The film ‘Psycho’ by Alfred Hitchcock

The film “Psycho” was produced in the 1960’s by Alfred Hitchcock. It was known as the “mother of the modern day horror movie”. Hitchcock wanted to manipulate his audience into fear and loathing, this was achieved by picking to make the film in black and white rather than using colour to make the audience far more terrified. The title of the film itself builds up tension and suspense. Psycho means mad or the 1 who is mentally disturbed. The title of the film is fairly unusual. It has a strong and deep meaning.

The fear that “Psycho” creates for the audience does not arise from the brutality of the murders but from the subconscious identification with the film’s character. Hitchcock enforces the concept that all the simple emotions and sentiments derived from the film can be felt by any individual as the unending battle among good and evil exists in all elements of life. The efficient use of character parallels and the creation of the audience’s subjective part in the plot enables Hitchcock to entice terror and convey a lingering sense of anxiety within the audience by way of a progressively intensifying theme.

The popular scene from “Psycho” is the shower scene where Marion is killed. This scene was not only renowned for being scary, and psychologically thrilling, but it was also shocking that the major female protagonist was killed off in the 1st half an hour. The films horror doesn’t rely on gore or blood. As an alternative the horror comes from the psychological thoughts, becoming in a shower, in a location exactly where you are supposed to feel secure, and then becoming killed in that spot. The horror also lies in Marion’s expression and her screams. Despite the fact that we never ever see the knife go into the physique, we still hear the noises of cutting flesh and the powerful screams of Marion becoming killed which makes the killing feel actual, and would make people cringe at the believed. This once more shows Hitchcock playing with men and women feelings, feelings and thoughts, as he psychologically disturbs them by producing them think about the knife going in and out, instead of showing the audience directly. This I think tends to make the scene more effective, intense and also believable. From the shower scene, the audience think that Norman Bates’s mother killed Marion. We see Norman take the body, clean the scene and dump the physique in a vehicle and then into the river. This again enhances the creepiness of Norman Bates, as he becomes a puppet to his mothers psychotic behaviour. Nonetheless, when Norman is waiting for the car to drown in the water, Norman smirks and has a devilish grin on his face. This instantly tends to make men and women wonder and query Norman on whether he really likes assisting his mother do this, or if maybe he could have been a portion of killing Marion.

In her last moments, Marion appears to be reaching for one thing, possibly she feels herself slipping from this planet and demands to feel a material object to sustain her grip on this world, either that or she could be reaching for the audience as if she is attempting to say “why didn’t you aid me?” She then proceeds to the floor as low pitch, sombre music begins to play. Her hand ultimately manages to discover the shower curtain and wrenches it from the rail as she topples more than the edge of the bath. The scene then shows that one particular element of the shower that wasn’t white, the tap, the symbol of cleanliness put on a darker objective, washing away Marion’s blood. This shows that the symbolism of cleanliness can be used to both purge darkness but also to scrub one particular clean of its life. The final component of this scene begins with an extreme close up of Marion’s unmoving, unseeing and unblinking eye.

The reality that the audience realise that their staring into death is quite unnerving, along with the reality that there appears to be a single tear on her face which shows immense sadness of the scene. A single of primary motives of the sadness was due to the fact the audience had bonded with her and that she had died leaving so a lot left to full.

By the use of diverse camera angles for example, the close up zoom on the camera curtain which depicts the dark figure holding the knife. This fills the scene with suspense and tension as Marion is not conscious of what is behind her and the use of zoom also highlights the truth that anything horrifying is about to happen. This is another close up on her hand and a downward tilt which shows her hand slowly falling. This symbolizes her last moment alive as the intruder stabs her to death and this yet once more raises suspension as we do not know who the murderer is. When the intruder faces Marion, the music is all of a sudden high pitched and really frantic, capturing the pain of Marion being stabbed continuously by the intruder. Explicitly, we see Marion stabbed on her body but there are also some showing the killer attempting to stab her. This is the most horrifying scene as it scares the audience and creates worry amongst them.

A single of these shots was in the shower scene and it was an eye level shot of the actual intruder attacking her. This emphasizes the fact that the audience are forced to be put into Marion’s place and it in fact feels like the intruder is attacking you which tends to make it even much more scarier.