Rida’s review published on Letterboxd:
I think I must have one of those faces you can't help believing.
It's quite fascinating how we have no difficulty in transferring our empathy from Janet Leigh's Marion Crane to the nervous young Norman Bates portrayed by Anthony Perkins after the turning point. There's almost no difficulty in seeing him as the protagonist, even as you watch him clean up a terrible mess with practiced ease. I was startled to find myself actually hoping that he wouldn't miss a spot and later get caught.
It's all an excellent example of how to create protagonists that are easy to sympathize with regardless of their lives. I mean, Marion Crane must have been shocking back when Psycho was first released - sleeping with a married man, then stealing money from her boss of ten years - and yet, you fear for her and hope she manages to evade everybody looking for her.
The same goes for Norman Bates. He's so jumpy, his smile is so childlike, and his need for constant approval really gets to you. He's also painfully lonely, with only a domineering, jealous mother for company. And he isn't bad-looking, either. In short, he looks and acts nothing at all like the public perception of a psychopath, so you never stop wondering if he really could be the psycho referred to in the title of the film.
Our sympathy for Norman Bates is derived almost solely from Anthony Perkins' masterful performance. He brings just the right amount of uncertainty, loneliness, and strangeness to his role, all the while maintaining an air of impenetrable mystery. It's the performance of a lifetime.
Much of the sympathy for Marion Crane has to do with the fact that from the moment she steps in her car and that frantic music score starts up, you feel a mounting sense of dread. At first it's a fear that Marion will be found out by someone - the policeman, her boss, or perhaps even by Norman Bates - but then the narrative completely changes as soon as she arrives at the motel. The film goes from what seems like a standard on-the-run movie to a film noir.
Psycho is still shocking, deeply frightening, and compulsively watchable. I was fifteen and had been raised almost exclusively on fluffy Bollywood musicals when I watched it for the first time. Needless to say, watching Psycho was a visceral experience, especially since I was one of the few people in the world who knew nearly nothing about the film beforehand. I'm well aware of how lucky I was, and I'm glad I have that film experience to keep.
I watched it again in India a year later, sitting with my cousins, who were intrigued despite themselves. And here I am, another couple of years later, and I found Psycho just as excellent this time around. In fact, I'm now sure that it's one of the handful of films that can be called just about perfect.
Psycho ignited my curiosity to get to know how films were made, and who they were made by. For the first time, I was able to look beyond a film's stars and wonder about who had put the whole thing together. It's the film that really started my love of cinema, and for that, I'll always look fondly upon Psycho.
I'm going to complain about only one thing, the same thing that everybody else complains about - the psychobabble at the end. Nearly all of it was completely unnecessary and took away from the mood of the film. But then they cut back to Norman Bates and that iconic ending, and all was redeemed.
From the evocative cinematography to the excellent central performances by Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh, all helping to show us a glimpse into the mind of a complex, psychologically tortured personality, Psycho is every bit as gripping as it was several decades ago. And apart from the black-and-white and the clothing (both of which you almost immediately forget about) Psycho is startlingly ageless in its simplicity.
It's perfect. And it's worth watching multiple times, because Psycho is the kind of film you appreciate more and more with each viewing.