Film Historian: 'Psycho' Altered Ideas On Censorship

The 50th anniversary of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho was this past week. The film was groundbreaking in many ways —including having been the first to show a toilet on-camera. Host Melissa Block talks with David Thomson, film critic and author of The Moment of Psycho: How Alfred Hitchcock Taught America to Love Murder.

MELISSA BLOCK, Host:

Fifty years ago this week, unwitting moviegoers found themselves in a motel bathroom, taking a shower with Janet Leigh. Then, the unthinkable.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "PSYCHO")

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

(SOUNDBITE OF SCREAMING)

BLOCK: Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho," starring Leigh and Anthony Perkins as the tortured Norman Bates, slashed its way into film history. The shower scene was, of course, terrifying in 1960, and it still is. But 45 seconds do not a classic make.

BLOCK: How Alfred Hitchcock Taught America to Love Murder." David Thomson, welcome to the program.

BLOCK: Thank you.

BLOCK: Now, Alfred Hitchcock could not get Paramount Studios to greenlight this movie. Why not?

BLOCK: Well, Paramount were an old-fashioned studio, and they were afraid of this material. They looked at the script and the story, and they thought serial killers are not really enormously attractive to the public. This is violent. This is nasty. It's just got an unpleasant feeling.

BLOCK: You have this great line in your book, you say that sex and violence were ready to break out, and censorship crumpled like an old lady's parasol. The orgy had arrived.

BLOCK: And in hindsight, it's clear that "Psycho" was a film that indicated the end of the code, the end of formal censorship. By the end of the 1960s, you could do and show nearly anything in a film.

BLOCK: Well, apart from that iconic shower scene, what else was it in "Psycho" that Hitchcock was doing, that hadn't been done before?

BLOCK: And the only available person is this rather odd young man who will prove to have been her killer. So that was something.

BLOCK: I do need to confess to you that I have never seen "Psycho." I was watching it right before we started this conversation, but I have been avoiding it because I was worried that I would never take a shower again if I did.

BLOCK: Well, I think that's understandable. And I think Hitchcock knew that just like a very dangerous ride at a fairground, this is a movie that frightens you or entices you - and probably does both.

BLOCK: Do you want to see my bathroom?

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

BLOCK: I think that the experience of it was a deep and profound thing, and I think it did have an effect on her. And I'm bound to say, I think it's a film that had an effect on bathroom behavior in general.

BLOCK: Well, David Thomson, thank you for talking with us.

BLOCK: My pleasure.

BLOCK: OK, well, I need to go watch the other 90 minutes.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

BLOCK: I hope you'll be OK.

(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

BLOCK: You are listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.

Copyright © 2010 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.