Born in London on August 13, 1899, Alfred Hitchcock worked for a short time in engineering before

entering the film industry in 1920. He left for Hollywood in 1939, where his first American film,
Rebecca, won an Academy Award for best picture. Hitchcock created more than 50 films, including
the classics Rear Window, The 39 Steps and Psycho. Nicknamed the "Master of Suspense," Hitchcock
received the AFI's Life Achievement Award in 1979. He died in 1980.

Early Life

Director, producer and screenwriter Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was born in London, England, on August
13, 1899, and was raised by strict, Catholic parents. He described his childhood as lonely and
sheltered, partly due to his obesity. He once said that he was sent by his father to the local police
station with a note asking the officer to lock him away for 10 minutes as punishment for behaving
badly. He also remarked that his mother would force him to stand at the foot of her bed for several
hours as punishment (a scene alluded to in his film Psycho). This idea of being harshly treated or
wrongfully accused would later be reflected in Hitchcock's films.

A Gift for Suspense

Hitchcock attended the Jesuit school St. Ignatius College before going on to attend the University of
London, taking art courses. He eventually obtained a job as a draftsman and advertising designer for
the cable company Henley's. It was while working at Henley's that he began to write, submitting
short articles for the in-house publication. From his very first piece, he employed themes of false
accusations, conflicted emotions and twist endings with impressive skill. In 1920, Hitchcock entered
the film industry with a full-time position at the Famous Players-Lasky Company designing title cards
for silent films. Within a few years, he was working as an assistant director.

In 1925, Hitchcock directed his first film and began making the "thrillers" for which he became known
the world over. His 1929 film Blackmail is said to be the first British "talkie." In the 1930s, he directed
such classic suspense films as The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) and The 39 Steps (1935).

The Hollywood Years

In 1939, Hitchcock left England for Hollywood. The first film he made there, Rebecca (1940), won an
Academy Award for best picture. Some of his most famous films include Psycho (1960), The Birds
(1963) and Marnie (1964). His works became renowned for their depictions of violence, although
many of his plots merely function as decoys meant to serve as a tool for understanding complex
psychological characters. His cameo appearances in his own films, as well as his interviews, film
trailers and the television program Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955-65), made him a cultural icon.

Death and Legacy

Hitchcock directed more than 50 feature films in a career spanning six decades. He received the
American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award in 1979. One year later, on April 29, 1980,
Hitchcock died peacefully in his sleep in Bel Air, California. He was survived by his lifetime partner,
assistant director and closest collaborator, Alma Reville, also known as "Lady Hitchcock," who died in
1982.
Alfred Hitchcock's powerful, complex psychological thriller, Psycho (1960) is the "mother" of all
modern horror suspense films - it single-handedly ushered in an era of inferior screen 'slashers' with
blood-letting and graphic, shocking killings (e.g., Homicidal (1961), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
(1974), Halloween (1978), Motel Hell (1980), and DePalma's Dressed to Kill (1980) - with another
transvestite killer and shower scene). While this was Hitchcock's first real horror film, he was
mistakenly labeled as a horror film director ever since.

The nightmarish, disturbing film's themes of corruptibility, confused identities, voyeurism, human
vulnerabilities and victimization, the deadly effects of money, Oedipal murder, and dark past
histories are realistically revealed. Its themes were revealed through repeated uses of motifs, such as
birds, eyes, hands, and mirrors.

The low-budget ($800,000), brilliantly-edited, stark black and white film came after Hitchcock's
earlier glossy Technicolor hits Vertigo (1958) and North by Northwest (1959), and would have been
more suited for as an extended episode for his own b/w TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. In fact,
the film crew was from the TV show, including cinematographer John L. Russell.

The master of suspense skillfully manipulates and guides the audience into identifying with the main
character, luckless victim Marion (a Phoenix real-estate secretary), and then with that character's
murderer - a crazy and timid taxidermist named Norman (a brilliant typecasting performance by
Anthony Perkins). Hitchcock's techniques voyeuristically implicate the audience with the universal,
dark evil forces and secrets present in the film.

