Psycho

Psycho

Psycho is a 1960 film, from the king of film, the one and only Alfred Hitchcock. It is hard to sum into a small blurb, as the structure of the film is unusual. This is because 47 minutes into the movie, the main character, Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) is killed. Up until this point, there is not one scene where Marion is not present. The narration is restricted to Marion, and therefore without her, leaves the audience seeking a new leader to take them through the movie, someone new to identify with. In between the time when she dies, and the end of the film, we are taken through more than three characters' point of views, including the guy who killed her and her sister.

At the time Psycho was made, colour movies were on the up, and to choose the decision to have a black and white film was a stylistic choice. The use of this means that the film feels lifeless, and takes the emotion out of the things that happen, whether that be the robbery or the murders that Norman commits. The shadows in the film become more pronounced for this reason. This gives the film an overall more darker finish, to reflect the dark storyline.

Within the first fifteen minutes of Psycho, the audience watch Marion steal a sum of $40,000 from her place of work. Despite the fact that this is a huge crime, the audience overlook it as we are manipulated by the camera, and the fact that we develop a relationship with Marion. The fact of the crime is overlooked, as we understand that she is doing it for love, as her partner is in debt from a past divorce and his father's death. Not only this, but at the point she steals the money, the audience have not yet been introduced to the 'villain' character, (who will be Norman/'Psycho'), and the most evil character so far is Cassidy, whom she steals the money from. The audience feel anger and distaste towards him, as he is arrogant and vulgar about money. For this reason, and the idea that Marion is the 'hero', the robbery is almost forgotten about, and the enigma code of whether or not Marion will get away is the priority of the audience.

When Marion is driving away from town, we see her shot in close up, with a particularly creepy piece of music being played. This is accompanied by voice overs from different people, the people Marion is worried about finding out that she has taken the money. These create tension and make us feel more on edge to know that she is worrying. The use of voice over brings us closer again to Marion, because they are thoughts and not words spoken out loud; meaning no one else can hear them. This means that we couldn't really get any closer to the character if we tried. We are drawn to her eyes especially, and the idea that they are 'the windows to the soul' is a rather good way to put it, Janet Leigh's eyes particularly. They are very deep and dark, and when she is driving the audience can really sense the panic she is feeling. As a result we feel sympathetic towards her.

When Marion is seen arriving at Bates, she appears distressed after a long and bumpy journey, including being stopped and followed by police, buying a new car, and being caught in a rainstorm. The ideology behind these factors is that everything is telling her to go back, but she still doesn't, and the idea that if she did, the film would be completely different. Within the next ten minutes, is when we see probably the most iconic scene in all of film (and rightly so), The Shower Scene.

Marion decides that she is going to return the money. This makes the audience feel content and at ease on her behalf that she will be free of worry. It is just before The Shower Scene that the narration becomes omniscient, when we see a shot of an eye looking through a hole into her room. She soon turns on the shower, and the idea of normality coming back into play is reassuring. Everyday noises including the therapeutic sound of the shower being turned on lead the audience to believe that everything is okay. There is no music at this point, just the shower. Marion is oblivious to the fact that there is a silhouette figure entering the bathroom, slowly becoming darker as it gets closer, and creating high tension levels for the audience. The music begins as the curtain is pulled back, and Marion begins to scream. Hitchcock surprises the audience with this, and the murder is relentless and continuous, and of course extremely violent. The music  is ear piercing and discordant, making the scene all the more uncomfortable to watch. The fact that the audience have already developed a bond with Marion does not help the shock of what happens, as she is at her most vulnerable and cannot fight back. The low key change in the music highlights the idea of the bad situation, and once the music is over, the sound of the shower is brought back to our attention. However, it has been there all along. From the start of the scene to the end, the shower is the only sound that remains consistent throughout. This could be because she shower is symbolic of washing things away. At the start of the scene, it is washing away her anxiety, however by the end is washing away her life, literally. We see the blood move down the drain, and this is the life draining from within her physically. Metaphorically, the drain could represent the  idea of being taken into a black hole, and the fact that the things that are about to follow are not going to be good. Hitchcock uses a graphic match, for the transition from the drain to Marion's eye when she is lying dead in the bathroom. This could further suggest that the drain is symbolic of a black hole, and that her life has just fell down into it. The fact that Marion is left dead juxtaposes the ideology of washing away the anxiety. The shot of the shower head after Marion is killed is extremely central, and I get an intimidating vibe from the shot, because of the unexpectedness of it, and the pace at which it is shown. It feels that if it was alive it would be looking straight at you, and for this reason and the fact that it has a small oval shape in the middle, I think it resembles an eye. The ideology I discovered from this is that the shower could be symbolic of an eye, and the idea that someone was watching all along.

After Marion is killed, the next character we identify with is Norman, from the point where he is seen disposing the body. This confuses the audience as the film progresses, as our first instinct is to think that if he is disposing her body, he must have killed her. However this changes when the audience are forced to identify with Norman the same way they did with Marion, and therefore develop a relationship with him. Norman becomes a character who the audience are just beginning to like and trust, when the lead role is passed to the next person. When two more people are killed and Norman's behaviour becomes more suspicious, the audience are left confused. Of course in the end it is revealed to us that he is the killer. The character is called Norman, because of the idea of him being 'nor woman, nor man'. We discover through the film that Norman's father died, and he therefore replaces him, and when his mother dies, he becomes her as well.

At the end of the film, when Norman is in prison, he breaks the 4^th wall by talking directly to the camera. The voice over is his mothers voice, and on the final line of the movie 'she wouldn't even hurt a fly', he smiles to the camera, as if he got away with everything he did and is happy with the outcome. Hitchcock uses the technique of compositing shots here, and overlaps the cunning smiling shot with his mothers skull, to show how alike they are not only mentally as we discover throughout the movie, but physically too.

In my opinion, Hitchcock broke a lot of conventions of society at this time to make this movie. Whether that be the idea of the woman trying to save the day, or even being the first movie to have a toilet flushing on camera. It fascinates me that he used to lock people in cinemas when they watched this movie, so that they couldn't get out before they missed any of the best parts. He is a legend in the industry and most definitely earned his position there.