As a supplement to the Norman Bates-Mitch Brenner comparison, it may be worth noting the similarities between their respective love interests. In both movies, these women are the proverbial start of all the trouble for these men. Let us, therefore, consider
Marion Crane & Melanie Daniels.
Marion's name means "blackness" & Melanie means "bitter." Marion Crane clearly loses both her moral & directional way just like one in darkness and Melanie Daniels' character is just plain bitter.
Marion's last name is a bird. A creature which Norman stuffs as a hobby. Or, as Norman states...
Knowing he stuffed his mother, caressing a bird he also stuffed while looking at a woman he's about to kill certainly begs a connection between women & birds.
Melanie's last name means "God is my Judge" and Melanie is outright accused of bringing the bird attacks and that they were a judgment from God.
Well, it's... it's more than a hobby.
Well, it's... it's more than a hobby. Read more: https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=psycho
Well, it's... it's more than a hobby. Read more: https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=psycho
Knowing he stuffed his mother, caressing a bird he also stuffed while looking at a woman he's about to kill certainly begs a connection between women & birds.
Melanie's last name means "God is my Judge" and Melanie is outright accused of bringing the bird attacks and that they were a judgment from God.
Again, it's a reading between the lines, but there's more similarity & connections than not. Do these two women have anything else in common?
• Young
• Impish
• Blonde
• Attractive
• Unmarried
• Irresponsible
• Irresponsible
• Promiscuous
• On the outs with the law
• In intimate relationships with dark-haired men
We know Marion & Sam were intimate from the opening scene:
The Birds was more modest in its portrayal of Melanie with Mitch, but still left enough to not be ambiguous.
Why does any of this even matter if the real topic is the son's relationship to his mother? Simple. If Norman & Mitch's relationships with their respective mothers is so similar, then introducing a very similar trigger should produce very similar results.
Likely one might wonder at such a comparison noting that, since Mitch had not killed Lydia, these are two different scenarios. And, to an outside spectator, it's a valid observation. But Psycho is about Norman. There is no mother & Marion gets killed early on.
This is to say nothing of not knowing how Norman might've handled any love interests prior to Mrs Bates getting married & provoking Norman to matricide. He might easily have treated women the way Mitch treated Annie, Melanie & the any girl Annie oddly references.
This is to say nothing of not knowing how Norman might've handled any love interests prior to Mrs Bates getting married & provoking Norman to matricide. He might easily have treated women the way Mitch treated Annie, Melanie & the any girl Annie oddly references.
In the mind of Norman, Mother is in fact alive and Marion is a threat to his relationship with mother. So, in the minds of Norman Bates & Mitch Brenner, both mothers are living & involved in their lives. Only in Norman's case, Mother's involvement is entirely in Norman's mind.
This being a prequel, at least in theory, one won't see Melanie inspiring Mitch to kill Lydia but rather Mitch, in the end, abandoning any romance with her.
In the same way Norman felt guilty about his emerging feelings for Marion, Mitch seems to have an volatile guilt about feelings for Melanie, Annie & possibly others...
...as Annie plainly alluded to Melanie:
Maybe there's never been anything between Mitch and any girl.
Annie's hinting at something. She's lived in a small town for years pining after a man she can't have. She's had all the time she needs to learn everything about Mitch Brenner from everyone that watched him grow up. Odd that this is all Annie can surmise.
Freud would have a field day with this much information. It's easy to hear a line like that and dismiss it as generic commentary. This, however is a script being brought to life by Alfred Hitchcock. Was he the type of man to simply film such a line for the sake of filler?
As one watches The Birds, it becomes evident Mitch never moved onto any deeper of a love interest with Annie because of Lydia. He also doesn't seem all that heartbroken about it as he was ready to simply leave her corpse in front of her house and, were it not for Melanie, would have.
Equally evident is that Lydia did not approve of Melanie. We later learn from Annie that Lydia only accepted Annie once she and Mitch were friends and nothing more.
Might charming Norman also have had romantic interests that Mother did not approve of? Norman recreated Mother in his own mind so all one has to do to see Mrs Bates is to listen to the "conversation" that transpires between Mother & Norman once he invited Marion for supper.
Mother: No! I tell you no! I won't have you bringing strange young girls in for supper! By candlelight, I suppose, in the cheap, erotic fashion... - of young men with cheap, erotic minds!
Norman: Mother, please.
Mother: And then what, after supper? Music? Whispers?
Norman: Mother, she's just a stranger. She's hungry and it's raining out.
Mother: "Mother, she's just a stranger." As if men don't desire strangers. As if... Oh! I refuse to speak of disgusting things, because they disgust me! Do you understand, boy? Go on. Go tell her she'll not be appeasing her ugly appetite... with my food or my son! Or do I have to tell her 'cause you don't have the guts? - Huh, boy? You have the guts, boy?
Norman: Shut up! Shut up!
It's not hard to see that, though the style is very different, the content of Lydia's opinions on Mitch & Melanie is pretty similar to Mrs Bates assessment of Norman & Marion.
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