Psycho also broke all film conventions by displaying its leading female protagonist having a lunchtime
affair in her sexy white undergarments in the first scene; also by photographing a toilet bowl - and
flush - in a bathroom (a first in an American film), and killing off its major 'star' Janet Leigh a third of
the way into the film (in a shocking, brilliantly-edited shower murder scene accompanied by
screeching violins). The 90-odd shot shower scene was meticulously storyboarded by Saul Bass, but
directed by Hitchcock himself.

[A satirical parody of scenes from various Hitchcock films, including some from Psycho, were included
in Mel Brooks' comedy High Anxiety (1978). The shower scene itself has been referenced, spoofed
and parodied in numerous films, including Brian De Palma's The Phantom of the Paradise (1974) and
Dressed to Kill (1980), Squirm (1976), Victor Zimmerman's low-budget Fade to Black (1980), Tobe
Hooper's The Funhouse (1981), John De Bello's Killer Tomatoes Strike Back! (1990), Martin Walz' The
Killer Condom (1997, Ger.), Wes Craven's Scream 2 (1997), Scott Spiegel's From Dusk Till Dawn 2:
Texas Blood Money (1999), and the animated Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003), in which Bugs acts
out with the film's black-and-white footage and a can of Hershey's chocolate syrup poured down the
drain.]

In this film, Hitchcock's gimmicky device, termed a MacGuffin (the thing or device that motivates the
characters, or propels the plot and action), is the stolen $40,000 from the realtor's office. Marion
Crane becomes a secondary MacGuffin after her murder.

The film's screenplay by Joseph Stefano was adapted from a novel of the same name by author
Robert Bloch. Remarkably, Bloch's 1959 novel was based on legendary real-life, Plainfield, Wisconsin
psychotic serial killer Edward Gein, whose murderous character also inspired the mother-obsessed
farmer in Deranged (1974), the Leatherface character in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), and
serial killer Jame Gumb ("Buffalo Bill") in The Silence of the Lambs (1991).
[Bloch became a major horror screenwriter during the 60s decade and beyond, responsible for such
suspenseful horror films and chillers as The Cabinet of Caligari (1962) - an update of the 1919 classic,
Strait Jacket (1964), The Night Walker (1964), The Skull (1965), The Psychopath (1966), The Deadly
Bees (1967), The Torture Garden (1967), The House That Dripped Blood (1971), Asylum (1972), the
short feature Mannikin (1977), and The Amazing Captain Nemo (1977).]

Like many of Hitchcock's films, Psycho is so very layered and complex that multiple viewings are
necessary to capture all of its subtlety. Symbolic imagery involving stuffed birds and reflecting
mirrors are ever-present. Although it's one of the most frightening films ever made, it has all the
elements of very dark, black comedy. This film wasn't clearly understood by its critics when released.
Hitchcock admitted that Henri-Georges Clouzot's influential thriller Les Diaboliques (1955, Fr.)
inspired his film.

This taut masterpiece was followed by three feature film sequels (none directed by Hitchcock) and
other imitations or TV films:

Title Director Comment

Psycho (1960)

Not rated until 1968,

when an early version of Anthony Perkins as
Alfred Hitchcock
the MPAA ratings system Norman Bates
rated it M, for mature
audiences only; a 1984
reissue re-rated the film R

Anthony Perkins as
Psycho II (1983)
Norman, released from
a mental hospital after
Note: This was a record
Richard Franklin 22 years; Marion's
interval - 23 years
sister Lila Loomis (again
between a 'I' and 'II'
Vera Miles) protests his
picture.
release

