e x p l a i n e d

This is a translation from French.The original resides here.I`m currently working hard on it, but some pages may not be still ready. Many thanks to Claudia, Michele and Francesca for helping me.

Psycho is Hitchcock`s movie above all others.The plot is excessively simple, not to say trivial, and could have been easily the basis of a dreadful flop (but it isn`t what Sir Alfred wants). The situation happens in Phoenix, Arizona. A young lady, Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), Sam`s lover (John Gavin), robs in a moment of bewilderment a small suitcase containing $40.000 $that her boss have asked her to deposit in the bank.

At night, she stops in a scarcely frequented motel, managed by Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins). Norman tells her that he lives in the house close to the motel with his disabled, bad tempered, old mother. Before going to bed, Marion takes a shower: the old mother appears and stabs her savagely!

After a while, Norman arrives, and hides Marion`s corpse, as well as her car (with the $40.000 in the back) in a pond close to the motel.

Marion is then searched by her sister Leila (Vera Miles), by Sam and by an insurance company detective, Arbogast, charged to get the money back.
The detective goes to the motel. Norman welcomes him but formally forbids him to meet his mother. Disappointed, Arbogast phones Leila and Sam; then he enters the house, wanting to speak to the old lady. He climbs the stairs but he`s received being stabbed by the old woman.

Leila and Sam meet the sheriff; he tells them that Norman mother`s dead and buried 8 years ago. They both go to the motel and Leila ,exploring the house , goes away from the stabbings which take place in the basement of the house. Unmasked by Sam, Norman loses his wig .

Two personalities were living in him since his mother's death; in fact he had embalmed and preserved the corpse in the house. The movie finishes with Norman's incarceration ( and with Marion's car being get back from the pond ).

In this movie the Macguffin is the money stolen by Marion at the beginning. We must say that the events which take place in the movie make the money forgotten soon.

Psycho is the greatest Hitchcock's success. Filmed voluntarily in black and white, it cost only $100.000 and it made millions. The movie has had two sequels and the second one was directed by Perkins himself .

Psycho is extremely purified at the level of the ambiance and it is silent for half his length (in fact it evolves with 2 or 3 spools without any dialogue). The direction is as sharp as the knife used by the murderer, if we begin with the opening credits which show some black and white stripes closely connected with the music, composed by Bernard Herrmann.

Audio version of the Opening Credits, AU 175 Kb.
The opening credits, AVI 885 Kb.

Hitchcock insists on the opposition between vertical and horizontal lines: the interlaced stripes in the opening credits, Marion sleeping and Sam standing up in the very first minutes of the scene of the hotel room, the vertical house opposed to the horizontal motel.

As Robin Wood states in his essay,

" Psycho begins with the normal and draws us steadily deeper and deeper into the abnormal; it opens by making us aware of time, and ends (except for the releasing final image) with a situation in which time has ceased to exist."

Another theme loved by Hitchcock and largely exploited in Psycho, is the opposition between evil and good and the notion of punishment. None of the characters of Psycho is really nice or honest. Sam has a illicit relationship with Marion, who is always scarcely dressed during the movie ( we're in 1960) ,and above all she steals the money, that same money being itself of uncertain origin (as Tom Cassidy, the owner, says).
Norman Bates really desires Marion, from the first time in which he saw her, and he spies her through a hole in the wall (which is disgusting!)
It is hard to imagine that the revenging arm that holds the knife- knife that remains "clean" during all the movie - would be the instrument of a divine justice!

When the movie was released, the aspect of the unbearable suspense had been emphasized from the posters of that time asking the public not to tell the end of the movie and telling that "nobody could enter in the theater after the beginning of the movie".

Index	Phoenix	The rob	The Motel	The Shower	Arbogast	The end