The opening credits for Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic proto-slasher––designed by the legendary Saul Bass––were virtually unchanged for Gus Van Sant’s 1998 remake. A lime shellac was the only alteration made by Pablo Ferro, who faithfully preserved his predecessor’s sublimely simple crosshatching stripes. Psycho ‘98’s titles are a convenient analogue for the film at large; Ferro’s mimetic homage to Bass parallels Van Sant’s foolhardy fealty to Hitchcock.
The filmmaker’s now-infamous attempt to resurrect one of the greatest films of all time would sound, to any sane person, like a terrible idea: “color, a modern cast, the same shots, and the same script” was the elevator pitch made by Van Sant as far back as 1990. Such sanity had Universal executives laughing the director out of the studio on two separate occasions. Eight years after their first meeting, an Oscar nom to his name courtesy of Good Will Hunting, the fat cats came crawling back with a blank check in hand. Van Sant would use it to stage a Warholian experiment in appropriation that resoundingly tanked his Hollywood career. Hindsight has since vindicated this ravishing, off-kilter movie (reductively, and incorrectly, classified as “camp” in the decades since), which strives valiantly to transcend the confines of being a straightforwardly good movie, and only halfway succeeds.
Saul Bass once described the title sequence as a way of “conditioning the audience,” so they might enter the film with its emotional landscape already subconsciously mapped. In this sense, Ferro and Van Sant have lined up our terms of engagement to a tee. Colour transforms the view without actually changing it, while sound signals a sense of detachment and turmoil––our eyes tell us one thing, and our ears tell us quite another.
"Colour transforms the view without actually changing it, while sound signals a sense of detachment and turmoil––our eyes tell us one thing, and our ears tell us quite another."
In the film that follows, Van Sant’s recreation of the original shots can only ever be approximations. When a remake is “shot for shot,” those elements of film craft that are often supplementary to mise-en-scene are bolded and underlined: the costumes and production design are charmingly tacky, reflecting the fashions of the moment; the cinematography (by Wong Kar-Wai’s favoured DP Christopher Doyle) is awash in lush pastels, lacquering the “borrowed” form and fundamentally transmuting it; and most importantly, the performances are distinct from their original counterparts, with a robust cast of recognizable actors (Ann Heche, Vince Vaughn, Julianne Moore, Viggo Mortensen, William H. Macy, Rita Wilson, Phillip Baker Hall, Robert Forster, James Remar, James Le Gros, and Flea are highlights) that variously reflects the expressive physiognomy of late-90s Hollywood.
The film’s approach to sound deserves its own space entirely, as its strategies are aimed at cleaving our aural experience from the visuals. At first, sound serves as an implicating force; Sam and Marion’s first conversation is serenaded by couples moaning in adjacent rooms, and later, Norman gazing at Marion through his office peephole is scored by the sounds of him jerking off below the frame. Quite audaciously, the soundtrack from an impending sequence frequently plays over the one preceding it, like a preemptive echo; the immortal strings of the shower sequence arrive early, while Marion is scrawling sums on a scrap of paper, flushing the torn-up pieces down the toilet, and preparing for her final ablution. When “Mrs. Bates” rips open the curtain, kitchen knife in hand, we hear only the sound of running water. Marion’s scream brings the score back, but it rings slightly more tentative, softly underscoring the puncturing foley of this woman’s demise.
Such flourishes offer not-so-subtle stimuli that sporadically alert us to the artifice of recreation. Van Sant had no illusions about the commercial compromises of his project, and instead chose to wield the wariness of a media-savvy audience as his own sharp instrument. One might call this reanimated Psycho ghoulish and self-defeating, but the film is a scrupulously organized palimpsest, filled to the brim with reminders of what lies beneath.
To be concluded…
The opening credits for Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic proto-slasher––designed by the legendary Saul Bass––were virtually unchanged for Gus Van Sant’s 1998 remake. A lime shellac was the only alteration made by Pablo Ferro, who faithfully preserved his predecessor’s sublimely simple crosshatching stripes. Psycho ‘98’s titles are a convenient analogue for the film at large; Ferro’s mimetic homage to Bass parallels Van Sant’s foolhardy fealty to Hitchcock.
The filmmaker’s now-infamous attempt to resurrect one of the greatest films of all time would sound, to any sane person, like a terrible idea: “color, a modern cast, the same shots, and the same script” was the elevator pitch made by Van Sant as far back as 1990. Such sanity had Universal executives laughing the director out of the studio on two separate occasions. Eight years after their first meeting, an Oscar nom to his name courtesy of Good Will Hunting, the fat cats came crawling back with a blank check in hand. Van Sant would use it to stage a Warholian experiment in appropriation that resoundingly tanked his Hollywood career. Hindsight has since vindicated this ravishing, off-kilter movie (reductively, and incorrectly, classified as “camp” in the decades since), which strives valiantly to transcend the confines of being a straightforwardly good movie, and only halfway succeeds.
Saul Bass once described the title sequence as a way of “conditioning the audience,” so they might enter the film with its emotional landscape already subconsciously mapped. In this sense, Ferro and Van Sant have lined up our terms of engagement to a tee. Colour transforms the view without actually changing it, while sound signals a sense of detachment and turmoil––our eyes tell us one thing, and our ears tell us quite another.
"Colour transforms the view without actually changing it, while sound signals a sense of detachment and turmoil––our eyes tell us one thing, and our ears tell us quite another."
In the film that follows, Van Sant’s recreation of the original shots can only ever be approximations. When a remake is “shot for shot,” those elements of film craft that are often supplementary to mise-en-scene are bolded and underlined: the costumes and production design are charmingly tacky, reflecting the fashions of the moment; the cinematography (by Wong Kar-Wai’s favoured DP Christopher Doyle) is awash in lush pastels, lacquering the “borrowed” form and fundamentally transmuting it; and most importantly, the performances are distinct from their original counterparts, with a robust cast of recognizable actors (Ann Heche, Vince Vaughn, Julianne Moore, Viggo Mortensen, William H. Macy, Rita Wilson, Phillip Baker Hall, Robert Forster, James Remar, James Le Gros, and Flea are highlights) that variously reflects the expressive physiognomy of late-90s Hollywood.
The film’s approach to sound deserves its own space entirely, as its strategies are aimed at cleaving our aural experience from the visuals. At first, sound serves as an implicating force; Sam and Marion’s first conversation is serenaded by couples moaning in adjacent rooms, and later, Norman gazing at Marion through his office peephole is scored by the sounds of him jerking off below the frame. Quite audaciously, the soundtrack from an impending sequence frequently plays over the one preceding it, like a preemptive echo; the immortal strings of the shower sequence arrive early, while Marion is scrawling sums on a scrap of paper, flushing the torn-up pieces down the toilet, and preparing for her final ablution. When “Mrs. Bates” rips open the curtain, kitchen knife in hand, we hear only the sound of running water. Marion’s scream brings the score back, but it rings slightly more tentative, softly underscoring the puncturing foley of this woman’s demise.
Such flourishes offer not-so-subtle stimuli that sporadically alert us to the artifice of recreation. Van Sant had no illusions about the commercial compromises of his project, and instead chose to wield the wariness of a media-savvy audience as his own sharp instrument. One might call this reanimated Psycho ghoulish and self-defeating, but the film is a scrupulously organized palimpsest, filled to the brim with reminders of what lies beneath.