Anthony Perkins, in Anthony Perkins as

Psycho III (1986)
his directorial debut Norman, 25 years later

TV pilot film, with Bud

Bates Motel (1987) Richard Rothstein Cort as Bates Motel
manager

Made for Cable-TV film,

with Anthony Perkins as
Psycho IV: The Beginning Norman, Henry Thomas
Mick Garris
(1990) as a young Norman,
and Olivia Hussey as
Norma Bates
 An almost 'scene-by-
scene' (actually 'shot-
by-shot') remake (or
Psycho (1998) Gus Van Sant replication) of the
original classic, that
only generated interest
for the original film

The film's four Academy Award nominations failed to win Oscars: Best Supporting Actress (Janet
Leigh with her sole career nomination), Best Director (Alfred Hitchcock with the last of his five losing
nominations), Best B/W Cinematography, and Best B/W Art Direction/Set Decoration. Bernard
Herrmann's famous and memorable score with shrieking, harpie-like piercing violins was un-
nominated.

When the film was originally aired in theaters in mid-1960, Hitchcock insisted in a publicity gimmick
(a la P.T. Barnum) that no one would be seated after the film had started - the decree was enforced
by uniformed Pinkerton guards. Audiences assumed that something horrible would happen in the
first few minutes. Violence is present for about two minutes total in only two shocking, grisly murder
scenes, the first about a third of the way through, and the second when a Phoenix detective named
Arbogast is stabbed at the top of a flight of stairs and topples backwards down the staircase. The
remainder of the horror and suspense is created in the mind of the audience, although the tale does
include such taboo topics as transvestism, implied incest, and hints of necrophilia.

The Story

The bleak, monochrome film is made more effective by Bernard Herrmann's sparse, but driving,
recognizable score, first played under the frantic credits (by industry pioneer Saul Bass) - shown with
abstract, gray horizontal and vertical lines that streak back and forth, violently splitting apart the
screens and causing them to disappear. The frenetic lines appear as prison bars or vertical city
buildings. [These criss-crossing patterns, like mirror-images, are correlated to the split, schizophrenic
personality of a major protagonist.]

The film opens with the aerial-view camera sweeping left to right along the urban skyline of
"PHOENIX, ARIZONA" where some new construction is in progress. [The numerous references to
birds in the film begins here, with the city of 'Phoenix'.] The specific date and time are emphasized in
titles in the middle of the screen:

FRIDAY, DECEMBER THE ELEVENTH

TWO FORTY-THREE P.M
The shot pans across many skyscraper buildings, and
after a series of numerous dissolves, randomly chooses
to descend and penetrate deeper into one of many
windows in a cheaper, high-rise hotel building - the
window's venetian blinds narrowly conceal the dingy
interior. There, the camera pauses at the half-open
window - and then voyeuristically intrudes into the
foreground darkness of the drab room. The camera
takes a moment to adjust to the black interior - and then
pans to the right where a post-coital, semi-nude couple
have just completed a seedy, lunch-time tryst.
Attractive, single 30-ish secretary, Marion (spelled not
with an A but an O - signifying emptiness) Crane (Janet
Leigh), wearing only a prominent white bra and slip and
reclining back on a double bed, is with her shirtless
lover/fiancee Sam Loomis (John Gavin) who stands over
her. In the background is a bathroom (the first of three
bedrooms with bathrooms in the background).

Sam speaks the first line of dialogue, referring to the

uneaten lunch food on the stand - on many levels, she
has lost her appetite for their ungratifying relationship
and mutual poverty. As he kisses her and they embrace
on the bed, they discuss their "cheap" relationship and impoverishment, and their many unresolved
issues:

Sam: You never did eat your lunch, did you?

Marion: I'd better get back to the office. These extended lunch hours give my boss excess acid.
Sam: Why don't you call your boss and tell him you're taking the rest of the afternoon off? (It's)
Friday anyway - and hot.
Marion: What do I do with my free afternoon? Walk you to the airport?
Sam: Well, you could laze around here a while longer.
Marion (foreshadowing a future hotel visit): Hmm. Checking out time is 3 pm. Hotels of this sort
aren't interested in you when you come in, but when your time is up. Oh Sam, I hate having to be
with you in a place like this.
Sam: I've heard of married couples who deliberately spend an occasional night in a cheap hotel.
Marion: When you're married, you can do a lot of things deliberately.
Sam: You sure talk like a girl who's been married.
Marion: Sam, this is the last time.
Sam: For what?
Marion: For this, meeting you in secret so we can be secretive. You come down here on business
trips. We steal lunch hours. I wish you wouldn't even come.
Sam: All right, what do we do instead? Write each other lurid love letters?

