Cinema Bestius: Psycho

At the time of its original release, one critic called Psycho, "a blot on an honorable career.” Most critics at the time were either unimpressed or openly hostile to the film. When it emerged as one of the biggest hits of the decade, many critics changed their tune… to something with strings.

#8 – Psycho

Psycho may be the film your Pope has seen the most times. During my tenure teaching high-school film classes, many other films on the syllabus came and went, but Psycho always remained. I used to joke with my students that it was Illinois State law: a teacher had to screen Psycho in any basic film survey course or risk fine and imprisonment. There were semesters where I would see Psycho four times a day. There’s a recipe for a happy, healthy life. I got to know the film… intimately.

The Plot In Brief: Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) meets for a secret tryst with her lover Sam Loomis (John Gavin) over a long lunch hour. Both are frustrated because financial circumstances will not allow them to marry. Back at the office, Marion brazenly steals $40,000 and sets off to share it with Sam. Tiring after a long night of driving, Marion decides to stop at a roadside motel to get a proper night’s sleep. The proprietor, Norman Bates (Tony Perkins) seems like a nice enough fellow, but he harbors many secrets.

Psycho is a film of many firsts: the first time Paramount vetoed a Hitchcock project (he wound up financing it himself with Paramount only distributing); the first time that Hitchcock worked with a low budget, using his television series crew; the first time a major star was dispatched halfway through a film; the first time a flushing toilet was shown on film; and the first time this level of violence was ever shown or suggested. It was also the first time audiences were required to watch the film from its very beginning—Hitchcock instituted a policy that no one was to be seated after the first ten minutes. Disappointed latecomers had to wait for the next screening, which led to big lines outside the theater and much interest from passersby.

At its core, Psycho is about loneliness. We witness the chance meeting of two impossibly lonely people and no good comes of it. Characters are vulnerable when alone: Marion in her small shower, Detective Arbogast sneaking back into the house alone. Loneliness leads to the grave. The film whispers that human connection is important; there is safety in numbers. The sheer number of characters in the police office at the film’s conclusion supports this. In the film’s famous last shot, Norman is still alone. Psycho is the story of a character so lonely, he allowed another person into his life in the most unconventional way imaginable. One of Hitchcock’s neatest tricks was marketing this serious meditation on loneliness and despair as a quickie exploitation horror movie.

Three years ago, I wrote an appreciation of Tony Perkins’ performance for this site in which I stated,

“I am impressed by all of Perkins’ line readings, but I think the pièce de résistance may be what he brings to one of the film’s simplest lines: ‘She needs me.’ Think about those three words—say them aloud. Most of us would emphasize the word ‘need,’ wouldn’t we? ‘She NEEDS me.’ Yet Perkins emphasizes the word ‘me’: ‘She needs ME.’ There is something so uncanny about that reading, so right for the material – it speaks volumes about the complicated relationship between Norman Bates and his mother. The character of Mother is not defined by her need; she is defined through Norman, and Perkins was astute enough to puzzle this out and manifest that through his line reading.”

This column is timely because an interesting new documentary premiered at the Sundance Film Festival just days ago. According to The Hollywood Reporter, “78/52 is an in-depth examination of the iconic shower scene from Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, which required 78 setups and has 52 cuts. The shot-for-shot breakdown comes from writer-director Alexandre O. Philippe, who interviewed filmmakers like Guillermo del Toro, Bret Easton Ellis and Karyn Kusama about the lasting impact of the sequence that pushed the boundaries of chaste American filmmaking.”

We can all look forward to that! So take a shower, acolytes, I am taking all of you to the MOVIES.

For almost 30 years, I would spend an entire class period analyzing the famous shower scene, freezing the frame on a VHS tape and lecturing about camera angles, technique, and the film’s production history. After Hitchcock’s death, Saul Bass, who designed the film’s opening credits and is listed as “pictorial consultant,” claimed that HE (not Hitchcock) had directed the iconic shower scene. That was bunk. No less an authority than Janet Leigh—who, after all, was IN THE SHOWER the whole time, insisted that no one directed her and the scene but Hitchcock.

