Psycho

One of the most chilling moments in Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) is arguably precisely when Norman leans forward in his chair after Marion unwisely comments that he should put his mother “someplace.” With a piercing gaze he berates Marion’s insensitivity, concluding that although his mother may be over-controlling, she is far from insane. “It’s not as if she were a maniac, a raving thing,” he says with a soft smile. “She just goes a little mad sometimes. We all go a little mad sometimes … Haven’t you?” After viewing the movie, one can equate the supposed occasional madness of Norman’s mother with Norman’s own instability. It is implicitly revealed in the film that Norman begins to experience a split personality after witnessing his mother in bed with another man – a variation on the scene of primal representation. Most of the time, Norman Bates is introverted and methodical, diligently tending to the upkeep of his motel. But sometimes, only temporarily, he goes “a little mad,” driven to murder as he is possessed by “Norma’s” personality. 

This scene demonstrates the cinematic self-consciousness of Psycho, as it reminds viewers of several other films that have meditated on how madness is ephemeral, unpredictable, and dangerous. In Rebecca, Maxim de Winter recounts Rebecca’s death with the words, “I suppose I went mad for a moment,” in order to explain why he struck her and led her to hit her head on a piece of ship’s tackle. In Strangers on a Train, madness seems to temporarily take over Guy when Miriam tells him that she has called off their divorce and plans to accompany him to Washington, D.C. “You sound so savage, Guy,” Anne comments, shocked, when he yells that he could strangle Miriam. Bruno even tries to capitalize on how everyone goes “a little mad sometimes” when convincing Mrs. Cunningham at Guy’s party about the utility of murder. “Do you mean to tell me there wasn’t a tiny moment when you’d been made really angry?” he asks. And even Marion loses herself when she steals the $40,000 (the ultimately meaningless McGuffin of the story) and runs. 

As François Truffaut notes, in Psycho, the situation is more important than the story. Clearly, madness is not present throughout the entire storyline; it appears only in certain, extremely brief, situations and shapes the scenes that follow. In all three films (Rebecca, Shadow of a Doubt, and Psycho), the male protagonists are not directly responsible for the women’s deaths. Indeed, Norman never intended to hurt Marion – it was his mother that did. By emphasizing the fleeting nature of madness and Norman’s psychological removal from the murder of Marion, Psycho prompts viewers to consider the complexity behind evaluating the true guilt of murderers.