LAURENT BOUZEREAU ON THE COP IN PSYCHO, AND THE STRANGER IN DRESSED TO KILL
From the chapter about Dressed To Kill in The De Palma Decade, by Laurent Bouzereau:
The man is wearing sunglasses, a clear indication that he is not there to appreciate art. But this detail also foreshadows Bobbi, who hides her identity behind dark sunglasses, day and night. Through this association of two characters with “no eyes,” the stranger is the dark angel, the one who delivers Kate to Bobbi, her killer. This approach of connecting worlds is also present in a similar fashion in Psycho; Marion has fallen asleep on the side of the road and is awakened by a policeman, who is wearing dark sunglasses. He never takes them off; we never see his eyes. This very much presages the other character with no eyes, Norman Bates’s dead, mummified mother in the cellar. When she is revealed—as a lightbulb swings back and forth above her face—we see dark holes instead of eyes, just like the cop who wouldn’t take off his sunglasses.