Legend has it that, when the scene was edited, Hitchcock showed it to the Production Code Office for approval; they rejected it. Two of the five members of the board saw unacceptable nudity. Hitchcock waited a few days, then showed the board the exact same sequence with no changes. Now, the three members who had not seen any nudity claimed they saw some, and the two members who originally did said that they no longer did. At loggerheads over what to do, the Production code office approved the scene as edited.

Oh, and it is Shasta brand chocolate syrup being used as blood in the shower scene, not Hershey’s or Bosco. Some accounts get that crazy detail wrong. Assistant director Hilton Green has said that the crew used Shasta because it had just come out in a convenient squeeze bottle.

Many, many years ago during the first flowering of the laserdisc era (era) I became interested in the commentary tracks that started accompanying classic films. Using a painfully makeshift and amateur setup, I made my own scene-specific commentary track for Psycho by recording a laserdisc onto VHS and substituting yours truly on a microphone for the film’s soundtrack. I used to lend the tape to students who missed any of my classroom lectures on the film. As it often happens when materials are loaned to students, eventually I loaned it out and never got it back. I was very sad because I had put so much work into it, and I would love to hear it again, if only to hear a slice of my past.

One of my goals in my upcoming retirement, when free time will be more than plentiful, is to recreate that commentary track and make it available on F This Movie (#PopePromise). Patrick has said he would love to post that as the podcast one week. Since I will be essaying that commentary track ALONE, two thirds of the way through, I will be violently murdered.

Psycho’s Three Miracles: Hitchcock’s directing prowess reaches a new peak as he guides the audience like a magician, misdirecting us over and over again, so the final reveal is devastating and delightful; Tony Perkin’s performance, so affecting that no one could shake it and he ended up typecast for life; and Bernard Herrmann’s beautiful, sad, shocking score, a funeral oratorio for strings.

In nomine Hitchcock, et Herrmann, y spiritu Perkins, Amen. “Mother… my mother… what’s the expression? She isn’t quite herself today.”

Cinema Bestius: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

We no longer need to search to find this black comedy. Or this terrific movie.

#9 - Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

The Pope remembers staying up late as a boy (#TheOtherYoungPope) in order to watch Dr. Strangelove on local television. Chicago CBS affiliate Channel 2 was often showing it at midnight or two in the morning. I thought I was the only one who knew about this incredible film. Years later, I read an interview in Chicago magazine with the Channel 2 employee who scheduled the movies. He admitted the station would just show crap in the afternoon and early evening; that’s when everyone was watching. He said those people would watch anything. Great movies, he explained, were scheduled in the wee, small hours in the morning, when he knew discerning film fanatics would seek them out. I felt strangely vindicated.

I also remember seeing my first copy of Leonard Maltin’s indispensible TV Movies book when I was eight or nine years old. It was an elephantine dictionary of films often shown on commercial television. In the bookstore, I searched its pages for the listing on Dr. Strangelove. I thought I was the only one who knew about this incredible film. There it was! I decided to buy the book (and every subsequent edition).

I remember when my high-school Film Study teacher screened Dr. Strangelove in class… to total silence. Three weeks later I drove to the Varsity Theater in Evanston to see it on the big screen. The audience there laughed so loudly they drowned out much of the dialogue. This was one of my first lessons in the huge divide between “school” and “real life.” I still thank that teacher, Mr. Ron Johnson, from the bottom of my heart for trying to introduce us to the classics.

The Plot In Brief: General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) has a theory that the Russians are sapping Americans’ “precious bodily fluids” by fluoridating our water. He orders a bomber wing to fly into Russian airspace and drop their atomic payloads. Ripper’s second in command, Group-Captain Lionel Mandrake (Peter Sellers), tries to convince Ripper to give him the code that will recall the bombers.