It's a hot, Friday afternoon [although December, it undoubtedly looks like a summer day] and they
are obviously in the midst of a "secretive" affair in Room No. 514. She loves Sam but they can only
furtively see each other during his business trips. Sam has flown in from a small town in California to
see Marion - and "steal lunch hours." As she rises to dress and cover up her ample breasts, they
discuss further difficulties in their fitful relationship (characterized as more sexual than intimate).
Sam secretly enjoys the illicitness of their sleazy, "lurid" affair and suggests seeing her the next week
- and even assents to having "lunch - in public."

In a semi-ultimatum to Sam, Marion tells him that "this is the last time" - she will deny him further
sexual couplings in "secretive" meetings. She expresses her frustration about their private love trysts
and her real desire for marriage - she wants chastity, respectability, and public meetings in the place
she shares with her sister (where a framed picture of her dead "Mother" morally disapproves,
presides, and judges them). [Of course, there's another morally-disapproving, judgmental 'dead
Mother' in the film, but that comes later. One unanswered question in the film: Did Marion spend
years nursing her invalid mother - selfless dedication that contributed to her fate as an old maid?] He
agrees to see her under the new terms of 'respectability,' although he reminds her how "a lot of
sweating out," "patience," and "hard work" would be prerequisites in a respectable relationship
[Marion's sister later tellingly asserts: "Patience doesn't run in my family"]:

Marion: Oh, we can see each other. We can even have dinner, but respectably. In my house, with my
mother's picture on the mantel, and my sister helping me broil a big steak for three.
Sam: And after the steak, do we send sister to the movies, turn Momma's picture to the wall?
Marion: Sam!
Sam: (begrudgingly) All right. Marion, whenever it's possible I want to see you and under any
circumstances, even respectability.
Marion: You make respectability sound disrespectful.
Sam: Oh no, I'm all for it. But it requires patience, temperance, with a lot of sweating out. Otherwise
though, it's just hard work. But if I could see you and touch you, you know, simply as this, I won't
mind. (He nibbles at her neck.)

Sam, a small-town (Fairvale, California) hardware store proprietor, is also frustrated and self-pitying
because of his money worries - he is a financial martyr, burdened by his father's debts and the
alimony he must pay to his ex-wife. She proposes marriage directly (she is still a spinster and stuck in
the same job after ten years) - and poignantly describes her willingness to share a life of cash-
strapped hardship with him. But annoyingly, he balks at the thought, refusing because he doesn't
want her to live in poverty and because he believes he must first pay off his debts over the next
couple years. She threatens to leave him and thinks she may find "somebody available" to take his
place and end her fears of being a fallen woman:

Sam: I'm tired of sweating for people who aren't there. I sweat to pay off my father's debts and he's
in his grave. (Sam has walked in front of a fan with spinning blades.) I sweat to pay my ex-wife's
alimony and she's living on the other side of the world somewhere.
Marion: I pay too. They also pay who meet in hotel rooms. [This line evokes the famous last line of
Milton's sonnet, On His Blindness: "They also serve who only stand and wait."]
Sam: A couple years and my debts will be paid off. If she remarries, the alimony stops.
Marion: I haven't even been married once yet.
Sam: Yeah, but when you do, you'll swing.
Marion: Oh Sam, let's get married! (They kiss and embrace.)
Sam: Yeah. And live with me in a storeroom behind a hardware store in Fairvale? We'll have lots of
laughs. I'll tell you what. When I send my ex-wife her alimony, you can lick the stamps.
Marion: I'll lick the stamps.
Sam: Marion, you want to cut this off, go out and find yourself somebody available?
Marion: I'm thinking of it.
Sam: How could you even think a thing like that?
Unhappy and unfulfilled in her unsanctified relationship, Marion rejects his idea to take the
afternoon off and rushes back to her storefront real estate office - she is anxious about being late.

