Psycho (1960)

For my tenth and final post, I chose to analyze the Hitchcock classic, Psycho. The beginning misleads the audience into a plot which will only serve to be a distraction from the main plot. The film starts where Marion is in a hotel room with a man named Sam. She steals thousands of dollars from the bank she works at, then leaves town, trades her car in for another, and has an overwhelming sense of anxiety due to giving into her guilty pleasures. Prior to Marions murder, there are no fading transitions. The cuts go from one scene to the next, trying to convey a sense of "real time". When she arrives at the secluded motel, the pace of the movie slows down finally, and does a back tracking shot from her eye to her body. This scene lasts a little over a minute. This plot will almost cease once she is murdered at the Bates motel by Norman's "mother" who is actually him. The movie ends at a completely unpredicted point in contrast to the beginning, where Norman Bates is locked up in jail. Towards the end, a man comes to speak with Sam and Marions sister to give his psychoanalysis if Norman. He states that Norman killed his mother and her lover out of jealousy, and kept her body. Once she died, he developed a split personality: one being himself, and the other his mother. The films scenes seem to have the most action occur at night: Murders, Marions racing thoughts, the discovery of Mrs. Bates body. While the daytime scenes seem uneventful. The motel setting is always dark, with an old rickety Victorian home overlooking it from a hill. Sometimes a silhouette lingering in the front window is seen. A series of shadows are used in this film to further convey the darkness, all the way to the end where the skull of Mrs. Bates is illuminated in the back, giving a chill to the audience. The overall mise-en-scene emphasizes shadows, and darkness perhaps metaphorical to the unexpected outcome of the plot and personality of Norman Bates. Also during the infamous transitional scene where Marion is stabbed in the shower, the soundtrack of the shrieking heightens the shock to the audience, and has been used in future films. It is now a symbolic sound to a horror. Without the shriek, the transitional scene would not be what it is today. Speaking to someone who saw this in theaters in 1960 when it debuted, they stated, "I couldn't take a shower for 2 years, only baths, and I'm serious". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bT7a8Gv9qdA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYDxxHrlmUg&NR=1&feature=endscreen