In the Pentagon’s War Room, General Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott) counsels President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers) about what to do next. Turgidson advises an all-out sneak attack in an effort to catch the Russians “with their pants down.” The President decides to call the Russian Premier and provide information to help the Russians shoot down our planes instead.

The President’s other advisor is Dr. Strangelove (Peter Sellers), a former Nazi rocket scientist who was brought to the United States after World War II to work in the defense department. Strangelove has a mechanical hand that refuses to follow orders. He suggests that Americans can stay alive after a nuclear holocaust in some of our deeper mineshafts.

Meanwhile, Major King Kong (Slim Pickens, in the role of a lifetime) pilots his bomber plane towards its Russian target. Damaged by a Russian missile, the plane continues its course to its target, flying so low that it cannot be picked up on radar. Will the planet be destroyed? Should fighting be allowed in the War Room? Will we meet again?

Dr. Strangelove is the funniest black comedy ever made—at every turn humans are thwarted by the very technology designed to keep them safe. At one point American troops are sent in to fight… American troops. When Pickens’ bomber plane is hit, the auto-destruct mechanism on the radio scrambler is damaged… and blows itself up. Something is very wrong when the fate of the world rests on a Coca-Cola vending machine.

The performances in the film are without peer. Peter Sellers has the flashiest job, given that he plays three separate roles (and was supposed to play a fourth until a broken ankle kept him from essaying the Major Kong part), but George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, and Slim Pickens all give Sellers a run for his money, delivering standout performances and demonstrating the age-old rule that the best way to play comedy is to play it straight.

In fact, every time I watch the film, I am more and more taken with George C. Scott’s performance, all the more because Scott was not known as a comedian. Roger Ebert was a fan too. In his Great Movies series, Ebert writes,

“[Scott’s] performance is the funniest thing in the movie […] I found myself paying special attention to the tics and twitches, the grimaces and eyebrow arching, the sardonic smiles and gum chewing, and I enjoyed the way Scott approached the role as a duet for voice and facial expression. That can be dangerous for an actor. [….] Kubrick, whose attention to the smallest detail in every frame was obsessive, would have been aware of George C. Scott's facial gymnastics, and yet he endorsed them, and when you watch Strangelove you can see why. Scott's work is hidden in plain view. […] Yet you don't consciously notice his expressions because Scott sells them with the energy and conviction of his performance. He means what he says so urgently that the expressions accompany his dialogue instead of distracting from it.”

This movie also marks my first faltering steps away from film fandom and towards film scholarship. Gerald Mast’s book The Comic Mind spends many pages on Dr. Strangelove. Reading it as a boy, I was knocked out that a filmmaker could add so much subtext to a seemingly simple black comedy. Mast posits that Kubrick equates sex with death: from the two planes “refueling” each other during the opening credits, to the sexually suggestive names of all the principle characters, to Strangelove’s suggestion that man must abandon monogamous sexual relationships if the planet is to be repopulated. This was heady stuff (heh heh) for a twelve-year-old, and only left me CRAVING MORE!

In a film full of favorite scenes, my very favorite is Peter Seller’s phone call to the Russian Premier. Rumor has it that Sellers improvised great swaths of dialogue during filming. Proof of this can be seen in the film itself. Watch Peter Bull as Ambassador de Sadesky in the background of the scene. At several points, he is obviously trying not to laugh. Apparently, Sellers ruined take after take of the scene as cast members and crew exploded with laughter. Here is the beginning of his monologue—but you owe it to yourselves to check out the whole thing here:

