It was announced late yesterday that Scarlett Johansson will be playing Janet Leigh in Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho directed by Sacha Gervasi (Anvil! The Story of Anvil). Fine. Whatever.
I’m sure we’ll see a recreation of the iconic shower scene and I hope, at the very least, there will be a scene dedicated to the conversation between Hitchcock and screenwriter Joseph Stefano with Stefano urging Hitchcock to show the flushing toilet. Yeah, that would be a highlight for me.
Along with Johansson, James D’Arcy has been added to the cast as Anthony Perkins and the two join Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren who will play Hitchcock and his wife Alma Reville respectively. The story is said to center on the relationship between Hitch and Alma as he sets about making what has become one of the most iconic horror movies of all time. 20th Century Fox is set to release the feature in 2013 from a script written by John McLaughlin based on Stephen Rebello’s 1998 non-fiction book of the same name.
Variety reports the film is drawing comparisons to My Week With Marilyn, which also showed the making of a film while focusing on the relationship between Marilyn Monroe and Colin Clark. Hopefully this story will be a bit more compelling than that film ended up being.
As for my headline, it’s due to the casting of Johansson and the difference in today’s actresses compared to year’s gone by. Sure, “sexy without trying” is a bit misleading, because there is certainly a lot of “try” in both the screenshot above and below, but you wouldn’t know it to look at Leigh’s performance. Today’s actresses have this pouty, mouth agape look to them. They’re softened up by too much makeup and the word “sexy” doesn’t rarely seems to play a role in the conversation any more.
Watching Leigh in Psycho you are immediately struck by her sheer beauty in that opening scene, wearing a white bra and slip as she cuddles up to John Gavin as Sam Loomis. You’d be forgiven if their discussion slipped your memory. Not too long after that the woman in white becomes the woman in black as she prepares for her road trip, $40,000 in hand and an unexpected future ahead of her.
It’s hard to imagine many of today’s porcelain doll, scantily clad actresses in such a role, it’s one of the reasons I think Noomi Rapace struck such a chord with viewers when they first saw her as Lisbeth Salander. Rooney Mara also served the character well in David Fincher‘s remake, winning the role over Johansson whom Fincher referred to later saying, “Scarlett Johansson was great. It was a great audition, I’m telling you. But the thing with Scarlett is, you can’t wait for her to take her clothes off.”
It’s no surprise people can’t wait for Scarlett to take her clothes off. She’s a beautiful woman with a great body. I’m not denying that or attempting to pretend she’s not attractive, but “sexy” has become a whole different beast when it comes to movies nowadays and I’m not quite sure many of today’s actresses could pull off being sexy the same way Leigh did in Psycho or the same way any of Hitchcock’s leading ladies did in any of his films from Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief or Kim Novak in Vertigo. If we expand outside of Hitchcock, I look at Anne Baxter in All About Eve and think her sex appeal trounces any of today’s actresses and she pulls it off inside an Oscar nominated performance.
If I was to really cast one of today’s actresses as Janet Leigh — an actress I felt could take on that level of sex appeal and performance and do it effortlessly — I’d probably look to someone like Elizabeth Olsen (probably too young), Jessica Chastain or maybe Rachel McAdams. Michelle Williams is obviously in the conversation as is Emily Blunt and Charlize Theron, the latter of which is only four years older than Leigh was when she starred in Psycho.
I know it sounds like I’m complaining about the casting of Johansson, but really I’m just using it as an opportunity to point out what I see as a glaring difference in today’s actresses from those 50 years ago. That said, no, I don’t see Johansson as Janet Leigh, but maybe that’s just me.
