The unlikely landmark moment within Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’
Alfred Hitchcock‘s 1960 horror film Psycho was groundbreaking upon its release. Audiences were stunned when the supposed lead character was brutally killed, in a scene that “changed cinema forever.”
After Janet Leigh’s Marion checks herself into the Bates Motel, she meets her untimely demise when her evening shower gets interrupted by the shadowy figure of Norman Bates. Michael Brooke of Screenonline noted that “the total shock of killing off a lead character a third of the way in, and just the complete feeling of disorientation” is what made Psycho so terrifying.
During the production of the film, the Hays Code – which had been strictly enforced in Hollywood since the 1930s – was still operating. The Hays Code was a form of extreme censorship which banned images seen as explicit, provocative, or profane from cinema.
However, the Code was beginning to reach its decline by this point, allowing Hitchcock to showcase many scenes that would have previously been banned altogether. Still, its existence meant that Paramount refused to give Hitchcock a large budget to create the film, and it also had to be filmed in black-and-white to censor the bloodshed.
The result was a film that pushed boundaries, showing images of or alluding to sex, gender nonconformity, nudity, and abject violence. This led the way for other films to include similar content. In the following decade, brutal films such as Bonnie and Clyde were made, with Psycho “open[ing] the floodgates” for such graphic violence.
Yet, Psycho wasn’t just a groundbreaking feat of cinema because of its portrayal of violence and sexuality, it was also the first American film to show the image of a flushing toilet. Something as mundane as a toilet was seen as too vulgar by the Hays Code, and the Production Code Administration even tried cut the short scene of Marion flushing paper down the toilet out of the film. Funnily enough, they had no issue with the violent murder scene, since the Code was beginning to allow this kind of content when it was presented for mature audiences.
It has been long debated whether Psycho was truly the first film to show a flushing toilet or just the first to do so after the easing of the Hays Code. Many people propose the fact that a flushing toilet can be heard in the 1930 film Going Wild, which is accompanied by the image of a plumber pulling a chain.
However, Psycho seems to be the first film to show the image of a toilet flushing, with the inside of the toilet bowl clearly visible.
