I've just realized a major problem with "Psycho"

I watched Psycho again yesterday, for probably the 10th time. I watched it with my two oldest boys, who were scared by it, so it's still effective even with today's teenagers (they're 13 and 15).

But something I never picked up on before now bugs me.

In the final scene, the psychiatrist and the policemen confirm that Norman's "Mother" has killed two women before Marion Crane. Both murders were unexplained up to that point. "Mother" herself, in her monologue, says that she couldn't let them think she was responsible for killing "those girls", so she blames Norman.

So on two occasions before Norman ever met Marion, "Mother" killed a woman because Norman was attracted to her.

From Norman's point of view, that means that he knows that, twice already, his mother has killed a woman once he got too close to her.

That's the problem. Because Norman's behavior, throughout the whole movie, now doesn't make sense, even from his own point of view.

When Marion walks into his office, he should be very standoffish, very distant and cold, because he knows that his mother becomes murderous when he's friendly to women -- indeed, she's already killed TWICE, and he had to mop up the crime scene and cover for her.

So why would he be nice to Marion, invite her into the house for sandwiches? Why would he be surprised at his mother getting into a big argument with him and humiliating him by shouting loudly that she doesn't want that woman into the house?

And later on, why would he be surprised when "Mother" murders Marion? Why would he react with shock? It's the THIRD time this has happened in just ten years.

It's too bad that the screenwriter and Hitchcock threw that bit at the end about Norman being a serial killer, because it retroactively makes Norman's behavior nonsensical throughout the whole movie. I wish I'd not finally picked up on that...

 

His reaction and behavior does make sense with this being a repeat pattern. He knew he had to get rid of the evidence in the same place. His reaction can also be read as she did it again. Great film…….

 

Great movie.

 

He is insane and mentally he just re-sets after each incident. I see nothing in the final scene that contradicts Norman's behaviour.

 

The ending with the psychiatrist babbling away is anticlimatic.
All that was needed was that shot of Norman looking at the camera with that skull superimposition and 'Motger' saying she wouldn't hurt a fly.

 

His mother had a relationship and he killed them out of jealousy.
Now it's his turn to make his mother jealous. Her killing the girls justifies his previous overreaction.

 

Because “mother” didn’t kill the girls. Norman did. Norman was a serial killer. Mother wasn’t. What the psychiatrist says is pure bs.

 

Psycho isn't an accurate forensic account of a split personality serial killer.

The several brilliantly suggestive split screen composed shots within the cinematography and camera placement drives home the idea that Norman has two personalities... that of the good son vs evil, jealous Mother he has to constantly battle against. I spotted this visual language after several viewings when I took up photography as a hobby. Over the years I often make a game out of how many of these split compositions I can spot. It's there in the straight on shot of the stairs and backs of Norman side by side with walls or making a decision which room to go into.

The whole tone of the movie is filmed in a split personality motif that's made even more disturbing in its slow pace and overly dead quiet and peaceful silence that explodes in raging violence. Note there's no dialog or spoken words of the victim begging for mercy in the raging murder scenes. It's just those screeching violins that make all of the violent scenes detached from reality as an internalized dialog of sounds that's only in our heads as it probably is in Norman's.

 

That is the only « in-movie » explanation that I can think of: Norman eventually pushes out of his mind « Mother »´s crimes, so that every time a new woman enters his life, he doesn’t remember that « Mother » will become jealous and eventually kill her.

But it is an unsatisfying explanation, as it’s just a way for us as viewers to cover what seems to be a plot hole.

 

In the context of the movie, Norman certainly doesn’t want Marion to get murdered when he meets her: he likes her and is attracted to her. But if he knew that his mother, whom he thinks is actually alive and living in the house with him, has a twice-demonstrated tendency to savagely murder any young woman he is attracted to, it makes no sense that he would invite Marion in the house to have sandwiches with him, with his mother upstairs.

 

Unless...he was crazy. I know that sounds cheap but I think it holds up. Something in Norman wants to kill, needs to kill. He's invented a whole sick fiction in his head to justify it. I think what's happening when Marion is murdered is indeed a "not again, Mother!" kind of thing, but he can't stop the cycle, part of him craves the cycle, that's why he's invented it this way of splitting himself in two to allow himself to not blame himself. He can just blame his mother. Over and over and over. If Norman were able to feel guilt, then yeah, when he starts thinking about Marion intimately, he'd worry for her, tell her to get out of there while she can. But that's not what the innermost, damaged part of Norman wants. He wants this drama to play out, over and over again. The reason the film hides the fact until the end that this has played out before, is to keep the audience guessing. But it makes sense Norman is hiding it from himself in certain ways, because he needs this fiction to allow himself to continue.

 

Then you'd have to disregard the psychiatrist's explanation at the end as completely mistaken, but Hitchcock doesn't intend for it to be seen as false: this scene is the explanation of everything we've just seen, because audiences in 1960 would have been confused otherwise by what had just been revealed. There's no "in-movie" reason to doubt the psychiatrist's account, even though our contemporary tastes would like one last twist where even the psychiatrist was fooled.

 

It still makes sense.
Great movie.

The best scene for me is...

