For most moviegoers, the famous shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock‘s ‘Psycho‘ is the scariest thing they have ever seen. But for the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, it was something else. He saw it as a confession.
Back when both men were seen as giants of 20th-century cinema, Bergman, the man behind ‘The Seventh Seal‘, wrote a kind of psychological study of Hitchcock using only ‘Psycho‘ as his guide. In a candid 1971 interview with critic John Simon, Bergman said that Hitchcock’s low-budget horror film was less about scaring people and more like an X-ray of the director’s own soul.
Why Ingmar Bergman Called ‘Psycho’ Alfred Hitchcock’s Most Revealing Film
While everyone else watched a thriller, Bergman said he noticed something darker. He saw “infantile” behavior, hidden cruelty, and the plain truth about how Hitchcock viewed women.
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Bergman started with a compliment that most people would agree with. He called Hitchcock “a very good technician,” but he didn’t care for the polished look of movies like ‘Rear Window‘ or ‘North by Northwest‘. He thought those were just distractions. To Bergman, the real Hitchcock showed up not despite the cheap and rushed production of ‘Psycho,’ but because of it.
“Psycho is one of his most interesting pictures,” Bergman said, “because he had to make the picture very fast, with very primitive means. He had little money, and this picture tells us a lot about him.”
For Bergman, the rough edges of the film stripped away Hitchcock’s usual smooth style and left only something raw and uncomfortable underneath.
The Dark Soul Ingmar Bergman Saw in Norman Bates
What did Bergman find inside the Bates Motel? He thought he saw Hitchcock’s own predatory side in the character of Norman Bates.
“He is completely infantile,” Bergman said. “And I would like to know more, no, I don’t want to know, about his behaviour with, or, rather, against women.”
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That comment turned out to be pretty accurate. Years later, the writer Donald Spoto wrote in detail about how Hitchcock allegedly mistreated Tippi Hedren. Those behaviors, the controlling and voyeuristic side, were exactly the kind of thing Bergman claimed to notice in ‘Psycho‘.
Bergman thought the movie was not just fiction but a form of “wish fulfillment” for a man who wanted to control, change, or get rid of the women he desired.
Ingmar Bergman Copied Alfred Hitchcock’s Cameos But Rejected His Vision
Here is the strange part. Bergman hated Hitchcock’s psychology but loved his skill. In an odd twist, Bergman admitted that he copied Hitchcock’s famous cameo appearances in his own early movies just to claim that same “authorial presence” as a director.
But Bergman thought that no amount of skill could erase the rotten core. He said Hitchcock played the audience like an organ, while he himself was more interested in the “wholeness inside every human being.” Bergman searched for God in silence, while Hitchcock, in his view, only found a monster in the mirror.
“But this picture is very interesting,” Bergman said at the end, unable to look away. It might be the greatest backhanded compliment ever made; a put-down of the man wrapped up in praise for the artist.
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