"What stimulates the audience is not the message conveyed by the story, nor the wonderful performance of the actors... What shocked the audience was purely the film itself. ”
Janet Leigh
Alfred Hitchcock said the above to Truffaut, and then said that the film "belongs to the filmmakers, to you and me." Hitchcock deliberately made Horror look like a shoddy curiosity movie, and instead of using the royal family's expensive production team, he used his TV production team to shoot the film. The film is made entirely on black-and-white film, with no dialogue in large sections, and the Bates Inn and Mansion were built in Universal Studios studios. The production cost of "Horror" was only $800,000, which was quite low even in the 60s. Compared to rear window (1954) and Vertigo (1958), which are exquisite and elegant Hitch's masterpieces, Horror is spiritually closer to a small-budget film noir like "Detour".
However, The Horrors far outweighed any other Hitchcock film. "I'm directing the audience," he told Truffaut (the interviews between the two were later published in a book), "you could even say I was playing with them, like playing with an instrument." "For the first audience to watch 'Horrors', it was the most shocking film they've ever seen. The theater's advertising campaign shouted: "Don't leak secrets! No viewer could have predicted that Marion (Janet Leigh), who seems to be the first heroine, would be killed in a third of the film, let alone guess the big secret of Norman's mother. The slogan of "Horror" is reminiscent of William Cassel's hunting thriller. "You have to start looking at Horrors from the ground up!" declared Hitchcock in an irrefutable tone, "before the late audience could see Janet Leigh, she had already disappeared on the screen." ”
Although the film's plot has long since lost its suspense today, Horrors is still able to continue to seduce and frighten the audience, thanks in large part to Hitchcock's ingenious handling of two secondary plots, namely the antecedents of Marion Klein's escape and her relationship with Norman (Anthony Perkins). Hitchcock's meticulous handling of these two threads has the potential to develop them into the main line, so that these two plots can have a miraculous effect.
The plot of Marion Klein's escape is the introduction to the entire film, and Hitchcock uses his usual bridge here: an ordinary man falls into the situation of a criminal, suffering from guilt. Marion Klein did steal $40,000, but it still met Hitchcock's criteria for an "innocent man." At the beginning of the film, we see Marion meeting her lover, the divorced Sam Lumis (John Gavin), in a low-class hotel, which is her first appearance. Sam had to pay alimony for his ex-wife and was unable to marry Marion, so the two had to meet in private. Then a huge sum of money falls from the sky: an oily customer (Frank Albertson) comes with cash to buy a house and takes a big brunt at Marion, as if to imply that the money is enough to buy her. Thus, Marion's motive for committing a crime became love, and the victim was a shameless villain.
The introduction is enough to develop into a two-hour Hitchcock-style suspense film, with no indication that this is a disguise to mislead the audience. Marion escapes phoenix with the money and heads straight to Sam's house in Fawell, California, when another Hitchcock signature episode, police phobia, appears. Marion is awakened by a highway patrol (Mort Mills) while napping on the side of the road, and asks questions about it, while the envelope containing the money is almost right under his nose. She changed her license plate at the depot, only to realize that the patrol officer was parked across the road, leaning on the police car, holding his arms, and staring at her tightly. All viewers who see this for the first time will believe that this introduction will be carried through as the main clue of the film.
At this time, Marion was terrified and exhausted, perhaps already remorseful. Near the time she reached Fawell, she was held back by a storm and had to drive into the Bates Inn for the night; in this inn, she met Norman Bates and began a brief but deadly entanglement. Here, Hitchcock once again uses well-designed scenes and dialogue to convince the audience that Norman and Marion will play the main roles in the rest of the film.
Marion's large conversation with Norman in the "reception room" fully embodies Hitchcock's trick. The reception room was filled with wild bird specimens, each one imposing, as if it were going to swoop down and kill the two. Marion had vaguely heard that Norman had been reprimanded by his mother, and at this time she gently suggested that he leave the hotel, which was far from the national road and the business was depressed, and find another way out. On the one hand, her words are out of concern for Norman, and on the other hand, she is also a reflection on her own situation. Norman was touched by her, but it was this feeling of emotion that made him feel threatened, so he had to kill her. Hitchcock said that when Norman spied on Marion, most of the audience read the meaning of "voyeurism" in it. Truffaut also believes that Marion's footage of her bra and bottoms at the beginning of the film sets the stage for later voyeurism. At this point, we still know nothing about the coming murder.
The bathroom scene seems to have several characteristics that stand out today. Unlike today's horror films, "Horror Story" has never shown a bloody scene of a white knife entering a red knife, nor can it see the tragic appearance of scales all over the body; although there is blood, it is not a river of blood. Hitchcock chose black and white because he felt that audiences could not afford such a large area of blood red (the 1998 remake of Gus Van Sant was clearly against this theory). There is no eerie sound effect in the film, replaced by Bernard Herman's sharp and harsh soundtrack. The final set of shots is a symbolic representation of death: first a close-up of the blood swirling into the sewer, followed by a close-up of Marion's stagnant eyeballs. This scene is still the most shocking murder scene in the history of film, and it proves that scene scheduling and artistic techniques are more important than picture details.
Perkins constructed Norman's complex personality with incredible acting skills, which is enough to go down in history. Perkins makes the audience feel that there is something wrong with his Norman, but the way he slipped his hand in his trouser pocket and grinned down the hallway was not lacking in the cuteness of a young man. When the conversation was about personal issues, he began to open his mouth and flicker. At first, he not only aroused the sympathy of Marion, but also won the sympathy of the audience.
The death of the heroine is followed by a scene in which Norman carefully cleans the scene. Hitchcock secretly changed the protagonist here. Marion is dead, but at this point we involuntarily assume the role of Norman (not consciously, but on a deeper level)—not because we too will stab someone with a knife, but because if we do, we will be swallowed up by fear and guilt like him. At the end of this segment, Bates pushes Marion's car (along with her body and stolen money) into the swamp. The car slowly sank and stopped halfway through. Norman watched intently from the shore. Eventually, the car disappeared into the swamp.
When we think about it, we realize that we, like Norman, "want" cars to be engulfed in swamps. At this time, "Horror" already has a new protagonist: Norman Bates. Even for Hitchcock, a veteran of manipulating audiences, this trick is really bold. Sam Loomis then reappears, with Marion's sister Lila (Vera Miles) in search of his lover. The rest of the film is dramatic and features two thriller scenes, one in which private investigator Abergst (Martin Balsam) is killed, in a back-projection scene that seems to follow him down the stairs, and a scene in which Norman's mother's identity is revealed.
For the entertainer, there is an equally astonishing plot that follows, which is why Hitchcock tarnished the classic with an outrageous ending. After the case was solved, a psychiatrist made a long speech to several survivors about the cause of Norman's psychological disorder. This anti-climax is really inexplicable, almost ironic. If I had the nerve to re-edit Hitchcock's masterpiece, I would have kept only the beginning of the doctor's explanation of Norman's dual personality, namely, "Norman Bates is no longer there." From the beginning he was only half a man, and now the other half has the upper hand, and perhaps forever." Then the rest of the doctor's lines are cut out, directly to the picture of Norman wrapped in a blanket, and his mother's voice rings out ("It's sad that a mother has to open her mouth to condemn her son..."), which in my opinion can make "Horror" perfect. So far, I have not seen any reasonable explanation for that psychological nonsense. Truffaut cleverly avoided the question in his famous interview.
Many films are forgotten before the audience leaves the theater, but "Horror" will never die, because it points to everything we are most afraid of—the fear of making a big mistake on impulse, the fear of the police, the fear of murderers, and of course, the fear of disappointing our mothers.