[Director Hitchcock, wearing a ten-gallon hat, makes his cameo appearance on the Phoenix sidewalk
facing away from the window of the realty office.] She is relieved that her boss Mr. George Lowery
(Vaughn Taylor) is not back from lunch, but she suffers from a headache (brought on by her perennial
problems with Sam). [Behind her in the office is a framed picture of a barren, desert scene]:

Headaches are like resolutions. You forget them as soon as they stop hurting.

She listens to her recently-married co-worker Caroline (Patricia Hitchcock, Hitchcock's real-life
daughter) chatter about her interfering, nagging mother, who had suggested that her doctor
prescribe tranquilizers for her wedding day to protect her (from the anguish of losing her virginity
and having sex?) - her mother's nosiness angered her proprietary groom/husband Teddy. [Scenes of
frigid winter are displayed behind her.] Caroline offers Marion a tranquilizer rather than an aspirin
for her headache.

My mother's doctor gave them to me the day of my wedding. Teddy was furious when he found out
I'd taken tranquilizers.

Mirrors are ever-present throughout the film - Marion checks out her appearance and applies lipstick
using a small compact mirror from her purse. Mr. Lowery arrives shortly afterwards with an
important, wealthy (and inebriated) millionaire - a cowboy-hatted customer named Mr. Tom Cassidy
(Frank Albertson). He is an oil-lease man who is sweating from the heat and complaining about the
weather: "Wow! It's as hot as fresh milk." The salty oilman suggests that Lowery should "air-
condition...up" his employees, because he "can afford it today." Mr. Cassidy has just proudly bought
a house on Harris Street for his "sweet little girl" - his 18 year old, soon-to-be-married daughter
("baby"):

Tomorrow's the day my sweet little girl - (He leers over at Marion) - Oh, oh, not you - my daughter, a
baby. And tomorrow she stands her sweet self up there and gets married away from me. I want you
to take a look at my baby. Eighteen years old, and she never had an unhappy day in any one of those
years.

Flirting with Marion, he sits on her desk, and sensing that Marion is unhappy and feeling deprived
with his talk of marriage, gloats about his wealth and his easing of life's pains through buy-offs:

You know what I do about unhappiness? I buy it off. Are, uh, are you unhappy?

Marion answers that she isn't "inordinately" unhappy - although she is uncomfortably reminded of
her unmarried status and other deprivations. Then, the vulgar client takes out the $40,000 in cold,
hard cash for the house purchase for his "respectable" married daughter as a wedding present, and
boastfully waves and flops it around in front of his audience. He domineeringly explains how virile
the money makes him:

Now, that's, that's not buying happiness. That's just buying off unhappiness. I never carry more than I
can afford to lose.

He tosses the money on Marion's desk, but the money is not for her - but for Cassidy's daughter's
wedding dowry (although she is challenged and tempted by the money earmarked for a bride's
house - she feels more entitled to it than the pampered daughter). It is an awkward, discomfiting
sight for Marion who has just left her impecunious lover/partner whom she is unable to marry for
lack of money. Caroline is astonished by Cassidy's brash proposition: "I declare!" Cassidy even brags
about how he doesn't rightfully 'declare' his illicitly-obtained money to the government - an obvious
illegality: "I don't. That's how I get to keep it."

Lowery is worried about so much cash out in the open: "A cash transaction of this size is most
irregular," but Cassidy assures him: "Aw, so what. It's my private money. Now it's yours." [His
transference of the 'dirty' private funds to Lowery suggests that Marion's boss may keep the cash
transaction undeclared.] The loud-mouthed Cassidy embarrasses the real estate boss by exposing the
presence of something else hidden away and unrevealed - a bottle in the desk in his office. He
persuades Lowery to take him into the inner air-conditioned office for a drink. Lowery instructs
Marion to put the large amount of cash in a bank's safe deposit box over the weekend: "I don't even
want it in the office over the weekend. Put it in the safe deposit box in the bank."