President Muffley

Hello? Uh, Hello? Hello, Dmitri? Listen, I can't hear too well, do you suppose you could turn the music down just a little? A-ha, that's much better. Yeah, yes. Fine, I can hear you now, Dmitri. Clear and plain and coming through fine—I'm coming through fine too, eh? Good, then. Well then, as you say, we're both coming through fine. Good. Well, it's good that you're fine, and—and I'm fine. I agree with you. It's great to be fine. [Laughs] Now then, Dmitri, you know how we've always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the bomb, the BOMB, Dmitri, the hydrogen bomb. Well now, what happened is, uh, one of our base commanders, he had a sort of - Well, he went a little funny in the head. You know—just a little funny. And uh, he went and did a silly thing. Well, I'll tell you what he did. He ordered his planes...to attack your country…

Well, let me finish, Dmitri. Let me finish, Dmitri. Well, listen, how do you think I feel about it? Can you imagine how I feel about it, Dmitri? Why do you think I'm calling you—just to say hello? Of course I like to speak to you! Of course I like to say hello! Not now, but any time, Dmitri. I'm just calling up to tell you something terrible has happened. It's a friendly call. Of course, it's a friendly call. Listen-- if it wasn't friendly… you probably wouldn't have even got it.

Dr. Strangelove’s Three Miracles: Flawless casting, cross-cutting that has never been bested in an American narrative film, and Peter Seller’s amazing versatility in three major roles. No matter where we look, Sellers seems to be the boss of our collective fate.

En nomine Kubrick, y Sellers, y spiritu Terry Southern, Amen…

Because I am capable of being JUST as sorry as you are.

Home for the Holidays: The Lion in Winter

by Rob DiCristino

“I’m vilifying you, for God’s sake! Pay attention!”

Many families are a complicated Molotov cocktail of egos, resentments, and unresolved complications. You do what you can to get along for most of the year, but holiday gatherings have a tendency to exacerbate things: First there’s your dad, who hates you. Nothing you can do about that. Then there’s your mom and sister, who haven’t spoken in a few weeks but will spend all day pretending like that thing that happened never happened. Your cousin will show up late and take his yearly opportunity to brag about how he went to a better college than you did. Your aunt will get drunk and make you watch funny dogs on YouTube until dinner. And how long has grandpa been so racist? It’s tricky, to say the least. Maybe it’s better to just have it all out. Unload all the dirty laundry, throw some food at each other, and move on with your lives. That’s essentially The Lion in Winter, Anthony Harvey’s 1968 film based on James Goldman’s Broadway play of the same name. It’s the story of a family gathering gone wrong — or, in this case, a royal family gathering gone wrong.

France, 1183 AD: King Henry II of England (Peter O’Toole) holds a Christmas court, hoping to name an heir to his vast empire. He gathers his three surviving sons: the brave Richard (Anthony Hopkins), the conniving Geoffrey (John Castle), and the sniveling John (Nigel Terry), each of whom hopes to be the next king. Overseeing the proceedings are King Phillip II of France (twenty-four-year-old Timothy Dalton, in his first film role) and his sister Alais (Jane Merrow), who, while technically betrothed to Richard, has been Henry’s concubine since she was very young. Gentleman T-Dalts hopes to hold Henry to his promises and ensure that the peace between England and France can con-tinue, while Alais, who loves Henry, hopes not to be sold off to one of his sons. The final piece of the puzzle is Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine (Katharine Hepburn). Though Henry has kept his wife locked in a tower for a decade, he invites Eleanor to join the court and help name his successor. Let the palace intrigue begin.

While there’s plenty of real-life historical context to The Lion in Winter (namely that Eleanor and Richard once led a failed revolt against Henry in response to various treasons, infidelities, and the alleged murder of a Catholic archbishop), the layman only needs to know that some drama has gone down that has the entire family gunning for each other’s throats. Consequently, each of them approaches the Christmas court with their own agenda: Richard, whom Eleanor favors, is prepared to go to war for the crown (a war he’d very likely win). John, whom Henry prefers, is an entitled shitbag who expects his dad to give him what he wants. Geoffery resents his parents for their indifference toward him and sabotages his brothers’ plans from behind the scenes. Phillip, sick of Henry’s condescension and eager to prove his mettle, plots with Geoffrey to provoke an internal war. Then there’s Eleanor, who just wants Henry to suffer for years of mistreatment and doesn’t seem to care who wins as long as he loses. The whole film is essentially a series of dramatic gestures and vindictive arguments — just like your holiday gatherings!

