The essential role of architecture in the relationship
between cinema and novel.
The classic example of “Psycho” by Alfred Hitchcock
Gianluca Guaragna
Fig.
1 - Frank Lloyd Wright, Ennis House, 1924.
Fig.
2 - Bates Motel, location of Psyco di A. Hitchcock
Fig.
3 - Edward Hopper, House by the Railroad, 1925.
Fig.
4 - Frank O. Gehry, Gehry House, Santa Monica, California, 1977-78,
1991-94.
A notorious close connection between cinema and architecture exists, as
between cinema and literature, however we are convinced that
architecture plays a central role in this context.
In other words, the relationship between cinema and literature can
hardly ignore the connecting role of architecture inside this triad,
since the link between movies and novels cannot be disregarded.
We know that the “scenario” usually allows the
stories to unfold, thus the relationship between
“scenario” and action is just as close as the one
between stage and theatre play, as written by Amitav Ghosh. Ghosh also
adds that we enter into the “scenario” a little at
a time until it appears real to us and we become a part of it. This is
why the “sense of place” is notoriously one of the
great magic aspects of novels. (Gosh 2017)
Architecture, which is the ultimate “scenario”,
either depicted in the pages of a book, or shot in a movie sequence,
represents an essential element of storytelling. However, when a story
is told through the movie technique, architecture shows it’s
imperative role.
We only need to think of movies such as Le Mèpris
(based on the novel by Alberto Moravia and entirely shot in the Villa
Malaparte on Capri, by Jean Luc Godard, starring Michel Piccoli and
Brigitte Bardot); or Le
Procès by Orson Welles, from Kafka’s
novel, shot mostly at the Gare d’Orsay which at the time was
decommissioned; or of Blade
Runner by Ridley Scott, inspired by Philip K.
Dick’s novel, where in a dystopian Los Angeles Sebastien, the
designer of replicants, lives in Ennies House by Frank Lloyd Wright
(Fig. 1)
Architecture, as well as movies, obviously disregards being faithful to
novels. When Francois Truffaut, in a paper written in 1958, covers the
literary adaptation to cinema, he clearly states that between
faithfulness to what is written and faithfulness to the spirit, no rule
is possible and every case is particular. He adds that everything is
allowed except for trivialisation, impoverishment and sweetening1.
Luchino Visconti used to interpret very freely the novels from which
his movies originated, so much so that during the shooting of Lo straniero, in
1967, when he was obliged to strictly adhere to the literary text, he
admitted that the movie – that makes use of Marcello
Mastroianni’s impeccable acting- was one of his less
successful films2.
The movie is inspired by a work by Albert Camus and it is the result of
a compromise with Camus’ widow. While giving up her ownership
rights she required absolute allegiance to the literary text. She even
imposed the presence of two French scriptwriters she trusted.
According to David Lynch a book, or a script, are nothing but a
skeleton to which one must add flesh and blood3; This is true if wanting to adhere to
the novel as well as if wanting to interpret it more freely.
In this respect naturally architecture, as well as being the place for
the setting, also inevitably plays a strong symbolic key role that
concentrates the hidden elements and the psychological implications of
the plot.
These topics are easily identified in Alfred Hitchcock’s vast
filmography which shows that allegiance to the novel is a false problem
to him4,
and that architecture is fundamental in order to create the atmosphere
the director wishes to obtain to infuse further emotions to the story.
Truffaut points out that Hitchcock in many of his movies uses the same
principal of exposure, moving from far away to nearer. At first you see
a city, then a building inside the town and then a room inside the
building (Truffaut 2010, p. 224)
Even Psycho
starts the same way. In fact, before showing us the central place where
the whole story will develop, the film starts with a long overview,
then moving closer to the building and framing the window that will
bring us inside the room where the first scene takes place.
While the images of the town flow in motion, a writing at the bottom of
the screen appears by which we understand that the town is Phoenix,
Arizona. We then see date and time on the screen: it is seventeen
minutes before three in the afternoon, this apparently marginal detail
is used by the director to suggest a possible clandestine relationship
between Marion and Sam, even before they appear on the scene (Truffaut
2010, p. 225).
