“It wasn’t a message that stirred the audiences, nor was it a great performance… they were aroused by pure film.” – Alfred Hitchcock told Francois Truffaut about Psycho, adding that it “belongs to filmmakers, to you and me.” Hitchcock deliberately wanted Psycho to look like a cheap exploitation film.
Upon release, Psycho1960 polarized critics. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times initially dismissed it as “sicko” but later included it in his Top Ten of 1960, praising its “bold psychological mystery.”
film critic Roger Ebert that captures the enduring praise for Hitchcock’s Psycho: “What makes Psycho immortal, when so many films are already half-forgotten as we leave the theater, is that it connects directly with our fears: Our fears that we might impulsively commit a crime, our fears of the police, our fears of becoming the victim of a madman, and of course our fears of disappointing our mothers.”
Critics like David Thomson dismissed Psycho as a “concession to slasher trash,” arguing that Hitchcock “lost interest” post-Marion’s death. However, film scholars Raymond Durgnat and William Rothman argue that Psycho’s second half intensifies its psychological depth, particularly as Norman Bates spirals further into his fractured psyche. The chilling climax, revealing “Mother” as a mummified corpse, forces audiences to confront the unsettling reality of dissociative identity —a theme Hitchcock explores with meticulous rigor and haunting, unsettling intimacy.
From the very first jarring notes and the fractured lines that slice across the screen, spelling out “Psycho” in stark relief, we’re warned that we’re stepping into a story where nothing is as it seems. A ripple of unease builds, echoing the rising strings, as Hitchcock draws us into a world stitched together from secrets, betrayals, and broken minds. Joseph Stefano’s adaptation of Robert Bloch’s novel doesn’t just give us a tale of stolen money and shadowy murders—it peels back the wallpaper of ordinary life to reveal deeper questions about who we are and what we desire. Beneath its surface, Psycho is a mirror reflecting the anxieties of a society obsessed with appearances and haunted by what lurks beneath: the pull of forbidden wants, the tension between who we pretend to be and what we can’t admit even to ourselves. The film quietly warns us that when people are forced to hide or deny their true selves, when identity and desire are locked away, darkness finds a way to seep through the cracks, and the most shocking horrors can wear the most familiar faces.
Before Psycho, most of Hitchcock’s films focused on building suspense and tension between characters, often using color and rarely diving deep into truly deviant or taboo subject matter—aside from a few exceptions like Shadow of a Doubt and Strangers on a Train. Hitchcock himself was known around Hollywood as a bit of an oddball: a perfectionist, sometimes difficult on set, and with a reputation for being both controlling and flirtatious. What’s fascinating is that, right as the 1960s were about to shake up society, Hitchcock decided to reinvent himself as a director with Psycho. Working with Joseph Stefano’s daring script, he delivered a film that shocked audiences with its sexual undertones, glimpses of nudity, and that now-legendary, brutally intense shower scene, pushing boundaries in ways he never had before and helping to usher in a new era of psychological horror.
Hitchcock shot Psycho on a modest $800,000 budget, using the crew from his television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents rather than his usual feature film team. Filmed in black and white, with long stretches of silence and minimalist sets, the Bates Motel and looming Bates house were constructed on Universal’s backlot. In its raw, visceral style, Psycho shares more with gritty noir films like Detour than with Hitchcock’s polished classics such as Rear Window 1954 or Vertigo 1958.
No other Hitchcock film left a greater impression or such a powerful impact on its audience.
The runaway success of Psycho took Hitchcock aback so much that he reached out to the Stanford Research Institute to investigate what made it such a phenomenon. The film was a stark departure from his earlier, more polished, and high-budget productions, which made its impact all the more surprising to him. What truly astonished Hitchcock was how deeply Psycho connected with audiences in ways he hadn’t fully anticipated. Its unique blend of extreme terror and dark humor created an emotional rollercoaster unlike anything he had achieved before, leaving audiences with a strange mix of both terror and his sardonic sense of humor.
According to film scholar Linda Williams, “Genre study has sometimes been the one place in film studies where repeatable audience pleasures…have been scrutinized” (“Discipline and Fun” 359).
“I was directing the viewers,” the director told Truffaut in their book-length interview. “You might say I was playing them like an organ.”
Hitchcock announced, “The late-comers would have been waiting to see Janet Leigh after she had disappeared from the screen action.” For its original audience, it was the most shocking film they had ever experienced. Hitchcock insisted, “Do not reveal the surprises!”
Janet Leigh pays for Anthony Perkin’s psychosis. Molly Haskell, in From Reverence to Rape makes an observation about the treatment of the Hitchcock woman “She must be punished, her complacency shattered; and so he submits his heroines to excruciating ordeals, long trips through terror in which they may be raped, violated by birds, killed. The plot itself becomes a mechanism for destroying their icy self-possession and their emotional detachment…
… Like Norman Bates ‘mother’ in Psycho, who might, by a stretch of the Oedipal complex, be categorized among the brunettes, they are inclined to be possessive and even a little sticky. The Hitchcock protagonist is attracted to the girl he can’t have, and the misogynist in Hitchcock invests the character with poisonous personality traits to punish her for rejecting him. If Hitchcock’s women must be tortured and punished, his men are fully implicated in the deed — and the more detached they seem, the more guilty and morally responsible. “
The ads proclaimed it loudly, yet no audience could have foreseen Hitchcock’s shocking twists—the brutal murder of Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), the apparent heroine, just a third of the way into the film, and the chilling revelation of Norman Bates’s mother. Psycho was marketed with the flair of a William Castle exploitation thriller, heightening its sensational impact. “It is required that you see ‘Psycho’ from the very beginning!”
