While his self-imposed retirement from cinema may still be in effect, Steven Soderbergh appears to be keeping his creative urges sated. With the TV show The Knick and Off-Broadway production The Library on the way, a cinematic curiosity has popped up on the Oscar-winning filmmaker's website Extension 765. Soderbergh has edited a feature length "mash up" of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and Gus Van Sant's 1998 shot-for-shot remake.
Shown mostly in black-and-white and named Psychos, the film is undoubtedly an exercise in "what if?", rather than an attempt to improve on either film, but still, it offers some interesting moments. For the most part, a scene from one film will be followed by a scene from the other. (The opening apartment scene is from '98, while Marion Crane's arrival at the office is from '60.) Occasionally, shots from each will be spliced together in the same scene. (In the bit where Marion is in her car and stops at the crossing, it's Anne Heche behind the wheel, but she's looking out to the original film's street scene.) But four key moments in the film are particular highlights.
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Both the signature shower scene and detective Milton Arbogast's demise are presented with layered footage – Hitchcock's scene in black and white, Van Sant's in colour. At the film's climax, the discovery of Norman Bates by Sam and Lila is given a rapid cut with shots from both films spliced together, while Norman/Mother's creepy coda blends both visually and audibly from Anthony Perkins to Vince Vaughan. While it doesn't make either film better or worse, Psychos offers a different perspective, underlining just what makes the story and the original film so enduring. In a roundabout way, the edit also achieves what critics of the remake argue that Van Sant couldn't – it tells the same story in a new and thought-provoking way.
Edits that change the way people look at a beloved movie are not a new thing, and indeed have reinvigorated some projects in the past. One of the most famous examples is the 1992 Director's Cut of Blade Runner. The most significant changes to this new version were the removal of Harrison Ford's voiceover narration and the inclusion of a dream sequence which implies that his character is unknowingly a replicant. In 1997, Francis Ford Coppola made significant changes to his Godfather saga, re-editing the first two films into a more linear chronological order for a seven-hour TV mini-series.
In the internet age, "fan edits" have become more common. Some have even taken to the edit suite to right the wrongs of a film they were disappointed by – most famously The Phantom Edit, a shorter version of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace that removes a lot of the more unpopular elements of the 1999 blockbuster, including most of the antics of the character Jar Jar Binks.
While perhaps only the subsequent versions of Blade Runner can truly claim to overtake the original, a re-edit can offer a new perspective on a film, and at the very least highlight the enduring popularity of a particular work. It may also gratify Soderbergh's fans to see that, despite his absence from cinemas, the man who dedicated his 2000 Oscar win to "anyone who spends part of their day creating" appears as passionate about cinema as ever.
