Psycho (1)

Psycho

“we’re all in our private traps, clamped in them, and none of us can ever get out. We scratch and claw but only at the air, only at each other. And for all of it, we never budge an inch.” — Norman Bates

To start with the overall site of Bates’ motel and the house, we can say that both the motel and the house are enclosed at a marginalized space away from the world. The motel and house are located along a previous highway that connects Phoenix and California, but after the highway was moved and the road became local, the motel is then deserted where nobody ever stops and visit the motel unless they have gotten off the main road. When Marion diverges from the main highway due to her need to hide away from the public and then eventually drives into the motel, she leaves the world of the road adventure that is defined by her encounters with the patrol police, car dealers, highway signs, and car lights, and then enters the secluded world of the Bates. This action of getting off from the road is a form of threshold crossing from public to private, and similar to Tracy’s entry to the family store in Blackmail, Marion also enters an unknown and entrapping private sphere that does not have a way out. Within the enclosure of the Bates’ estates, if we look into the two architecture separately, the gradient from public to private can be seen within the two disconnected and extremely different architecture. The motel To a degree, the motel acts as a long horizontal threshold that abstractly connects the outside to the most private house. The L-shaped motel as a threshold with depth also extends itself in both directions (both inwards and outwards) to present a much longer succession of private rooms. The sequence of private rooms starts from the hotel room occupied by Marion and Sam in Phoenix, to Marion’s own apartment, to Marion’s motel room, to the motel office and parlor, to the mother’s room, and the basement at the end. Marion was not invited to In terms of

the duality of the two architecture

Francois Truffaut might be the first one to point out the architectural contrast between the horizontal Bates’ motel and the vertical Bates’ house. And as Norman keeps running in between the two architecture, or the two female characters, we could say that he is crossing the threshold between the two. Here the threshold is not a physical architectural form, but a passage. The Folk Victorian houses, California Gothic (Gingerbread) Parlor as a piece of the dark, Victorian mansion transferred to the motel The camouflages of Norman’s peephole

Peeping hole

Thresholds in the movie Psycho also operates on the level of visibility or the action of looking.

When Norman peeps through the open hole from the

The threshold of such is an in-between place between the interior and exterior. The thinness of such threshold is dramatically contrasted with

Architectural details that frames or blocks the view Translucent window, closed Venetian blinds, shower curtains, dark reflection glasses, windshield blurred by the rainstorm. Or even swing light bulbs, mirrors.

“Move form a scenographic space to an obscenographic space” — > marks the structure of the film Compression — entrapment — encasing — bird imager

Mirror as the entrapment (no way to return)