Slavoj Žižek examines the unsettling narrative shift in Psycho following Marion’s death. The first third of the film highlights how it transitions from her story to a murder mystery centered around Norman Bates. Žižek notes that both Marion’s and Norman’s arcs could function as complete narratives on their own, yet Hitchcock disrupts this structure, creating a jarring effect that reorients the audience’s focus. This deliberate fragmentation underscores the film’s innovative storytelling and its ability to challenge traditional cinematic conventions.
Hitchcock’s decision to kill off Marion Crane in the first part of Psycho shattered the framework of storytelling, transforming the film from a crime thriller to a psycho-sexual shocker and destabilizing audience expectations. This bold move shifted the focus onto Norman Bates, the deeply troubled motel owner whose fractured psyche became a defining template for psychological horror. Hitchcock didn’t stop at narrative shocks—he layered the film with visual cues like mirrors and high-angle shots to evoke voyeurism and duality, drawing viewers deeper into Norman’s disturbed world. And then there’s Bernard Herrmann’s iconic score: among the film’s most indelible elements, and perhaps its most evocative hallmarks, are the shrieking violins during the shower scene, which contrast sharply with the eerie silence of Norman’s final stare, leaving audiences haunted by both sound and stillness.
“The first part (Marion’s story) could well stand alone: it is easy to perform a mental experiment and to imagine it as a thirty-minute TV story, a kind of morality play in which the heroine gives way to temptation and enters the path of damnation, only to be cured by the encounter with Norman, who confronts her with the abyss that awaits her at the end of the road — in him, she sees a mirror- image of her own future; sobered, she decides to return to normal life […] The film’s second part, Norman’s story, is also easy to imagine as a closed whole, a rather traditional unraveling of the mystery of a pathological serial killer.” (Žižek)
Although the twists in Psycho—Marion Crane’s shocking murder and the truth about Norman’s mother– are now common knowledge, the film remains a chilling thriller. This enduring impact lies in Hitchcock’s skillful crafting of two less obvious elements: Marion’s story setup and her complex dynamic with Norman Bates. Hitchcock treats these early moments with meticulous care, as though they will carry the entire narrative, making their eventual subversion all the more unsettling.
Alfred Hitchcock, Anthony Perkins, and Janet Leigh on the set of Psycho 1960.
Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh, who played Norman Bates and Marion Crane, respectively, had a license to improvise their parts in Psycho to some degree. Hitchcock gave them free rein within scenes, as long as their ad-libbing didn’t change the angle required for a shot.
The film’s screenwriter, Joseph Stefano, would later describe one piece of improvisation by Perkins as his “most magical moment” in the film. It was the actor’s own decision to have Norman chewing on candy corn, nervously watching on as Marion’s car descends ever-so-slowly down into a swamp.” – (Source – during the scene where Norman disposes of Marion’s body – according to Guy Howie’s article published Mon, 25 March 2024, 11:00, UK from FAR OUT).
The setup revolves around a recurring Hitchcock theme: the guilt of an ordinary individual ensnared in a criminal act. Though Marion Crane steals $40,000, she remains emblematic of Hitchcock’s archetype—an otherwise innocent person caught in the web of wrongdoing.
This is not unlike Hitchcock’s Marnie (1964), in which he revisits his fascination with women on the run and the symbolic significance of their possessions, particularly their suitcases. In the film’s opening scenes, even before we meet Marnie herself, we are introduced to the items she has acquired: a bright yellow handbag containing stolen money, a new suitcase, freshly purchased clothes, and gifts for her mother. These objects are meticulously packed into her suitcase, reflecting not only Marnie’s compulsive need for control but also her attempts to construct a new identity.
Marion Crane’s introduction is far from glamorous—a clandestine afternoon in a dingy hotel room with her divorced lover, Sam Loomis (John Gavin), whose alimony keeps marriage out of reach. Enter $40,000, courtesy of a sleazy real estate client, Mr. Cassidy (Frank Albertson), who all but implies that Marion herself might have a price. Ironically, her crime is born of love, and her victim is hardly worth pity—a slimy opportunist who practically invites his own downfall.
Unveiling the Layers of Madness: Hitchcock’s “Psycho” and the Birth of Modern Horror:
Let’s face it: Anthony Perkins’ Norman Bates is an enigmatic anti-hero. Similarly, in Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Joseph Cotton’s Uncle Charlie’s chilling monologue about widows deserving death is framed from his niece’s horrified point of view. This juxtaposition of intimacy and menace creates both empathy for her fear and fascination with his charisma. By fostering empathy for antagonists, Hitchcock challenged traditional notions of good versus evil in horror storytelling.
Alfred Hitchcock’s cinematic virtuosity with his seminal psycho-sexual thriller, Psycho, has elevated the film to an unparalleled status in the history of cinema, rendering it instantly recognizable and profoundly influential. And let’s face it, what Jaws did for swimming in the ocean, Psycho did as the first horror movie that took away the safety of taking showers in your own home!
With his adaptation of Robert Bloch’s 1959 pulp novel of the same name, Bloch conjured Norman Bates, his mysterious and elusive mother, and the Bates Motel, helping it become a landmark in film history, renowned for its masterful direction and psychological depth. But his conjuration had its roots in the deeply disturbing, grim reality that defies the realm of myth and fantasy.
