This morning when I woke up the house was noticeably cooler than it’s been in a month. It was sixty degrees or thereabouts. So, Fall is making its entrance felt. Lots of leaves under the maple tree and the grass is drying out. The raspberry canes are still producing tons of berries but the lower leaves are all turning yellow. Well, the kids go back to school on Monday and so this is the end of summer by decree and by degree. So be it.
Well, it was a terrific summer weatherwise and we did most of the things we wanted to. And we had a big party at the end. So now it’s time to anticipate the good stuff that comes with Fall. Well? I guess the only thing about Fall that’s good is the long evenings allow us to watch old movies and plan for the holidays. Certainly, there’s more to do than that. Fall is when you’re supposed to do the repairs and weatherproofing that prevents winter from doing a lot of damage. And I do plan to do that stuff. But let’s be honest here. I hate that stuff. I’ve been talking about getting some tarps to cover over the woodwork on the balconies and the outside staircase for about ten years and I haven’t gotten any closer to doing it yet. I’m just an immensely lazy man whose strong suit is dithering, waffling, vacillating and procrastination. Of course I blame Camera Girl. If she were half as good at nagging as she is at cooking, I’d be a model husband. But it’s the cross I bear.
So, a couple of nights ago TCM had “Psycho” on and Camera Girl was watching it. Well, I was busy but I noted her choice in passing. And while I was working in the dining room, I could hear snatches of music and dialog. And I could tell it was getting toward Marion Crane’s (Janet Leigh’s) fateful arrival at the Bates Motel. So, I dropped what I was doing and sat through Marion’s supper with Norman and all the way through her murder and subsequent deposition in the “swamp.” By the way, how much of Southern California actually has any swampland?
Now I’ve seen Psycho dozens of times. And the murder scene has always struck me as well done. It’s well staged and well shot. And having seen it so many times allowed me to watch it this time analytically. And I thought that the critical snatch of film is when Marion is luxuriating in the shower and the camera shifts to the room through the shower curtain and you see the door open and a silhouette appear in the doorway.
That is the moment when death has entered the frame. The actual killing with the blood and piercing, screaming “music” is almost an anticlimax.
And then I watched Marion Crane die from loss of blood. And it was remarkably well acted and achingly sad. Here was a young woman whose impatience to be with the man she loved had driven her to steal an enormous amount of money. But just as she’s figured out what she needs to do to escape from the trap she’s gotten herself into, fate steps in and feeds her into a buzz saw of insanity.
The rest of the movie is a murder mystery and a psychological horror show. But the end of the murder scene is a tiny window into an intensely poignant moment; the death of a human being and specifically the death of a beautiful young woman. Janet Leigh’s face conveys the reality that Marion Crane’s brain is shutting down from lack of blood and her world has shrunk down to just trying to grasp the shower curtain with her hand. And then she dies and her body lies crumpled on the floor and her unfocussed eye stares into space. That’s the best acting in the movie.
So, despite the spectacle from then on, the interesting part of the movie is the first forty minutes that record Marion Crane’s date with destiny. And I’ll include her conversation with Norman. He does communicate his pathetic version of what he thinks the world is about. And in some sense, he provides a sounding board to allow her to think about what to do about her own private trap.
Well, anyway, it’s Fall and old movies are the thing to do.