This morning when I woke up the house was noticeably cooler than it\u2019s been in a month.\u00a0 It was sixty degrees or thereabouts.\u00a0 So, Fall is making its entrance felt.\u00a0 Lots of leaves under the maple tree and the grass is drying out.\u00a0 The raspberry canes are still producing tons of berries but the lower leaves are all turning yellow.\u00a0 Well, the kids go back to school on Monday and so this is the end of summer by decree and by degree.\u00a0 So be it.<\/p>\n
Well, it was a terrific summer weatherwise and we did most of the things we wanted to.\u00a0 And we had a big party at the end.\u00a0 So now it\u2019s time to anticipate the good stuff that comes with Fall.\u00a0 Well?\u00a0 I guess the only thing about Fall that\u2019s good is the long evenings allow us to watch old movies and plan for the holidays.\u00a0 Certainly, there\u2019s more to do than that.\u00a0 Fall is when you\u2019re supposed to do the repairs and weatherproofing that prevents winter from doing a lot of damage.\u00a0 And I do plan to do that stuff.\u00a0 But let\u2019s be honest here.\u00a0 I hate that stuff.\u00a0 I\u2019ve 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\u2019t gotten any closer to doing it yet.\u00a0 I\u2019m just an immensely lazy man whose strong suit is dithering, waffling, vacillating and procrastination.\u00a0 Of course I blame Camera Girl.\u00a0 If she were half as good at nagging as she is at cooking, I\u2019d be a model husband.\u00a0 But it\u2019s the cross I bear.<\/p>\n
So, a couple of nights ago TCM had \u201cPsycho\u201d on and Camera Girl was watching it.\u00a0 Well, I was busy but I noted her choice in passing.\u00a0 And while I was working in the dining room, I could hear snatches of music and dialog.\u00a0 And I could tell it was getting toward Marion Crane\u2019s (Janet Leigh\u2019s) fateful arrival at the Bates Motel.\u00a0 So, I dropped what I was doing and sat through Marion\u2019s supper with Norman and all the way through her murder and subsequent deposition in the \u201cswamp.\u201d\u00a0 By the way, how much of Southern California actually has any swampland?<\/p>\n
Now I\u2019ve seen Psycho dozens of times.\u00a0 And the murder scene has always struck me as well done.\u00a0 It\u2019s well staged and well shot.\u00a0 And having seen it so many times allowed me to watch it this time analytically.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
That is the moment when death has entered the frame.\u00a0 The actual killing with the blood and piercing, screaming \u201cmusic\u201d is almost an anticlimax.<\/p>\n
And then I watched Marion Crane die from loss of blood.\u00a0 And it was remarkably well acted and achingly sad.\u00a0 Here was a young woman whose impatience to be with the man she loved had driven her to steal an enormous amount of money.\u00a0 But just as she\u2019s figured out what she needs to do to escape from the trap she\u2019s gotten herself into, fate steps in and feeds her into a buzz saw of insanity.<\/p>\n
The rest of the movie is a murder mystery and a psychological horror show.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Janet Leigh\u2019s face conveys the reality that Marion Crane\u2019s 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.\u00a0 And then she dies and her body lies crumpled on the floor and her unfocussed eye stares into space.\u00a0 That\u2019s the best acting in the movie.<\/p>\n
So, despite the spectacle from then on, the interesting part of the movie is the first forty minutes that record Marion Crane\u2019s date with destiny.\u00a0 And I\u2019ll include her conversation with Norman.\u00a0 He does communicate his pathetic version of what he thinks the world is about.\u00a0 And in some sense, he provides a sounding board to allow her to think about what to do about her own private trap.<\/p>\n
Well, anyway, it\u2019s Fall and old movies are the thing to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This morning when I woke up the house was noticeably cooler than it\u2019s been in a month.\u00a0 It was sixty degrees or thereabouts.\u00a0 So, Fall<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,239,1263,237],"tags":[494,3070,43,1219,38,1355],"class_list":["post-34263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-movie-reviews","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous","category-reviews","tag-alfred-hitchcock","tag-janet-leigh","tag-movie-review","tag-psycho","tag-review","tag-reviews"],"yoast_head":"\n