The Terrible Liar

Today was my first viewing of Pyscho, since I had missed the previous class. But fortunately, the small part of the film that I did see today was interesting. It started out with a motel worker talking to an attractive women. I noticed right away that he seemed a little strange, and the fact that he stuffed dead animals didn't help with this first impression. He explained that his mother had some serious mental issues, which could explain why he acted the way that he did. Shortly after this conversation, the woman (Marion) headed to her room, and I saw the man (Norman) look into her bathroom through a peephole. Right away, I thought "this guy is creepy". I just didn't like the way he was acting, and I was concerned for her safety. There was no telling what he was capable of doing. 

Just a short while after, Marion was in the shower, which looked horribly unrealistic, by the way. Then, a shot of the shower curtain came up, and as she was showering, I could see a figure in the background. I knew she was in trouble, yet she had no idea it was coming. That, my friends, is a classic example of dramatic irony: the audience can see something that the characters in the film cannot see yet. Usually, it is used in dramatic/horror scenes. That figure came closer to Marion, and stabbed her several times. At first, not being familiar with the movie, I thought that Norman had done this, but I read the synopsis online and found that his mother had killed her. 

When the detective came to investigate, Norman attempted to act as if he didn't know anything about the stabbing, despite the fact that he did. Clearly he wasn't a very good liar, and it was also clear that the detective was aware of this. He was extremely suspicious of Norman, whose poorly-thought-out stories made no sense at all. I felt really bad for Marion, because she was dead, and it seemed like no justice would be served. Her body couldn't even be recovered, because Norman drove a car with her body in its trunk into a swamp. He cleaned up the bathroom from the walls to the floors in an effort to make it seem as if she was never killed there. But he probably missed a few spots. He offered to give the detective a look at the rooms just to prove that he wasn't up to something, but it didn't work out so well. The detective saw him head towards the first room, and then quickly jerk away. "Why is he not showing me that room? He must be hiding something there...", he must've thought. Norman also stuttered a lot when he spoke, and had a noticeable shakiness in his voice as well. 

The detective kept prying at him, trying to get more information, but he didn't tell him anything else, and instead asked him to leave. Again, this is another example of how bad of a liar he was, which certainly didn't help him cover his behind, so to speak. The detective didn't buy it, Norman was definitely not nearly as innocent as he claimed to be. I'm interested in seeing what will happen after this, and how the story turns out. In my class, we have about 15 minutes left of the film

As a side note, I also thought that the placement of the music was strange. There was so much dramatic, creepy sound even when there was nothing dramatic or creepy happening. I liked the fact that Alien's music was perfectly composed, and played at the appropriate time. With Psycho, it is a little nerve wracking because it feels as though something scary is going to happen, yet it doesn't. But hey, this film is from 1960, so I'll cut it a little slack...