Caroline is jealous that Cassidy flirted with her colleague [Her 'respectable' marriage must be
somewhat desperate and unfulfilling.]:

He was flirting with you. I guess he must have noticed my wedding ring.

Both women touch and handle the naughty, filthy money, and then Marion puts it into an envelope,
wraps it up and sticks it in her purse. She is granted permission to go straight home after the bank
deposit because of her headache. Although she expects to be "in bed" all weekend, Cassidy thinks
she needs an escape and propositions her with an invitation:

What you need is a weekend in Las Vegas, the playground of the world!

As she leaves, Marion refuses tranquilizers a second time from her co-worker: "You can't buy off
unhappiness with pills." [But obviously, can't her unhappiness be bought off with money?] As she
leaves the office, her shadow follows after her.

In the next scene, Marion's shadow precedes her. In a moment of weakness and impulse, she has
been tempted to bring the money home to her small bedroom instead of to the bank. (Her sister is
away for the weekend in Tucson to "do some buying.") Again in partial undress wearing only a black
bra and slip [after the theft, her underclothes turn black - signifying her darkness], Marion repeatedly
and apprehensively eyes the money in a fat envelope lying on the bed (where she told Lowery and
Cassidy she would spend the weekend). The camera zooms in and cuts back and forth to the
envelope more than once. Next to it is her packed suitcase, ready for a trip. [Behind her in this
second bedroom in the film is another bathroom - this one with the shower head particularly
noticeable. Also, more mirrors and windows and pictures looking down from the wall - two of her as
a baby, another of her deceased parents. She has redirected the money intended by Cassidy for his
"baby" to her own maternal instincts - her wish to be married to Sam, have respectable sex and raise
a family.] She stares long and hard at herself in the dresser mirror. Although she appears casually
indifferent and secure in the presence of the money, she nervously finishes packing and closes her
full suitcase.

She sits down on the bed, stares with desire at the money, and tries to stop herself from doing
something she knows is shameful and wrong - something that is not "respectable." But she can't
control her sinful, obsessive-compulsive behavior. Because her suitcase is already full and shut, she
stuffs the envelope in her purse (with other important papers) and then leaves.

While driving out of Phoenix toward Fairvale, California in her black car, Marion stares straight ahead
and trance-like while imagining that she is on her way to elope with Sam with the large sum of cash
with which to finance her elopement and marriage. She hears a conversation with a startled Sam
who is surprised to see her in Fairvale - with pilfered money for their salvation. His startled, echoing
voice speaks in her head. With an uneasy reaction to her appearance, he would undoubtedly reject
her solution to their problem:

Marion, what in the world, what are you doing up here? Of course I'm glad to see you. I always am.
What is it, Marion?

Their conversation is cut short and interrupted. Significantly, she cannot finish talking with him.

While waiting at a stoplight, her boss (and Cassidy) pass by in the cross-walk in front of her. He at
first smiles and nods when recognizing her, and leaves the frame of the windshield. Likewise, she
smiles - nervously. But then he stops, turns and furrows his brow at her. Mr. Lowery is puzzled and
concerned to see her in her car when she was supposed to be home sick. Likewise, her face turns
frozen after realizing that she has been caught. Bernard Herrmann's jarring music begins to play,
slashing at her. She pulls away, gulps hard, and looks back - her conscience already gnawing away.

Unnerved but still drifting along irrationally, Marion drives her dark-toned car toward Fairvale from
Phoenix and it turns to dusk and nighttime. She repeatedly looks into her rear-view mirror -
symbolically checking out her own inner thoughts. She blinks her tired eyes and tries to avoid the
glare of headlights of oncoming cars - spotlighting her crime.