Psycho
This was my first time watching Psycho, but I was still vaguely familiar with Norman Bates as he is pretty prominent in pop culture. I was really not expecting that plot twist, and I thought completely different things were going to happen. Hitchcock is very good at planting misleading evidence, as both the characters themselves are misled as well as us, the audience. Unlike the previous novels we've read, like Valley of Fear, Hitchcock doesn't rely on physical evidence, but instead the actions of the characters. It is Marion's behavior that gets her caught by the cop, and Norman's behavior that gets him caught by Arbogast. At the beginning, I thought Norman was going to kill Marion and then taxidermy her, like he did to the birds. It just seemed plausible, because Hitchcock spent quite a while on that scene, and then never really revisits it.
The plot twist at the end was the most unexpected of all, because we are consistently provided with misleading evidence that points to Mrs. Bates being alive and a murderer, only to find out that she has long been dead. Despite knowing that he was insane, for some reason I still believed Norman when he said that it was his mother who did it and was still alive. Also, it was interesting Hitchcock shows how the characters were misled by previous assumptions. Lila assumed that Norman killed Marion because he needed the $40,000 in order to get rid of his failing business, which is a reasonable assumption, but he didn't even know about the money in the first place and the money itself is irrelevant.
Marion's death was also extremely unexpected; she was supposed to be the main character, and main characters never get killed. It caught me off guard, because the movie had spent so much time setting up her backstory and setting her up to be the plucky protagonist then just killed her off halfway through. I was also taken off guard when Arbogast was killed, because in the mystery novels that we've read, the detective is an enigma that is untouchable.
Overall, I think it was a really good movie, despite the super fake violence scenes.
The plot twist at the end was the most unexpected of all, because we are consistently provided with misleading evidence that points to Mrs. Bates being alive and a murderer, only to find out that she has long been dead. Despite knowing that he was insane, for some reason I still believed Norman when he said that it was his mother who did it and was still alive. Also, it was interesting Hitchcock shows how the characters were misled by previous assumptions. Lila assumed that Norman killed Marion because he needed the $40,000 in order to get rid of his failing business, which is a reasonable assumption, but he didn't even know about the money in the first place and the money itself is irrelevant.
Marion's death was also extremely unexpected; she was supposed to be the main character, and main characters never get killed. It caught me off guard, because the movie had spent so much time setting up her backstory and setting her up to be the plucky protagonist then just killed her off halfway through. I was also taken off guard when Arbogast was killed, because in the mystery novels that we've read, the detective is an enigma that is untouchable.
Overall, I think it was a really good movie, despite the super fake violence scenes.
I would say that Hitchcock does actually revisit taxidermy in that Norman is preserving the body of his mother. He mentions that taxidermy requires chemicals, which he is probably also using to help preserve Norma's body. I agree with you though that the death of Arbogast surprised me. It contrasts films like The Maltese Falcon, where Sam Spade, a very similar character to Arbogast, is able to escape serious harm despite all the people trying to kill him.
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