Smash Cut

Far be it for anyone to call it a “director’s cut,” considering the Master of Suspense isn’t around to verify it as such, but a slightly different version of Alfred Hitchcock’s groundbreaking black-and-white horror classic Psycho has recently been discovered. Where? On German television, of all places.

This site, called “Schnittberichte” (which, from what I can piece together from web definitions of its root terms, roughly translates as “Cut Report”) offers a visual comparison between certain scenes from the original 1960 version and corresponding moments in the German TV broadcast. The differences seem to be relatively lengthy; although they’re not minutes of material or additional scenes that change the movie entirely, they are, nevertheless, significant enough to add many seconds to existing sequences, like Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) examining his bloody hands, or Milton Arbogast (Martin Balsam) being killed.

People like designer Saul Bass, who created the terrific opening title sequence for Psycho, have often claimed credit for the film’s famous shower scene. I always thought that, regardless of their talent, these people were trying to crib kudos for a rightfully famous movie and work their way into cinema history books. But who knows? Perhaps these newly discovered differences suggest that other hands may have, in fact, truly been involved with Hitch’s legendary masterpiece.

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