversary of Psycho, in July 2010, the San Francisco Symphony^[98] obtained a print of the film with the soundtrack removed, and projected it on a large screen in Davies Symphony Hall while the orchestra performed the score live. This was previously mounted by the Seattle Symphony in October 2009 as well, performing at the Benaroya Hall for two consecutive evenings. These performances are part of John Goberman's offering of films with great music performed by live orchestras: A Symphonic Night at the Movies, These special events range from "Alexander Nevsky" to "Singin in the Rain" to "Hitchcock!".

Controversy

Psycho is a prime example of the type of film that appeared in the United States during the 1960s after the erosion of the Production Code. It was unprecedented in its depiction of sexuality and violence, right from the opening scene in which Sam and Marion are shown as lovers sharing the same bed, with Marion in a bra.^[101] In the Production Code standards of that time, unmarried couples shown in the same bed would be taboo.^[102]
According to the book Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, the censors in charge of enforcing the Production Code wrangled with Hitchcock because some of them insisted they could see one of Leigh's breasts. Hitchcock held onto the print for several days, left it untouched, and resubmitted it for approval. Each of the censors reversed their positions: those who had previously seen the breast now did not, and those who had not, now did. They passed the film after the director removed one shot that showed the buttocks of Leigh's stand-in.^[103] The board was also upset by the racy opening, so Hitchcock said that if they let him keep the shower scene he would re-shoot the opening with them on the set. Since they did not show up for the re-shoot, the opening stayed.^[103]
Another cause of concern for the censors was that Marion was shown flushing a toilet, with its contents (torn-up note paper) fully visible. No flushing toilet had appeared in mainstream film and television in the U.S. at that time.^{[104][105][106]}
Internationally, Hitchcock was forced to make minor changes to the film, mostly to the shower scene. In Britain and New Zealand the shot of Norman washing blood from his hands was objected to and in Singapore, though the shower scene was left untouched, the murder of Arbogast and a shot of Mother's corpse were removed.^[107]
The most controversial move was Hitchcock's "no late admission" policy for the film, which was unusual for the time. It was not entirely original as Clouzot had done the same in France for Les Diaboliques.^[108] Hitchcock thought that if people entered the theater late and never saw the star actress Janet Leigh, they would feel cheated.^[30] At first theater owners opposed the idea, claiming that they would lose business. However, after the first day, the owners enjoyed long lines of people waiting to see the film.^[30]

Promotion

Hitchcock did most of the promotion on his own, forbidding Leigh and Perkins to make the usual television, radio, and print interviews for fear of their revealing the plot.^[109] Even critics were not given private screenings but rather had to see the film with the general public, which, despite possibly affecting their reviews,^[107] certainly preserved the secret.
The film's original trailer features a jovial Hitchcock taking the viewer on a tour of the set, and almost giving away plot details before stopping himself. It is "tracked" with Bernard Herrmann's Psycho theme, but also jovial music from Hitchcock's comedy The Trouble with Harry; most of Hitchcock's dialogue is post-synchronized. The trailer was made after completion of the film, and since Janet Leigh was no longer available for filming, Hitchcock had Vera Miles don a blonde wig and scream loudly as he pulled the shower curtain back in the bathroom sequence of the preview. Since the title, "Psycho," instantly covers most of the screen, the switch went unnoticed by audiences for years. However, a freeze-frame analysis clearly reveals that it is Vera Miles and not Janet Leigh in the shower during the trailer.^[30]
The film was so successful that it was reissued to theaters in 1965. A year later, CBS purchased the television rights for $450,000. CBS planned to televise the film on September 23, 1966, but three days earlier, Valerie Percy, daughter of Illinois senate candidate Charles H. Percy, was murdered. As her parents slept mere feet away, she was stabbed a dozen times with a double-edged knife. In light of the murder, CBS agreed to postpone the screening, but as a result of the Apollo pad fire of January 27, 1967, the network washed its hands of Psycho,^[110] and shortly afterward Paramount included the film in its first syndicated package of post-1950 movies, "Portfolio I". WABC-TV in New York City was the first station in the country to air Psycho (with some scenes significantly edited), on its late-night movie series, The Best of Broadway, on June 24, 1967.^[111] Following another successful theatrical reissue in 1969, the film finally made its way to general television airing in one of Universal's syndicated programming packages for local stations in 1970. Psycho was aired for twenty years in this format, then leased to cable for two years before returning to syndication as part of the "List of a Lifetime" package.^[110]

Reception

Initial reviews of the film were thoroughly mixed.^[124] Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote, "There is not an abundance of subtlety or the lately familiar Hitchcock bent toward significant and colorful scenery in this obviously low-budget job." Crowther called the "slow buildups to sudden shocks" reliably melodramatic but contested Hitchcock's psychological points, reminiscent of Krafft-Ebing's studies, as less effective. While the film did not conclude satisfactorily for the critic, he commended the cast's performances as "fair".^[125] British critic C. A. Lejeune was so offended that she not only walked out before the end but permanently resigned her post as film critic for The Observer.^[126] Other negative reviews stated, "a blot on an honorable career", "plainly a gimmick movie", and "merely one of those television shows padded out to two hours."^[124][127] Positive reviews stated, "Anthony Perkins' performance is the best of his career... Janet Leigh has never been better", "played out beautifully", and "first American movie since Touch of Evil to stand in the same creative rank as the great European films."^[124][128] A good example of the mix is the New York Herald Tribune's review, which stated, "...rather difficult to be amused at the forms insanity may take... keeps your attention like a snake-charmer."^[124]
The public loved the film, with lines stretching outside of theatres as people had to wait for the next showing. It broke box-office records in Japan and the rest of Asia, France, Britain, South America, the United States and Canada, and was a moderate success in Australia for a brief period.^[124] It was the most profitable black-and-white sound film ever made, and Hitchcock personally realized well in excess of $15 million. He then swapped his rights to Psycho and his TV anthology for 150,000 shares of MCA, making him the third largest shareholder in MCA Inc. and his own boss at Universal, in theory. But that didn't stop them from interfering with him badly.^[129][130] Psycho was, by a large margin, the most profitable film of Hitchcock's career, earning over $12 million for the studio on release, and $15 million by the end of the year. Hitchcock's second most profitable was Family Plot ($7,541,000), and third place was a tie between Torn Curtain (1966) and Frenzy (1972), each earning $6,500,000.
In the United Kingdom, the film shattered attendance records at the London Plaza Cinema, but nearly all British critics panned it, questioning Hitchcock's taste and judgment. Reasons cited for this were the critics' late screenings, forcing them to rush their reviews, their dislike of the gimmicky promotion, and Hitchcock's expatriate status.^[131] Perhaps thanks to the public's response and Hitchcock's efforts at promoting it, the critics did a re-review, and the film was praised. TIME switched its opinion from "Hitchcock bears down too heavily in this one" to "superlative" and "masterly", and Bosley Crowther put it on his Top Ten list of 1960.^[131]
Psycho was initially criticized for making other filmmakers more willing to show gore; three years later, Blood Feast, considered to be the first "splatter film", was released.^[132] Psycho's success financially and critically had others trying to ride its coattails. Inspired by Psycho, Hammer Film Productions launched a series of mystery thrillers including The Nanny^[133] (1965) starring Bette Davis and William Castle's Homicidal (1961) was followed by a slew of more than 13 other splatter films.^[132]


Above Extracts Taken From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycho_(1960_film)

More Info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054215/ - http://www.filmsite.org/psyc.html