The New York Times did another of those intriguing match-the-painting-with-the-real-subject stories on the houses in the paintings of Edward Hopper. It reminded us of Hopper’s profound influence on the movies and particularly a favourite house - the Psycho residence.
It's impossible to believe that Hitchcock’s set designer didn’t use the 1925 Hopper painting House by the Railroad as a model. The movie's screenwriter Joseph Stefano was certainly a Hopper fan and once told Anthony Perkins that he felt that "Norman Bates, if he were a painting, would be painted by Hopper.” And then there's the mansion in Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven. Got to be another homage to Hopper.
Images: Top, Edward Hopper’s House by the Railroad. Bottom left, the Psycho version and right as portrayed in Days of Heaven
