Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho

(contains spoilers)  In a murder mystery, you know a character is doomed when she is committing adultery and stealing money.  And Janet Leigh (as Marion Crane)  has "doomed" written all over her.  After a tryst with her lover in a nap motel, she is entrusted with $ 40,000 cash at the real estate office in which she works.  Temptation quickly gets the better of her and she absconds with the money.  The guilt of it all disturbs her so much that she is off driving in a distracted state to who knows where.  A policeman wakes her up when she is found pulled over and asleep in the front seat of her car and her evasiveness when questioned quickly convinces him to shadow her.  She hurriedly sells her car and buys a new one at a used car dealership, then keeps driving, finally arriving at the Bates Motel, in the middle of nowhere appropriately arriving on a dark and stormy night.  Norman Bates the hotelkeeper rents her a room. He appears at first to be as innocent as a lamb, his only fault being his over-submissiveness to his mother.  We soon know better however.   He has creepy hobbies, like taxidermy, for example, and he spies on women from from a hole in the wall concealed behind a picture.   As soon as she is in the shower, washing the dirt of her crimes off her, someone sneaks up on her and stabs her to death.  This is of course the famous shower scene.

We are convinced that Norman or his mother or both are guilty of something.   The assailant is not revealed in this first murder.   In a later scene we see the old lady killing the private investigator (Martin Balsam) after he gets a little to close to the truth.   Eventually things unravel between Norman and his mom and the law in a climactic scene in which the twisted truth of the matter is revealed in the cellar.  Afterwards the psychiatrist, after talking to Norman Bates explains everything to the investigators waiting outside, and then cut to Norman Bates, clearly crazy as a loon, thinking to himself.  The end.

The post-game show by the psychiatrist was a bit off-putting and kind of long.  I didn't find it convincing or all that satisfying.  However many mystery movies are like that.  After all the surprises and pyrotechnics are over, it is best to get quickly off the stage, before the viewer begins to reflect on the weaknesses of the plot.

The ending seemed kind of abrupt, but then life is seldom tied up neatly in a bow.  I thought the scene with the psychiatrist was weak, but I guess psychological dramas are usually a bit thin especially when depending on conventional wisdom circa 1960.    For one thing, no psychiatrist would necessarily know so much about the goings on in Norman Bate's mind after just talking to him for a few minutes, especially when he was clearly as sneaky and evasive as he was in the film.   I half expected a more complicated explanation to surface.  But that was it.