Marion Crane is a lead character in Psycho (1960) and was played by actress Janet Leigh.
The character of Mary Crane was originally created by author Robert Bloch for his 1959 novel, Psycho. During the early stages of the film's production, the studio's research department found there were two people with that name in the Phoenix area and Hitchcock was asked to select from a list of alternative first names from which he chose "Marion".
Tuesday, October 23, 2018
On the Uncanny
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A sad case of "someone" trying exaggerate his or her own importance by IMPOSING a bizarre fabricated "INTERPRETATION" ON –– and reading fictitious HIDDEN MEANINGS INTO –– an admittedly bizarre story that was obviously contrived primarily to make saleable popular entertainment.
What Marian wanted was sexy, muscular JOHN GAVIN and a comfortable, middle-class life with HIM.
The story makes audiences uneasy because it powerfully suggests that we never know what we might run into even during a mundane transaction such as registering for the night during a heavy rain at a small motel off the beaten path.
Hitchcock plays his audience like the proverbial violin. He is constantly TOYING with us to engender the precise responses he wants to create.
If we must be critical, the plot is preposterous, rather silly, and hopessly contrived, but we the audience are willing to suspend our disbelief, because the music, the settings, the series of secondary characters each with his own set of quirks and memorable traits combine with the atmosphere of mounting tension, guilt and anxiety Janet Leigh has created in herself by yielding to an extraordinarily foolish impulse.
We sympathize witho Janet's character not because she is especially virtuous, worthy or appealng, but because all the world loves a lover, and we, the audience, want to see her get together with sexy John Gavin and live happily ever after.
Hitchock was a master of casting SPELLS over his audience, but I doubt VERY much if he, himself, saw or felt any "deep hidden meanings" in his work.
I'll go out on a limb and say if anything the HOUSE is the REAL Star of the Show –– the TRUE Central Character.
To undescore my point try to imagine the movie where that dark, brooding, frankly menacing abode were replaced by a ninteen-fifties-style ranch house or a split level. The whole thing would fall part in a heartbeat. The same is true for Bernard Herrmann's eerie, wonderfully evocative music.
I'm sure if he were here, Hitchcock would laugh himself silly at the strained, utterly spurious "Freudian Interpretation," the flat-voiced, deadly dull, pointedly detached, unemotional female narrator, who sounds like a pretentious graduate student from a third rate college trying to sound smart, brings to the video.
Hitchcock like all great entertainers was a master at creating fascinating ILLUSIONS and spell-binding ATMOSPHERES that take audiences away from the dreariness of their workaday lives and places them in glamorous or grotesque situstations where they can experience the thrill of VIOLENCE and imminent DANGER at NO RISK to THEMSELVES –– a world of artfully crafted vicarious thrills and often glamorous intrigue that never plumbs our emotional depths or touches our hearts, despite the often dreadful events unfolding on screen.
Hitchcock without half-trying turns his audience into contented VOYEURS.
What he produced is certainly "art" but it has ittle or nothing to do with morality, sprituality, deep seated psychoses, or the made up world of psychoanlysis –– a CULT created out of whole cloth to cater to the perceived needs of the Pathologiclly Self-Absorbed.
Most of the time a spade is just a spade –– not a "SYMBOL" for Something Else.
Personally, I LOVED the interpretation. :)
I heretofore had never connected the Marion/Norman stories.
Oh dear! I thought you had lived long enough to have moved past The Impressionable Age, Thersites.
Alas! You are still in a vulnerable condition that permits you to fall prey to late-nineteenth and twentieth-century versions of "The Pied Piper" eager to lead you astray and imprison your future in the bowels of an impenetrable Mountain of Gloom, Doom, Deceit, Deprivation, Despair and Damnation.
I am anythng but a cycnic, but the cockamamie "theories" dreamt up by manipulative, politically ambitious, even fiendish JEWISH intellectuals in the late-nineteenth and early twenteth centuries have never fooled ME for an instant.
Their maleficent tripe doesn't pass the smell test.
The real life sicko Ed Gein was the inspiration for Norman Bates' taxidermy fetish.
If you enjoy the prospect of feeling the faint cold thrill of fear tingling through your veins, I highly recommend three short stories well-known to avid readers of literary anthologies
The Beckoning Fair One by Oliver Onions
The Mezzotint by M.R. James
Afterward by Edith Wharton
And how could I have forgotten what is possibly THE greatest Tale of the Supernatural yet written:
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
You haven't really lived till you've been isolated in a lonely English Country house to be put in charge of Miles and Flora, two young children whose behavior is disturbingly abnormal, and then find yourself confronted by the ghosts of Miss Jessell, your predecessor whose life ended tragically, and arch fiend Peter Quint, her lover who wickedly led the children, especially young Miles, into "strange ways," the nature of which is only hinted at darkly.
Freudian analysts hav laready ha a field day "analyzing" James's masterwork, but even THEY have no been able to mar the spellbinding power of the eerie tale.
And shame on me for failing to mention earlier Edgar Allan Poe's TALES of TERROR and the SUPERNATURAL to say nothing of THE RAVEN.
Nathaniel Hawthorne too made significant contributions to the genre.
Isn't it astonishing how these and other great masters of Fiction and Poetry neither know nor needed any "help" whatsoever from SIGGY FREUD and the regrettable horde of followers who got swept into his wake?
