While
the censorship battle was raging, George Tomasini did his brilliant editing,
and Bernard Herrmann composed what many regard as his quintessential score.
Herrmann's frenetically paced all-strings orchestration ¨C what one critic
called "screaming violins" and another "pure ice water" - would
set the all-time standard in film music. The main Psycho theme is
"repeated so often and at such musically strong points that it seems to be
not only a point of departure but a point of return as well," according to
film music scholar Royal S. Brown. The musical backing went beyond any previous
Hitchcock theme "in its array of jarringly dissonant chords, the
bitonality of which reflects on the film's ultimate narrative theme."
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Although
the director originally intended the shower scene to be one of his silent short
stories, he changed his mind after hearing the piercing music. So Marion's
ordeal would begin with "an extremely high-pitched string passage,"
in the words of film scholar James Naremore, "punctu-: Marion's screams
and a series of notes that are like whistles," abruptly shifting, after
Mother has stopped stabbing and fled, "into a loud but slow sequence of
bass chords in a minor key." Only after Mother leaves the room does the
music fade away, as a staring Marion slides down the wall. The final shot of
her lifeless eye is complemented only by the natural noises of running water
and a drain gurgling.
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While
the film was being edited and scored, Hitchcock convened a series of meetings
in Lew Wasserman's office to plan the publicity, advertising and release
strategy for Psycho.
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It
was a campaign Hitchcock had really begun BEFORE the filming, making a series
of provocative statements about the intentional shocker he had planned - complete
with nudity, bloodshed, and transvestism - and then closing the Psycho set to
journalists.
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This
created an aura of supersecrecy that extended even to the cast members.
According to Vera Miles, the ensemble actually had to raise their right hands
and swear not to divulge the plot twists of the film. That Hitchcock actually
took such self-serving pains was unlikely, as was the rumor that the director
bought up all copies of the book in Los Angeles. Psycho was a popular novel
that hasn't gone out of print since its original publication.
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One
thing Hitchcock DID buy was the book's original cover design, from artist Tony
Palladino, ordering the poster to be modeled after the book jacket. (Since
early in his career, Hitchcock, who started out in design, had consulted on his
titles and advertising, but this was the first time he was able to dictate the
style. Harold Adler, who worked with Saul Bass on title sequence - "nervous,
balletic horizontal and vertical bars that expanded and contracted in
mirror-image patterns," in Stephen Rebello's words - noticed that
Hitchcock's office "contained more art books and current magazines on
graphics than I owned.")
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Having
agreed to direct the film for a deferred salary, Hitchcock was a major investor
in - and co-owner of - Psycho. At one of the early advertising and publicity
meetings, Barney Balaban objected to Hitchcock's promotional ideas, insisting
they would never work, but Wasserman flourished Hitchcock's contract, reminding
Balaban of the director's rights.
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All
his life Hitchcock had been a student of publicity; now he could take all the
lessons he had been learning since Islington - lessons he had mastered with his
television series - and apply them to Psycho. He hired his witty amanuensis
James Allardice to write the Alfred Hitchcock Presents-type trailers, with the
director himself offering a guided tour of the Bates Motel, lingering in the
bathroom, flushing the toilet, and rolling his eyes.
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"All
tidied up," Hitchcock says ruefully. "The bathroom. Oh, they've
cleaned all this up now. Big difference. You should have seen the blood. The
whole, the whole place was, well, it's too horrible to describe. Dreadful. And
I tell you a very important clue was found here (pointing to the toilet]. Down
there. Well, the murderer, you see, crept in here very silently - of course,
the shower was on, there was no sound, and uh. . . "
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At
which point, the director whips the curtain aside, and Bernard Herrmann's
screeching violins are heard. There crouches an undressed blonde (not Janet
Leigh, but the accommodating Vera Miles in a wig) emitting a bloodcurdling
scream. It was one of the world's great trailers.
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With
the exception of the Selznick productions, Hitchcock had never enjoyed the big
promotional and advertising budgets that came with studio affiliation. That was
a continual gripe about his deal with Warner Bros.; Paramount was better, but
some of his Paramount films - like Vertigo - received surprisingly modest press
attention during filming, and only average budget support upon release. Now,
with Paramount keeping to the shadows, Hitchcock had the opportunity to
mastermind a film's release as never before.
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It
was Hitchcock himself who made the unprecedented decision to exclude critics
from advance showings (supposedly to prevent them from giving away the ending
in reviews), and to advertise, "No one BUT NO ONE will be admitted to the
theater after the start of each performance." As Rebello points out in his
book, the latter gambit was not unique (Paramount had tried the same angle with
Vertigo), but it never worked as well as with Psycho.
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Exhibitors
were forced to comply. Publicity kits advised theater owners how to handle long
lines and surging crowds, and cautioned them, in a recording from Hitchcock
himself, "to close your house curtains over the screen after the
end-titles of the picture, and keep the theater dark for half a minute. During
these thirty seconds of stygian blackness, the suspense of Psycho is indelibly
engraved in the mind of the audience, later to be discussed among gaping
friends and relations. You will then bring up houselights of a greenish hue,
and shine spotlights of this ominous hue across the faces of your departing
patrons."
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The
postproduction gloss and release plans were then left to trusted subordinates
as the Hitchcocks embarked on a two-month global vacation. They departed on the
President Cleveland on April 3 for Honolulu, and from there traveled to Tokyo,
Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney, Rome, Paris, and London, as usual mingling
publicity with pleasure.
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In
Tokyo, he later told Andy Warhol, he was escorted by an "extremely
sedate" Japanese representative to a press club and steak dinner.
Afterward they trooped upstairs, where Hitchcock had the kind of accidental
encounter with undressed women that he also had been mastering since Islington days.
He wasn't expecting pornography: "Awful films American ones, French ones
and then [after the films] they had two live girls sticking a brush between
their 'legs' and writing on white paper in Japanese characters."
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Patrick
McGilligan "Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light" (2003)
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