We quickly learn that Norman is a lonely man. I didn’t hear ya in all this rain” - display a simple country gentleness lacking in all the film’s other characters. As Roger Ebert explains, the “setup of the Marion Crane story, and the relationship between Marion and Norman…work because Hitchcock devotes his full attention and skill to treating them as if they will be developed for the entire picture.” When Marion first meets Norman, he is extremely likable. Marion’s encounter with Norman is perhaps the most interesting part of Psycho. When Marion meets Norman, the narrative focus on her begins to subtly shift to Norman, as does the viewer’s sympathy. Hitchcock is deliberate in how he sets up Marion’s story and is just as deliberate in crafting her meeting with Norman. Cassidy is an irritating blowhard who boasts about his fortune - “I never carry more than I can afford to lose” - and shamelessly flirts with Marion while discussing his daughter’s wedding. Sam is shown in a sympathetic light and Marion’s affair with him is seen as the only means of their being together while Sam is still paying alimony to his ex-wife. However, Hitchcock never explicitly condemns either moral crime. She is pursuing an affair with Sam Loomis and, more importantly, she steals the forty thousand dollars from Cassidy (Frank Albertson). Unlike the pure heroines in other films of the period, Marion is not a moral individual. While she is ultimately not the film’s main focus, she does the necessary job of establishing the amorality of the film’s real protagonist Hitchcock is not interested in the morality of individuals here, and although some could interpret Marion’s murder as justice for her thievery, Hitchcock intends no such thing. In his classic horror film, Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock transforms Norman Bates, the film’s villain, into the protagonist by exploring Norman’s relationship with Marion Crane and his mother, and by manipulating the viewer through psychological and narrative techniques.įor the first third of Psycho, Marion Crane is set up as the protagonist because the viewer has not yet met, nor is ready for, Norman Bates. By Hitchcock’s careful manipulation of the audience through film and narrative techniques, the viewer is made to identify with Norman, whether the viewer wishes to or not. Through his relationship with his mother, he is made pitiful and human: an object of the viewer’s sympathy and affection. Through his relationship with the other characters of the film, primarily Marion Crane, Norman Bates becomes the film’s protagonist. We identify with Norman Bates, not because we are given special insight into his mind and motivations, but because Hitchcock manipulates us into identifying with him - a radical move considering he is the film’s villain. In his book-length interview with Hitchcock, Francois Truffaut states that in Psycho “there isn’t a single character with whom a viewer might identify,” but he is incorrect (264). His psychological affliction and responsibility for the murder is not revealed until the end of the film, but the viewer’s ultimate knowledge of it does not diminish Hitchcock’s intention: to make the viewer complicit in the murder and ultimately sympathize with Norman Bates. Marion’s unexpected murder in the now-famous shower scene reveals that the true protagonist of Psycho is not Marion Crane, nor her sister, Lila Crane (Vera Miles), nor her boyfriend, Sam Loomis (John Gavin), but rather the young motel owner, murderer, victim of multiple-personality disorder, and villain, Norman Bates. However, while at the Bates Motel, Marion meets the owner, the young, endearing, boyish Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), and it is here that the film radically breaks from previous convention. This first deviation from convention goes almost unnoticed, and the opening third of the film highlighting Marion’s escape from Phoenix, pursuit by a bothersome police officer, and visit to the sleepy Bates Motel off the old interstate highway, plays much like other Hitchcock films. Of course, the difference between Marion and Hitchcock’s other protagonists is that she actually did steal the money, and is not an innocent person charged with a crime she did not commit. The first third of the film suggests that the ostensible protagonist is an ordinary woman, Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), who becomes involved in the robbery of forty thousand dollars. Alfred Hitchcock’s films often portray protagonists who are ordinary people thrust into criminal situations and the opening of Psycho (1960) suggests that it too will follow this successful formula.
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