[deleted]
[deleted]
Ed Gein felt the same way!
shareHah.
"But seriously, folks..."
There were a lot of reasons the 1998 remake of Psycho failed to have 1/10th the impact of the 1960 original, but one of them has to be: quizzical young 1998 audiences wondering why they had to go through over a half hour of NO horror, no murders, nuthin....as Marion embarked on her long car journey, met a cop, bought a car.
Oh, there was a suspense underpinning to the drive...she's stolen money, will she be found out? -- but folks who came for a slasher movie wondered what the hell was going on.
Even in 1960, some critics thought the beginning of Psycho was too slow. Wrote the New York Times Bosley Crowther: "Hitchcock swiftly gets Leigh to an out of the way motel...well, maybe he doesn't get her there too swiftly. This film is given over to a lot of detail for Hitchcock."
A man interviewed with many others about "the first time I saw Psycho" in 1960 said "its going on and on and I'm telling my wife, oh, its alright I guess....and then the shower scene came and it was pandemonium."
And as Bernard Herrmann told Brian DePalma about the long opening, "Because the film is from Hitchcock, the audience knows something horrible WILL happen...and they will wait."
Still, historically, there it is. A horror movie where the audience dutifully waits for 30 minutes(the first sighting of the house and motel) for any horror atmosphere, and 47 minutes for the first shock(but its a big one, in the shower.)
I can certainly understand, in the age of DVD, the ease of jumping to the motel start-up...and the first appearance of Norman Bates. I wonder how many DVD viewers have dumped that first half hour and never watched it again(confession: that's what i do whenever I watch Jurrassic Park on DVD!)
But there are many "cineastes" and just plain Hitchcock fans who love that long, luxurious opening for what it is: a study in suspense and paranoia, anchored by a very pretty woman under maximum pressure, and filled with interesting cinematic touches(the close-up of the cop's face; how the camera travels down the row of used cars from Marion's POV.)
And once Marion sets out from California Charlie's to her date with destiny at the Bates Motel, we begin what one critic called "the greatest night drive in movie history" a precision mix of darkening skies, rising rain, windshield wipers whapping, Herrmann music jittering -- and voices tormenting our heroine in the night.
And this: from a second viewing of Psycho on, that first 30 minutes is always very poignant to me -- it is a countdown to the death of Marion Crane. These incidents will prove to be the last incidents of her entire life, the last things she gets to do as a living human being. They are very sad in the watching -- for instance, when Sam watches Marion leave that hotel room, he can't know he is seeing her for the very last time ever. On earth.
I know of at least one Hitchcock scholar -- Camille Paglia -- who has written that the part before Marion reaches the motel is her FAVORITE part -- and that she turns the movie off after that point. Paglia is not interested in the shocker part.
It may not work for a modern audience. It seems few of the movies Gen X and Baby Boomers consider classics work well with the Millennials. This is not to bash the Millennials. They've been conditioned to look down at their phones if something outrageous doesn't happen within five seconds of a movie starting.
shareIt may not work for a modern audience. It seems few of the movies Gen X and Baby Boomers consider classics work well with the Millennials. This is not to bash the Millennials. They've been conditioned to look down at their phones if something outrageous doesn't happen within five seconds of a movie starting.
---
That's right.
Though I would like to point out that Jaws famously opened with a shock killing -- a naked woman in water, rather like Psycho -- and got to another killing(the boy) not too long thereafter. That was only 15 years after Psycho, and reflected how a lot of "B horror movies" opened in the 50's.
Hitchcock seemed interested in "stretching out the build-up" in both Psycho AND The Birds, where even LESS happens for a long long time(no sexual necking, no embezzlement) before the shocks come...very slowly.
Indeed, most of the time, Hitchcock was content to start slow -- and with exposition -- and to build up to his set-pieces and excitements.
Except one time, and it is an ironic one: Vertigo.
Vertigo as a movie is long, slow, nearly bereft of thrills or action or murder(though there is one). Except for its slam-bang opening: a chase across San Francisco rooftops that ends with James Stewart in a life or death cliffhanger and a cop falling to his death. Hitch seemed to need that bang-up opening for Vertigo because he knew the rest of the movie would be pretty languid.
Thrillers and movies in general seem to have been allowed to "start slow" for decades until some changes were made. "Jaws" is one, but the big one is "Star Wars" which, when coupled with MTV in the eighties, sped up storytelling and audience needs in one gulp.
And this: it is my contention that, once TV executives took over Hollywood in the 80s, movies started playing like TV shows -- at least cop movies like Lethal Weapon and Die Hard. You would have an opening bang-up murder or action scene, and then sporadic cliffhangers/action scenes every seven minutes or so(as if timed for commercial breaks.)
But wait a minute: the original "Die Hard" actually takes a lot of time starting up before the action kicks in. To that extent, that movie perhaps BENEFITTED from taking the time to establish characters(Willis and his estranged wife; the business executives); before Rickman and the pseudo-terrorists came in.
The other movie series that thrived on bang-up openings was the James Bond series, but it took awhile for the pre-credits scene to require big action. Goldfinger(fight scene and electrocution) in the Connerys; The Spy Who Loved Me(ski chase and skydive) in the Moores -- and then ALL Bond movies opened with big action scenes pre-credits.
Good points. For smaller budgeted movies before Jaws and Star Wars, there might have been something exploitive early on to maintain audience interest and compensate for the small budget, lack of stars, etc. But I think Jaws and Star Wars really changed the culture in Hollywood. A lot of people probably appreciate a slow build up, but the masses, in general, have been trained to expect fireworks (like the zombies in Land of the Dead) every three-five minutes now, so when a slow-moving, contemplative movie is released, it's generally trashed by the masses because their little spongy brains can't absorb too much.
shareThis is not to bash the Millennials.
---
oh, bash, bash, bash.