No doubt Hitchcock through the editing, the shots and the course of
actions, provides the movie with what lacks in the conventional
narrative of the novel the movie is taken from. The director manages to
enhance the audience’s emotional involvement also thanks to
the architecture chosen as frame of the plot. He actually states:
«I have chosen this house and this motel as I realised that
the story would not have had the same effect in an ordinary bungalow;
this kind of architecture was appropriate for the
atmosphere.» (Truffaut 2010, p. 227) (Fig.2).
Many like to think that the idea for the house in “Psycho”
originates from a painting by Hopper, but even though Norman
mother’s house is very similar to the one in Edward
Hopper’s picture House by the Railroad, painted in 1925
(Fig.3), Hitchcock clarifies that it is in fact an exact replica of an
existing house. His intention was not to recreate the atmosphere of a
classical horror film, but to go beyond the film fiction in order to
give a sense of authenticity to it’s narration. The
mysterious atmosphere is partly accidental because, as the great
director points out, the Californian Gothic style of this house is
found in many isolated houses of Northern California.
Even though the House by the Railroad belongs to a quite normal
typology, it is wrapped in an atmosphere of such neglect and isolation
that it causes a feeling of insecurity and even fear in the spectator.
In the painting the building expresses a condition of underlying
mystery, emphasised by the clean cut of the railroad that crosses
horizontally the whole surface at the bottom of the painting, and
conceals a part of the volume of the house at the bedrock’s
height.
We are not, obviously, so much interested in the similarity between the
two houses, as we know it is a very common typology, and it could be a
fortuitous coincidence, but in the conceptual analogy between the
composition of the elements in the painting and the architecture
present in the movie.
What Hitchcock, talking about Psycho,
calls the composition of the vertical block and the horizontal block,
namely the squareness between lines and figures we also found in Hopper.
As in the American artist’s painting, the verticality of the
house is opposed to the horizontality of the railroad, so that Norman
mother’s house is opposed to the horizontal block of the
motel.
Maybe this “contrast” between geometries, even more
pronounced in the second case by the antithesis between the
motel’s bear formal block look and the austere style of the
home somehow adds to the slight sense of tension and raises a latent
sense of concern.
Slavoj ŽiŽek even blames the contrast between the two buildings for the
mental distress of the lead character in the film. He writes (2011, pp.
45-46):
«… one can consider Norman as having a personality
split between the two houses, the modern and horizontal motel and his
mother’s modern gothic house. He tirelessly moves between the
two, never finding his own place. The unheimlich feeling of the end of
the film signifies that Norman, who totally identifies with his mother,
has finally found his heim, his home.»
ŽiŽek even uses the example of the point of intersection which signals
the union between the preexisting building and the expansion,
implemented by the architect in the famous Gehry House in Santa Monica,
California5
(Fig.4) He indicates the union between the preexisting building and the
expansion made by the architect, he also underlines how Fredric Jameson
identifies in the room of the intersection between the two spaces the
place where the antagonism between the two subjects resolves itself.
Which means the room itself is the place where the mediation between
two opposites takes place.
This brings him to a peculiar conclusion. A hypothesis which is as
weird as it is intriguing: the Slovenian philosopher concludes that if
the Bates motel had been designed by Gehry, Norman would not have
needed to kill his victims as «he would have been relieved of
the unsustainable tension that forces him to run between the two
places. He would have had a third place as a mediation between two
extremes.» (ŽiŽek 2011, p. 47)
Even without sharing Zizek’s theory, one cannot deny that the
two simple artefacts play a crucial role in the narrative structure of
the story. So much so that the whole story can be synthesised by two
single images: the house that stands over the motel of the homicides
and the scene of the killing in the shower.
Truffaut suggests that there are no good stories, just good movies. The
latter are all based on a deep idea which can always be summarised in a
single word6
Even though the plot in Psycho
cannot be summarised in one word, it certainly resolves itself around
these two images, without the great French critic and film
director’s thought being altered.
