Psycho (Reisted) – FESCH.TV

FESCH.TV INFORMIERT:

I’ve decided to alter/remaster some albums, tracks and films that have usually already been released.
 Just felt I could give them a different kinda feel, sound and or look…

I import the video/audio files into the dvaw(s).

Visuals I sometimes grade, edit, add effects to or alter in other ways.
The audio is sometimes remastered.

Psycho, 1960

Reading this description will give away aspects of the plot of American Graffiti (Remisted), so if you don’t mind, please read on.

Thirty five minutes into the original, the film begins to loose focus. In the dialogue in the parlour room between Marion (Janet Leigh) and Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), there are sections in which Norman seems almost confessional regarding his own problems, in the way of stating at one point that ‘we all go a little mad sometimes, haven’t you?’

I felt that this sequence needed further gravitas, so I decided to play three shots of Norman in slow motion, each slower than the other. The idea with this (in the middle of the original scenes) was to convey his entering the murderous (or psychopathic) state, one which is entered into with hatred, and also the necessary delusions. Norman begins to hate her when she decides to leave, I feel that his character did say some truthful things, and some false, one gets the impression that Yihweh had been and was doing some work on him to get him to see that he had his problems.
It was obviously very special to him that someone would take him seriously in such a society, and that they would share some unexpected honest moments with him. Perhaps then he ended up idolising her, and also the conversation, when she wanted to leave; idolisation gave way to its opposite.

In the original, after the murder of Marion, her sister Lila (Vera Miles) enters the story. I felt that unlike Marion as portrayed by Janet Leigh, Lila appears as your classic Hitchcock or even 1940s/50s heroin, a film idol, a woman of style, manner, ‘education’, charm, fashion etc. So I decided to edit her out of the film until her appearance at Bates Motel towards the end. It seems the nature of the story, Hitchcock’s influence, the plotline, her scenes with the character of Norman and the atmosphere of the set itself, as well as of course as anything else the work of Elohim caused her to let go this quality of being the idol (or star).
However I did edit around her character to keep the flow of the piece, where I felt that scenes/shots lingered a little too long on her, were obvious etc.

I dispensed with any court room/custody scenes towards the end, instead creating a crossfade from the revealed mumified skeleton of Bates’ mother to Marion’s car being dredged from the pond. The symbolism of this being that with the revealing of Bates’ alter ego and indeed his mother’s corpse, the answer to the mystery is provided.

As I see it, Norman idolised his mother, felt he couldn’t live without her, perhaps came from a very difficult background…. It would seem she and he to some degree demonised the rest of the world beyond its inherent fallen state (the way cults do), and that in the end Norman couldn’t bear to live, to go on without her, once she passed on, so he kept her body in the house, dressed and in the chair etc, and then himself began to act out the role of her, thereby feeling that he was preserving her personality, essence, or even perhaps channeling her spirit; that he was not alone.
However over time this invented character became a way for him to act out and to do certain things that he himself felt that he couldn’t do.

In a way it’s like one taking a drug, or getting very drunk and saying that the drug or drink ‘made me do it.’ Well, no, the person does it, the drug/drink is the excuse, a way to justify certain behaviour, for which purpose it’s taken in the first place.
For instance the drug cocaine cannot in and of itself cause someone to have sex with someone else, yet people associate it with sex.

Hitchcock makes the point that while Norman is an extreme case of delusions/insanity and one that’s combined with violence/murderous intention, all sinners actually are capable of indifference to human life, and can be sadistic, hooked on the superiority trip – are deluded in different ways, can indeed even murder and think that it’s not murder (child murder or abortion, warfare, police actions, spy/clandestine network activities, capital punishment, pleading insanity i.e. ’mental conditions’ etc).

Indeed human society is usually deluded, and becomes more so when the individuals that make it up go into greater delusions.

n.b. Was it really possible for Norman Bates to do the other voice?
Well, if you’re a guy…. try holding your nose and talking up an octave, older American accent helps etc.