 

Exactly. Who's to say that a schizophrenic is going to remember anything, let alone be logical and sensible when it comes to who did what to who? Robert Bloch's novel explains it all in greater detail, but there's also a line in there about "who knows how many bodies they're going to find in that swamp?"

The book also adds the additional detail that Norman became jealous of his real mother's relationship with a man in the neighborhood, and so Norman poisoned them both and then kept her stuffed body upstairs, going insane while providing the illusion that she's still alive. I think the story was racy enough for 1960 standards that Hitchcock didn't want to go quite that far in the movie.

I think Norman only kills when he's tempted, or when something gets in the way of his imagined relationship with his mother. Tony Perkins did a great job in a sympathetic portrayal of Norman, and I think the double-twist in the movie where not only did Hitchcock kill off the star in the first half hour, but lso built up to the surprise reveal that the mother was never alive during the film.

I saw the movie several times on TV back in the day (but not in its original 1960 release). When I went to film school years later, I suggested that we show Psycho in the college auditorium. The staff scoffed and insisted that everybody had already seen the movie before -- this was the 1970s -- but damned if the place wasn't packed, and the audience screamed in all the right places. And they had to add an extra showing for the overflow crowds. Psycho holds up very well.

 

Nah, it makes perfect sense because Norman doesn’t think “Mother” will ever find out. He was surprised because, again, because it was a brutal act and a surprise to him. As to the ending, Hitchcock put the explanation in there because the studio insisted on it. He didn’t want it there at all. When I asked Joe Stefano when I took a seminar from him on writing about that addition, he said he didn’t like it because it explained too much and was pedantic but knew the audience needed it. He also was undergoing psychotherapy at the time and felt that, even though it was an unnecessary scene, it provided context and a let down for the audience. It also allows the audience to feel like Norman and Mother gets theirs in the end in a sense.

So even he felt that, given the unusual nature of the film, that Coda provided some sense of closure even as the final uneasy image of the car being dredged up from the swamp appears.

it doesn’t make his behavior nonsensical-Norman truly didn’t know what he was doing due to multiple personality disorder. The murders occurred in a fugue state as Mother. I’d also point out that, we as the audience are seeing a story without the context of Norman’s insanity. There are more than enough hints about it visually and in the ‘trapped’ discussion that occurs between Marion and Norman.

you are also applying real logic to a movie-movie logic has its own fantastical element to it and operates on its own.

As to the conclusion, “Mother” states that they have all been fooled but she hasn’t been in a line of dialogue (as I recall).

As you point out, Norman could ‘forget’ what occurred blocking it as a means to cope. As someone else points out, he ‘resets’.

Hitch hated explaining stuff and he thought the audience was smart enough even then to figure some of this out. Even though he had control over the project, that last scene was added, as I recall, at the insistence of the studio and the ratings board.

 

On his way out the door, when I was about ten, and as I settled down to watch Psycho for the first time on TV, my dad admonished me with "watch carefully for the fly". To this day I remember watching intently for the fly that never came (until the end). Never forgave my dad

 

That's in the movie.

 

This is another kind of plot hole that doesn't make sense in that Norman's hobby is taxidermy which preserves the dead animals as if visually alive for display which when you think about the ending with Norman's mother's corpse siting in a rocking chair in the basement, anyone would have to guess that it is preserved by Norman using the same taxidermy methods or else she would be stinking up the entire home.

So him carrying her preserved corpse around the house suggests he knows she's dead physically but alive in his psychotic split personality mind.

 

The corpse's embalmed and stuffed, as is explained in the closing scene, but obviously Norman didn't have the skills or took too long to do the work, so Mother looks a little worse for wear...

When he carries the corpse around, he talks to her or talks back to himself in her voice. When Mother needs to be a little more mobile, she dresses up and walks around, meaning Norman does.

 

I agree with your explanation but does Norman think she's still alive? Or is he pretending she's alive and going through the motions of a son that cares for her. He acts like he cares for her even though it's obvious she's dead. What triggers when he treats her as a corpse vs a living person.? Norman seems to be wanting to convince outsiders she's still alive but not sure if it's due to his insanity or just covering up the fact she's dead as an excuse to be in the house to get away from running the hotel.

 

According to the movie, Norman couldn't bear to have killed his mother, so he "ret-conned" her death in his mind: he now truly does think she's alive. As to how he deals with the situations where he's dressed up as her and walks around, and sees her corpse on the bed -- that is when "Mother" sees "herself" on the bed -- that's not explained in the movie.

Of course, it does bring up the question: why is he so adamant that people can't see his mother? Near the end of the movie, when he realizes that, while he's talking to Sam, Lila has gone into the house, why does he panic? Is he afraid of what his mother might do or say? If he truly thinks she's alive, he shouldn't worry about Lila finding out she's dead and just a corpse.

 

The final basement scene of her corpse was of a corpse that had already decade to a point where she could be preserved and not be smelly. Since the town folks new she was dead and supposedly buried, Norman dug her up and preserved her body at the point we see her in the basement. He knows she's dead but it comes across in the movie to me as an excuse to leave the hotel and go into the house and change into her mother's outfit as he did when he kills Marion.

Of course my confusion on this could be Hitchcock's way of leading us along to keep us on the edge of our seats. The more questions, the more folks pay attention.