Everyone knows that Truffaut adored Hitchcock and that he included him
within the greatest film directors, and probably considered him the
greatest.
«Hitchcock, from the beginning of his carrier, understood
that if one is able to read a paper with one’s own eyes and
one’s own mind, one is also able to read a novel with
one’s own eyes and with a pounding heart. A film should be
watched in the same way one reads novel.» (Truffaut 2010, p.
227).
Notes 1
«Anything goes except low blows. Infidelity to the letter or
to the spirit is only tolerable if the director is only interested in
one of them and if he managed to do a) the same thing, b) the same
thing, in a better way, c) something else, better done. Trivialisation,
impoverishment and “sweetening” of the text are
unacceptable.» (Truffaut 2010)
Francois Truffaut, L’adattamento lettererario al cinema, from
La Revue des Letteres modernes, summer 1958, in Il piacere degli occhi,
by Jean Narboni and Serge Toubiana. Ed. Minimum Fax, Rome, 2010, p.279 2
Nearly all Visconti’s movies are inspired by novels, but the
director never adhered to the literary text. 3
«… A script is, so to say, a skeleton. One must
provide it with flesh and blood. The director is an interpreter. He
translates the images into the script. This applies to all ideas that
originate from a script or from a book. The idea does not belong to
you, you received it just like the images, the sounds and the
atmosphere that radiate from the script. As well as the other variable
issues such as the shooting locations, the choice of the actors and so
on…» (Lynch 2012, pp. 331-332). 4
My greatest satisfaction is when a film has an effect on the audience,
this is what I most cared about. In Psycho I am not extremely
interested in the subject or in the characters, what really matters to
me is the editing, the photography, the music and all the technical
aspects that may make the audience shout. Using cinematic arts to
create a mass emotion is a great satisfaction. We were able to do it in
Psycho. It is not a message that interested the public. It wasn't a
great interpretation that shocked the audience,it wasn’t a
great play that gripped the public. What moved the audience was the
pure film.» (Truffaut 2014, p. 233). 5
«In 1977 Frank and Berta Gehry bought a pink two storied
bungalow with a mansard roof. It had been built around 1920 and was
located on a corner block. The building was completely renovated, with
a relatively low expense. Gehry chooses materials he has used before -
corrugated metal, multilayer, wire mesh - in order to explore its
possibilities and to elaborate on the use of rough wooden frames. As
for the models, he draws from the “sketches in
wood” of the Wagner, Familian and Gunther houses, trying to
install them with an expressive vitality equal to that of the study
drawings.
Once again playing with perspective and movement, and thanks to
numerous axonometric drawings, he assembles a collage of customary
materials equipped with new connotations.
Gehry wanted to encase the building inside a casing through which one
could still see the old house; so that new and old could converse and
enrich each other…» (Dal Co, Forster and Arnold
1998, p. 151). 6
«There are no good stories, just good movies. The latter are
all based on a deep idea which can always be summarised in a single
word. Lola
Montès is a movie about overexertion, Eliana e gli uomini
is about ambition and flesh, Un
re a New York about delation, L’infernale
Quinlan about nobility, Ordet
about grace, Hiroshima,
mon amour about original sin.» (Truffaut 2010,
p. 97).
Bibliography DAL CO F., Forster K.W. e Arnold H.S. (1998) – Frank O.Gehry Tutte le opere.
Electa, Milan.
GHOSH A. (2017) – La
grande cecità Il cambiamento climatico e
l’impensabile. Neri Pozza Editore, Vicenza.
LYNCH D. (2012) – Perdersi
è meraviglioso. Ed. minimum fax, Rome.
TRUFFAUT F. (2010) – L’adattamento
letterario al cinema, da La Revue des Lettres modernes,
estate 1958. In: Il
piacere degli occhi, edited by Jean Narboni and Serge
Toubiana, Minimum fax, Rome.
TRUFFAUT F. (2014) – Il
cinema secondo Hitchcock. Il Saggiatore, Milan.
ŽIŽEK S. (2011) – Hitchcock:
È possibile girare il remake di un film?.
Mimesis, Milan.