Posted by jefty Great choice and I always appreciate the noir-o-meter analysis, it remains a great tool for quantifying perhaps the most personal of genres.
on 11/2/2009, 9:00 am, in reply to "NOIR OF THE WEEK (NOTW) 11/2/09: PSYCHO (1960)"
75.176.18.73 | Message modified by user jefty 11/2/2009, 9:14 am
I like the idea of "Psycho" as a TV construct. There is no doubt that AH's visuals were a result of having worked with the confinements of the small screen ...despite being out in the boonies, you see no vast expanse of space but rather the confines of the house, motel, diner, swamp tightly bordered, with the only exception being the opening, as you indicate.
Unlike Dan, I don't see "The Night Man" as a precursor to Norman...Weaver's character doesn't have the cojones and is aftraid of his own shadows..which in noir there are a lot. He is too timid and meek and isn't nearly as off balanced as our Norman...just a petrified little nebbish. Indeed, the mere thought of an encounter with a woman gives him the shivering shakes.
I do see the "Mirador" as a precursor to the Bates Motel however...a lonely, broken down, off the beaten path hostelry is the perfect place for madness and mayhem.
I prefer to keep "Psycho" in the thriller genre...perhaps it's hindsight, but Psycho is too full of little horror gimcracks to be considered than anything else but the best grandaddy of slasher pictures ever made by the master of suspense who's peturbatory and perverse sense of humor has us howling in the aisles.
I did see this in the theaters when it first came out and considered it then as now a rather perspicuous attempt to push one's button's...in which the director, self-admittedly, takes great pleasure and considerable amusement.
I consider Shadow of a Doubt, I Confess, Strangers on a Train and his early British films better examples of "Hitchcock Noir" .
""Is the casino vault armored? No, it's made of wood! -" Bob Le Flambeau" -1956
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