I was very surprised that they were going to do this uh, Psycho remake because it is kind of sacred ground. For people who live in the religion of film, this is, like, sanctimonious stuff, and so you're messing with the Bible.
Hitchcock's Psycho is a work of art, the… More
I was very surprised that they were going to do this uh, Psycho remake because it is kind of sacred ground. For people who live in the religion of film, this is, like, sanctimonious stuff, and so you're messing with the Bible.
Hitchcock's Psycho is a work of art, the "Mona Lisa" is a work of art, "David" is a work of art, Van Gogh's paintings are a work of art. Why do you re-create a work of art? I don't get it.
Gus Van Sant's heroic, I would say, act, I would say suicidal. Only someone as deranged and talented as Gus would think about doing this, it's like, uh, Scientology, it's like some people are intrigued, some people are joining. some people are, like, totally aghast it exists, afraid. I wish they didn't think they had to do it, I think there are too many filmmakers today who are recycling old ideas, it's part of the whole postmodern sensibility of recycling, redoing as if we have no new things to do, new subjects, new attitudes. I think we're appropriating the legacy of-of a classic to say, "Don't venerate these things too much".
Over Gus Van Sants remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) there hangs, like a neon sign in the sky, the single question Why?? The idea of even doing this remake it cames from having Gus meetings with the studios and having them say, "We do have some projects you might be interested in" It's the ultimate postmodern conceit the shot-for-shot remake of a classic film. Even down to the use of the same script, the same musical score and the director making a cameo in exactly the same scene that Alfred Hitchcock did in the original. Psycho 98 is surely the ultimate fin du siecle celebration of the view that all originality is dead and that all creativity is left with anymore is the endless quoting and reshuffling of the past. Psycho seems constructed as a vanity exercise, a conceit the same way that commercials quote and parody scenes from films or people construct three-dimensional dioramas of classic works of art one that seems to have been made more just to see if it could be done than to serve any real purpose. For what point can a film that admits the original cannot be bettered so much so that it can only copy it shot for shot possibly serve it is a work that has openly and loudly cheered the unsurpassable superiority of the original even before it has opened? And needless to say Psycho earned itself a thorough hammering even before a single commentator had seen a frame of it for its daring to desecrate a classic ? some online film sites even called for a boycott. Indeed the more one looks at the thinking that has motivated the remake, the more there seems to be an overwhelming a sense of pointlessness to it. It panders to a lowest common denominator in an audience the film's sole commercial hopes lay in the belief that modern 16-25 year old audiences are too lazy to watch a film that is made in black-and-white or without contemporary stars. Yet the irony of it is that the niche audience it is aimed at that I spoke to found the whole exercise slow-paced and tedious, they being too familiar with the modern psycho-thriller conventions that the original Psycho created to find much originality or novelty to it.
Gus Van Sant has made some fine commercial films To Die For (1995) and Good Will Hunting (1997) and critically acclaimed hits like Milk (2008) but also balances these with films that are made with an eccentricity that seems to willfully challenge an audience's patience the likes of My Own Private Idaho (1991) and the universally reviled Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1994). The latter two were more of a challenge than most audiences and reviewers were prepared to tolerate and it seems that with Psycho Van Sant allowed his penchant for eccentricity to bite off more than he can chew.
In its favour, Psycho is never as ghastly a desecration of the original that other films like the campy King Kong (1976) or The Haunting (1999) remakes were, or one that messes with the effectiveness of the original in an attempt to appeal to a more upbeat flavour like The Vanishing (1993) and Diabolique (1996) remakes did. The sense of desecration that exists is more in the conceit that someone has dared to mess with one of the untouchable classics. Being a shot-for-shot remake, Psycho 98 closely adheres to the original and cannot help but work in many of the places that the original did.
The remake makes a number of minor changes. The $40,000 that Marion Crane steals is inflation-adjusted to $400,000; Van Sant is free to show more graphic blood-letting during the shower scene; and there is now a spider that crawls out of the mouth of the mummified remains of Mrs Bates. But the addition of colour works against the film. It bleeds out all of the stark, atmospheric effectiveness the original had. The depiction of ordinary Arizona desert landscape here lacks any of the same alienating effectiveness that the black-and-white photography lent to the original. Similarly so the black-and-white made Alfred Hitchcock's low angle shots up on Norman Bates framed by his stuffed birds seem to eerily foreshadow something sinister but the colour robs the shots of any atmosphere. And without black-and-white the Bates house up on the hill behind the motel loses all of its looming, foreboding Gothic ominousness.
The most radical changes Gus Van Sant makes are to bring out something much more overtly sexual in the material. We get a brief side glimpse of Anne Heche's breast as she undresses for the shower and a brief labial shot as she keels over dead. There are sounds of panting from neighbouring rooms during the motel room tryst between Marion and Loomis that opens the film; the client whose money Marion steals is more overtly flirtatious with her; the visit to Norman's room shows a stash of pornography. But the most radical affront to purists is Van Sant's having Norman clearly heard to be masturbating as he peeps at Marion undressing in the shower.
The film's publicity proudly quotes Alfred Hitchcock's daughter saying that remaking a film shot for shot is exactly something her father would do. (She seems unaware of the fact that Hitchcock did remake one of his own films 1934's The Man Who Knew Too Much in 1956 although not shot-for-shot). One thing Hitchcock would never have done though is cast Anne Heche. The petite and almost anorexically thin Anne Heche is far from a Hitchcock woman Hitchcock always preferred well-rounded women, usually frosted blondes Kim Novak, Tippi Hedren, Janet Leigh. You know exactly what Norman means here in his line when he says that Marion eats like a bird. It could be a line coined to describe Anne Heche's performance she seems all twitchy, nervous energy. But while she conveys that part quite well, there seems to be almost nothing else to the character.
However she is far better than Vince Vaughn's Norman Bates. Alas for Vaughn, Anthony Perkins was Norman Bates. It was a piece of casting that was a truly harmonious marriage of actor and the role at hand. And Anthony Perkins nervous and twitchy, shy boy next door quality became so completely Norman that it ended up typecasting him for the rest of his career. And while Vince Vaughn is a good actor, what you end up watching here is his handsome good looks made down to an unnaturally pasty pallor and him merely imitating Anthony Perkins's shy twitchiness. It is like watching an impressionist imitate another actor. He maintains a certain twitch and a smile, but it is an affectation more than it is a performance.
Far better are some of the supporting performances. William H. Macy makes for a surprisingly good Arbogast. Macy has developed a tendency toward laidback characters that seem like genially ineffectual nuclear family patriarchs caught in a time warp from the 1950s mouthing boy scout euphenisms. He and Gus Van Sant do a good job of working with Macy?s amiable, ineffectual persona while showing a sharp intelligence hidden beneath the surface. Also extremely good is Viggo Mortensen one of the most underrated actors of the 1990s ? who makes Sam Loomis a solid, earthy small town working man.
Gus Van Sant would later return to the psycho genre with the interesting Elephant (2003) about a high-school shooting.
My reaction to the remake of Psycho: Please don't do it, if something's not broke, don't try to fix it. They're gonna get crucified, why would they want to redo that one? If people want to see a Hitchcock film, they should go watch the original Psycho.
You do not try to remake perfection.
