Film Studies II - Psycho

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was an English film director and producer. He pioneered many elements of the suspense and psychological thriller genres. One of his best work is Psycho. Psycho is a 1960 American psychological horror film directed and produced by Hitchcock, and written by Joseph Stefano, starring Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, John Gavin, Vera Miles and Martin Balsam, and was based on the 1959 novel of the same name by Robert Bloch. The film centers on the encounter between a secretary, Marion Crane (Leigh), who ends up at a secluded motel after stealing money from her employer, and the motel's disturbed owner-manager, Norman Bates (Perkins), and its aftermath.

Hitchcock is often defined by the subjective of camera, he wants the audiences to see the world through a characters’ eyes intimately following their experience and deviously manipulate alignment with those subjects. The opening shot moves through the city of Phoenix even though there are a number of edits it acts like a continuous shot that gradually moves closer to a bedroom window, it reflects the perspective of the audience having only just entered the film. Followed up by a scene appears to be an illicit adulterous affair, and a conflict is up the relationship problem which is financial. In the next shot, the camera pans to the money then to a suitcase showing us that Marion is having a decision between delivering the money to her boss or run away with the money. Hitchcock wanted to give the audience a justification for sympathizing with Marion’s criminal act. First, the owner of the money is painted in an unfavorable light, he boastful about his money and flirting Marion in a boorish way. Making the audience to side with Marion, showing her on the run and making the audience want her to evade capture and escape with the stolen money. As Marion on the way to her destination the lights gradually gets darker, making the audience consumed by this journey but their view has become distorted (showing heavy raining).

The next scene shows that Marion was being murder. Hitchcock is punishing Marion and the audience for prior transgressions and our attachment to her is broken. The camera then links Marion’s lifeless face then towards the money wrapped in newspaper. This is how it all started and like a repeat of the opening shot the camera pans to find the new host for the audience to attach themselves to. Which is showing Norman running into the scene making the audience sympathize him, before this Hitchcock has prepared for the switch prior to the murder the conversation between Norman and Marion was the longest one-on-one conversation in the film, giving the audience time to get to know him. But for the most part he was sympathize and appears to be lonely and pathetic existence, as an audience we pity him. Making the murder was done by his mother thus making the audience sympathize Norman. Following scene introduce three more character, Lila (her sister), Sam (Her boyfriend) and Milton Arbogast the private investigator. Norman a previously who the audience were sided on, is now someone who the audience is afraid off.

In conclusion, the whole construction of the picture suggests a sort of scale of the abnormal first there is a scene of adultery, then a theft, then one crime followed by another one, and finally psychopathy each passage puts the audience on a higher note of the scale. Hitchcock’s style is to framed shots to maximize anxiety, fear, or empathy, and used innovative forms of film editing. His work often features fugitives on the run alongside "icy blonde" female characters, showing us that in real life everyone is a criminal which there is no pure good in real life.