What’s more, the money goes down with her into the swamp and with it, all that we had held as important in the intrigue, all of our expectations for a resolution. Suddenly, the typical Hitchcock protagonist’s plea for a romantic ending becomes, not just in Psycho but for all of his films, its own farce. Love becomes a sickening irony after the shower scene, so often written on that I could scarcely do so again redeemably. I’ll take on a single detail instead. Sam writes her a letter. “So what if we’re poor and cramped and miserable, at least we’ll be happy!” But she’s already dead. His love is a farce on itself, a plea to a corpse. This isn’t the film’s only reference to necrophilia, but it’s the first. At this point we’re still wondering, 47 minutes in, who the protagonist is.