Peter O’Toole and Katharine Hepburn were born to chew scenery, and there’s plenty to go around in The Lion in Winter. James Goldman’s adaptation of his play reads like the wry, ironic lovechild of William Shakespeare and Aaron Sorkin, and the leads deliver it with all the speed and ferocity of two people who are literally trying to kill each other with acting. There’s a quotable line for every occasion (“When I bellow, bellow back!” “I have a confession: I don’t much like our children.” “I could have conquered Europe — all of it — but I had women in my life.”), and it’s impossible not to fall in love with every one of these horrible, horrible people. Another standout is Jane Merrow as Alais, whose inability to get Henry’s attention makes her quiet indignation all the more tragic. The Daltonator shines, as well: he plays King Phillip like a coiled spring, a snake waiting for exactly the right moment to strike. While the production design and music give The Lion in Winter a layer of real authenticity, this is a film that thrives on its truly remarkable lead performances.

That said, it’s easy to get lost in all the backstabbing and character machinations. Alliances crumble minutes after they’re made. Love and devotion are sworn as easily as they’re taken away. It seems that these people will say anything to get what they want, and all they seem to want is for everyone else to be miserable. But that’s the fun. There’s a great late-night scene in Phillip’s bedroom in which prince after prince approaches him with his own secret plan for victory, not knowing that the others are hidden in various parts of the room (Eleanor even lampshades it later: “Don’t you know? There was a scene with beds and tapestries, and many things got said”). It’s such a beautifully absurd scene that we almost lose track of what’s supposed to be at stake. In fact, the real irony is that all this bombast amounts to very little: no one dies, Henry never chooses an heir, and Eleanor is sent back to her prison until Easter. Everyone sits on their pain and anger for another year. Family!

Though The Lion in Winter might not be the most conventional or comforting Christmas movie, it might be the most authentic. It portrays the holiday season as equal parts celebration and commiseration, which it is. We come together with family a few times a year to circle the wagons and figure out where we stand. We talk about our worlds and what’s bothering us about them. We make the occasional confession and start the occasional fight. We might not all try to overthrow our parents’ empire, but sometimes it feels like we should. In the end, though, there’s hope underneath all the scheming and backstabbing: in their last scene together, after they’ve come within inches of executing their sons and narrowly avoided a trip to Rome to have their marriage annulled, Henry and Eleanor share a moment of peace. They’ve done everything they could do destroy each other, and yet here they remain. That’s family, isn’t it? As Henry puts it, “We have each other, and for all I know, that’s what hope is.”

Cinema Bestius: The Graduate

“The point is I don’t love your wife. I love your daughter, sir.”

#17 – The Graduate

The Graduate (1967) and I go way back. I saw it for the first time when I was 11 years old. I had just received the worst report card of my life, and my parents were livid. First they yelled at me, then they went out to dinner. They went out to dinner a lot, back in the days when it was appropriate to leave a sixth-grader home alone to fend for himself with a Swanson TV Dinner. My awful report card made me feel like something the cat dragged in. I turned to the CBS Wednesday night movie for solace and succor. CBS showed me The Graduate.

Sure, today I may be the infallible Pope of Film, but at 11 I was at a low point in my life that I thought would never end. This movie made me feel better—it showed me that tough situations could be overcome, and that the approbation of one’s parents need not be the end of the world. I am convinced that millions of people have seen this movie and found similar reasons to relate. Thanks, The Graduate.

