The “mother” of all other horror movies, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho transformed the directorial, cinematographic, and narrative style of cinema (“Psycho - How Alfred Hitchcock Manipulates An Audience”). Especially in the way Hitchcock attempted to involve the audience directly by creating a subjective, unreliable narrator, it was possible to generate the intense suspense and tension that permeates the film. As a result, viewers place themselves into Marian’s shoes. Even though Hitchcock uses editorial cuts at the beginning the viewer is led into it as one long scene, as we become voyeurs looking into the life of the protagonist who is at a sort of crossroads or turning point in her life (“Psycho - How Alfred Hitchcock Manipulates An Audience”). A close-up on the wad of money in the envelope is shown because Marian is thinking about stealing it, an illegal and unethical act carried out for unselfish reasons; the audience is now inside the protagonist’s head and about to go on the journey to the Bates motel with her. Hitchcock continues to alternate between different types of shots and camera angles to manipulate the mind of the reader, to help the reader see what Marian sees and feel what she feels. Music underscores the emotional content of the film, paralleling the visual elements.Marian’s guilt...
The audience knows she is being paranoid because she glances in the rear-view mirror; Hitchcock shows the audience the image in the mirror and not an objective display of the traffic. Marian’s perception of Norman at the hotel, her careful, meticulous moves, and her monitoring of the money all show how Marian is nervous. The famous shower scene is where sound and visuals truly converge during the climax of suspense. A shower is an act of cleansing, but Marian is stripped of the ability to cleanse her soul of the guilt that permeates her consciousness after taking the money. Marian is being violated; the audience does not gain immediate insight into who the killer is because Marian never knows either. All the audience sees is the shadowy figure and the murder weapon: the knife. The staccato stabs are accompanied by staccato violins, both of which subside as blood drains from Marian and her head hits the floor. When the audience again glimpses the wad of money on Marian’s bedside table, there is a brief and necessary return to an objective narrator now that Marian is dead.
In conclusion, costumes are used in two essential ways in the film. The first is that it reinforces the sense of normalcy and creates a background that juxtaposes and heightens the horror and drama of the film. The second use of costume in the way that Bates dresses as his mother is a complete transgression of normalcy and psychologically and socially diametrically opposed to the mundane costumes worn by the
Alfred Hitchcock has cast several actors in a few of his films. James Stewart, a favorite of Hitchcock's has been in "Rope," "Rear Window," "The Man Who Knew Too Much," and "Vertigo." He is and always has been an actor that grows with his characters. As the relationship between Stewart and Hitchcock grew, so did the character's he played, complexity. Stewart provided Hitchcock what few could in his life and
Psycho Alfred Hitchcok's Psycho was released in 1960, and encapsulates the social, psychological, and political tensions of the Cold War era. As Raubicheck and Serebnick point out, Psycho could have been a bridge to the 1960s but the film is "less linked to and reflective of the so-called radical sixties than they are of the more controlled fifties and possess more cultural texture of this earlier era," (17). The issues related
This ties closely with Hitchcock's belief that "dialogue means nothing" in and of itself. He explains, "People don't always express their inner thoughts to one another, a conversation may be quite trivial, but often the eyes will reveal what a person thinks or needs." Thus the focus of a scene within his movies never focuses on what actors say, but rather on what they are doing. Unlike a painter,
Anne Sexton and Alfred Hitchcock Briar Rose and Blood in the Shower Introduction to Both Texts Sexton's Sleeping Beauty goes from an initial anti-feminist slumber of childhood but grows to a later, mature feminist awakening. Hitchcock's Marion Crane goes from an initial feminist empowerment and sexual awakening to anti-feminist slumber and death as the film "Psycho" is more interested in the masculine conflict and journey of the self. Both "Briar Rose: Sleeping Beauty" by
movie industry in America has been controlled by some of the monolithic companies which not only provided a place for making the movies, but also made the movies themselves and then distributed it throughout the entire country. These are movie companies and their entire image revolved around the number of participants of their films. People who wanted to see the movies being made had to go to the "studios"
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