Psycho analysis

Psycho analysis

Psycho is an amazing classical film and one of the reasons it is an amazing film is because this film is restricted. One way it is restricted is apart from maybe one shot we are with Lila from when the film starts to when Marion dies. This helps with the narrative as this keeps the audience always wondering what is going to happen is she going to get caught is she not? By doing this the film also forces us to build a connection with Lila so we actually want her to get away from everyone and not get caught as we know she has stolen the money for a good reason. This also makes the legendary shower scene so much more horrific when it happens as we have built a relationship with this character and we think we are going to be with her for the whole film and she is then prematurely killed off which makes this scene even more shocking.

When it comes to Propp’s character types the women are always the damsels in distress basically the weak ones where as the men are the Heroes basically the strong ones. Alfred Hitchcock challenges this by making the women the strong characters this makes the film even more unique and more horrific when Leila dies as we believe that she will never die as she seems to be overruling everyone so it makes us feel like she is an untouchable person this makes the ending very shocking. Because when But when we get to the end and we find out that Norman at times believes he is his mother Norma this again shows the twist to the film that we did not expect but with Alfred using the women as the dominant characters all the way through it has built up to a very good and ending that no one saw coming.

The camera editing in this film is absolutely amazing as through a lot of the film we are given slow editing apart from a few moments even when Leila is getting chased by the cop the editing is not that fast. This makes it better for the shower scene because this a very sudden change of pace which disorientates us a lot this makes this scene even more horrific as this mixed with the horrific out of tune music makes this scene hard to watch as. The Music mixed with editing hurts our ears and the use of 70 odd shots hurts our eyes and makes us struggle to watch it.

Alfred Hitchcock made a brilliant choice of filming Psycho in black and white and the reason being is this shows the how the characters are themselves to start with for example Leila steals the money to help out her boyfriend so they can get married. But then makes the right decision to go and take the money back and make amends. But this also makes it more of a thriller as it makes the film feel a lot more secretive which makes it scarier as it makes us feel how can something like this be going on and know actually knows about it also. It is a great way to show the split personality of Norman as we have the nice side of him where he makes dinner for Leila and we then have the evil version where one comment about his mother and he is willing to kill someone to defends his mother’s honour.

When Marion is in her room looking at the money Alfred Hitchcock uses an Enigma code as this part makes us think what Marion is going to do with the money. As the audience want her to do the right thing and take the money with audience ironically willing her to her death. But it also makes us think she might do the wrong thing and take the money to the bank which we don’t want her to because the person that gave her the money was a very horrible person.

In this movie we have todorov’s narrative in play and I am going to start with when Marion steals the money and I believe this is equilibrium as everything is okay she knows she is doing and is getting away. The disruption weirdly though is not Norman at the hotel it is Marion turning up at the hotel as everything is good as roses till Marion disturbs Norman and accidently insults his mother. But it also does not help when Normans mother always restricted Norman from girls his own age so he ended up becoming too controlled and becoming too attached so the mother inside him restricts him from doing anything with other girls. So this means that the attempt to resolve the disruption is killing Marion so that he can make up for the insult on his mother as he is mentally disturbed and believes he is actually his mother at times so killing Marion returns the normality