The Plot In Brief: Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) has just graduated from college and doesn't know what to do with the rest of his life. Living again with his parents the summer after graduation, he begins a torrid, clandestine affair with a married friend of his parents, Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft). Realizing that this relationship can go nowhere, he attempts to break it off. He is unsuccessful. His parents badger him into going on a date with the Robinson’s daughter, Elaine (Katharine Ross). Benjamin falls in love with Elaine. Big problem.

Apostle Patrick and I once recorded a podcast on The Graduate—one of my “Top Ten” favorites we’ve ever done. When I began my tenure as a high school Film Studies teacher, there was no such thing as a podcast! So imagine how strange it was when one year, tired of assigning the same old critical essay on The Graduate to my classes, I began to assign listening to the podcast as a homework assignment. This was either the height of lunacy or the height of vanity. I was surprised how many of them wouldn’t do it – they couldn’t even invest an hour. And this is a movie they like!

For its recent Blu-ray release of The Graduate, Criterion Collection ported over an astounding amount of bonus materials from its earlier LaserDisc release, notably audition footage of both Hoffman and Ross and several actors who did not get the part. It’s essential viewing, and really interesting to see other actors’ interpretations of film characters that have become iconic. It’s also interesting to note that Charles Grodin, who auditioned for the part of Benjamin, did not grant permission to include his audition; his voice is actually edited out of the audition of a would-be Elaine.

My students, who are mostly seniors, see the film very differently than I did on that fateful Wednesday when I was only 11. They're just about to hit the epoch that Benjamin experiences in the film: graduation, and the “what now” that inevitably comes right after. Benjamin has no idea what to do with the rest of his life; my students, too, are largely without a clue, beginning the transition into adult life with no clear path. I prescribe watching this film as the antidote to the tragic and paralyzing ennui that everyone faces during such a time.

One cannot talk about The Graduate without talking about its musical score, which was groundbreaking for its time. Instead of hiring a standard composer to write a standard movie score, director Mike Nichols used already existing music from the catalog of Simon & Garfunkel, a then-popular folk duo. Nichols convinced them to write a couple of new songs for the movie, but didn’t like any of the songs the duo presented. However, Paul Simon had been working on a song called “Mrs. Roosevelt;” they changed the lyric to “Mrs. Robinson” and sang what they had for Nichols, who loved it. The song was a radio hit and became emblematic of the movie. I bet most of you have heard it, and may have formed the (mistaken) opinion that The Graduate features a surprise cameo from Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees.

Simon & Garfunkel’s music even influences Nichols’s editing of the film. In my favorite sequence, Nichols fragments space and time to show the endless existential slog that Benjamin’s life has become. The song “The Sound of Silence” plays over the sequence, and Nichols cuts the film fragments to the rhythms of the song, which fades before the sequence ends. The soundtrack goes to silence, then to the song “April, Come She Will.” It’s as if Benjamin (or Nichols, or the audience) is listening to an album and simply let it play into the next song, and the pace of the editing changes to match the second song.

The Graduate’s Three Miracles: Dustin Hoffman’s understated, hilarious performance, which anchors the whole enterprise; Nichols’s “Let’s Try This and See If It Works” direction, which still seems fresh and unexpected almost fifty years later; and Simon & Garfunkel’s score, which is lovely, haunting, and delightful, even given that one song is repeated three times.

“In Nomine Nichols, et Hoffman, y spiritu Webb… Amen.”

I would like to thank my eighth period College Composition class for their assistance in writing this column: Matthew Allegretti, Sophia Alsherry, Jasmin Capetillo, Allie Cline, AJ Coleman, Emily Engwall, Elizabeth Garay, Brad Hurt, Madeline Kokobe, Izzie Kopczewski, Theo Kotsioris, Erik Ortiz, Thom Panos, Alexis Robinson, Genesis Rosas, Jack Shroeder, Media Tafreshi, Ian Warrington, and Jake Wirth. You guys are the bestius.