Wouldn't you love to read what Freudonistas would make of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow?
WOO HOO!
The only ghost I ever saw
Was dressed in mechlin, — so;
He wore no sandal on his foot,
And stepped like flakes of snow.
His gait was soundless, like the bird,
But rapid, like the roe;
His fashions quaint, mosaic,
Or, haply, mistletoe.
His conversation seldom,
His laughter like the breeze
That dies away in dimples
Among the pensive trees.
Our interview was transient, —
Of me, himself was shy;
And God forbid I look behind
Since that appalling day!
~ Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
_____ On Friday the Thirteenth _____
Fools to nonsense eagerly lend credence.
Reality they shun; it’s too complex.
Instead vacuity will take precedence.
Divorcing thought from action often wrecks
Any hope of living ruled by Reason.
Yet, it’s easier to follow than to lead.
This laziness makes for a crazy season
Harming our best chances to succeed.
Ignorance we cling to with great pride
Resisting solid knowledge with great strength.
The narrow we respect, reject the wide,
Enjoy old wives’ tales we’ve been told at length.
Enraptured by Tradition’s constipation
Nurtures comfort in stultification.
~ FreeThinke
__________ Miss Hargreaves* __________
Mischief makers –– youthful –– on a lark ––
Initiate in spirit of burlesque
Something whimsical, endearing, yet grotesque,
Spirited, irrational –– often dark ––
Horrifying in its fascination ––
Also wistful, fey and sympathetic.
Ringing chords with dissonance splenetic
Granting spellbound hearers consternation
Railing on, imperious, yet eager ––
Engorged –– suffused –– with weird vitality ––
An ancient personage emerged from meager
Vision, and became Reality ––
Engaged her host-creators to beleaguer ––
Shrank then back to cosmicality.
~ FreeThinke
_____________________
*Miss Hargreaves, a whimsical fantasy novel by Frank Baker. The essence of Baker's imaginary character and a précis of her story is revealed in the above acrostic sonnet.
_________ SHERLOCK HOLMES _________
Stories filled with stylish keen perception ––
Hair-raising adventure well controlled ––
Even in the grip of Evil’s wild deception
Raising goose bumps ––– we love what we’re told.
Lolling in an armchair by the fire,
Opening a volume, we’re content ––
Conan Doyle’s creation slakes desire
Kindled by the need for amusement.
Home for Holmes, those rooms in Baker Street,
Overseen by Martha Louise Hudson,
Laden with exotica replete
Made cozy for Sherlock, all-but her blood son,
Established –– with violin –– an atmosphere
Suited to enjoy thrills free from fear.
~ FreeThinke
_________ MRS. DOUBTFIRE _________
Endearing, though preposterous, as you were,
Real affection from persona fake
Incredibly, for your dear children’s sake,
Flowed naturally, –– but with a trace of myrrh.
This bitterness directed just toward you
Betrayed your guilt at living past the norm
Usually accepted as good form.
Oh how easily you’d have gotten through
Demands domestic, if you’d just been steady!
Sadly, however, urges wild and heady
Remained in charge, and so your judges ruled
Maturity you lacked. They’d not been fooled.
Only then –– by showing some resolve
Through queer disguise –– did you your problem solve.
~ FreeThinke
go crazy
If you'd like to experience a CHARMING ghost story heavily tinged with poignant ROMANCE, try The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947) with Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison. The music ALONE is worth the price of admission.
It appears occasionally on TCM. Watch for it. I try never to miss it.
I know some lonely houses off the road
A robber 'd like the look of, ––
Wooden barred,
And windows hanging low,
Inviting to
A portico,
Where two could creep:
One hand the tools,
The other peep
To make sure all's asleep.
Old-fashioned eyes,
Not easy to surprise!
How orderly the kitchen 'd look by night,
With just a clock, ––
But they could gag the tick,
And mice won't bark;
And so the walls don't tell,
None will.
A pair of spectacles ajar just stir ––
An almanac's aware.
Was it the mat winked,
Or a nervous star?
The moon slides down the stair
To see who's there.
There's plunder, –– where?
Tankard, or spoon,
Earring, or stone,
A watch, some ancient brooch
To match the grandmamma,
Staid sleeping there.
Day rattles, too,
Stealth's slow;
The sun has got as far
As the third sycamore.
Screams chanticleer,
"Who's there?"
And echoes, trains away,
Sneer–– "Where?"
While the old couple, just astir,
Fancy the Sunrise left the door ajar!
~ Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
___________________________________
You never know who –– or WHAT –– may creep through your house in the middle of the night, do you? ];^}>
________ I'LL SEE YOU AGAIN ________
All my life I shall remember knowing you,
All the pleasure I have found in showing you,
The different ways that one may phrase
The changing light, and changing shades,
Happiness that must die, melodies that must fly,
Memories that must fade, dusty and forgotten bye and bye.
When I’m recalling the hours we’ve had
Why do the foolish tears tremble across the years?
Why do I feel so sad treasuring the memory of these days always?
I'll see you again whenever spring breaks through again.
Time may lie heavy between,
But what has been, is past forgetting.
This sweet memory across the years will come to me.
Though my world may go awry,
In my heart will ever lie,
Just the echo of a sigh.
Goodbye!
~ Noel Coward - “Bitter Sweet” (1929)
:P
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