How Hitchcock Challenges Audience Expectations in his Film Psycho
Hitchcock does very well in his film with censorship of film making in
the nineteen fifties as he goes right to the limits of were the film
is just suitable to show the nation. He does this many times in his
film, one example is where Marian gets undressed and dressed. You see
her bra and knickers in this scene, which is very unusual back then,
it is worse than seeing nudity in films now. If Marian had taken any
think else off in this scene it would have been explicit nudity,
therefore not be able to be shown in the film. This is what I mean by
how Hitchcock takes censorship to the limit.
Some other censorship themes that Hitchcock took to the boundary was
expressive kissing, swearing and brutality. Hitchcock went as far as
possible with censorship to grip the audience and get more of a feel
to the film. Psycho is a fifteen in England to buy on video these days
because the censorship now is nothing compared to back when the film
was made, a director can do basically anything now. The audience now
would say it should be a twelve or lower as there is no swearing or
sexual scenes and not that much brutality and parents would not mind
their children seeing this. The scenes are still scary to the audience
though and it would take quite an intelligent twelve year old to wrap
their head round what is about and how it develops at the end.
The editing in psycho is great and must have taken a week to do just
one scene. It is very good for the scene and for the audience as it
builds tension and creates an atmosphere. The best scene to show this
as an example is the famous shower scene where Marian is murdered,
whilst having a shower, by Norman dressed as his mother with a knife.
There was seventy-eight separate camera set ups needed for the shower
scene from the shower head, down the toilet, from the mirror, Marians
Eventually word got out he was in fact lying. so Alfred Hitchcock had to give another descirption of the movie Quote"Story of a young man whose mother is a homicidal maniac". The word psycho also means split personality. Alfred Hitchcock gives clues for this. e.g the word "Psycho" which is featured on the promoting poster has been completly shattered, which makes you think that the film is about split personalities.
‘Psycho’ is a 1960’s thriller that has been voted as one of the top 15
Through the use of irony, mis en scene and recurring symbols, Hitchcock has reinforced the fundamental idea of duality throughout his film, Psycho. Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960’s American psychological horror thriller, was one of the most awarded films of its time, proposing contrasting connections between characters, Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh, and cinematic/film techniques to develop this idea. Irony identifies contrasts between the dual personalities of Marion Crane and Norman Bates, often foreshadowing the future events of the film. Mis en scene is particularly influential to enforcing the idea of duality, evidently shown through the music and diegetic sounds used. The recurring symbols including the mirrors and specifically the birds, underpin a representation of the character’s dual personalities. Hitchcock’s use of devices reinforces the dual personalities of characters Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh.
And last but not least is the villain in these movies. Most of the killers in these films are portrayed as mentally deranged and/or has some type of facial or bodily deformation and who have been traumatized at an early age. Even though these characters terrorized and murder people they have taken on the persona of anti-heroes in pop culture. Characters like Halloween’s Michael Myers, A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger and Friday the 13th’s Jason Voorhees have become the reason to go see these movies. However, over time,”their familiarity and the audience’s ability to identify and sympathize with them over the protagonist made these villains less threatening (Slasher Film (5))”.
bank. Marion went home there was a close up shot on the money then on
film and novel not all characters that are introduced are in both the novel and film. The
...ces, nor was it a great performance or their enjoyment of the novel. They were aroused by pure film. That's why I take pride in the fact that PSYCHO, more than any of my other pictures, is a film that belongs to filmmakers."
PSYCHO is a unique film because it is a black and white film in the
Cinematography of Hitchcocks Psycho Alfred Hitchcock is renown as a master cinematographer (and editor), notwithstanding his overall brilliance in the craft of film. His choice of black and white film for 1960 was regarded within the film industry as unconventional since color was perhaps at least five years the new standard. But this worked tremendously well. After all, despite the typical filmgoer’s dislike for black and white film, Psycho is popularly heralded among film buffs as his finest cinematic achievement; so much so, that the man, a big
...w the hosting of two personalities in Dr. Robert Elliot worked De Palma was able to show what the society really thought of psychiatrists and the police, and De Palma was able to undermine what would seem important to society which is order and stability. Through this scene and through other similarities and differences that De Palma has created in Dressed to Kill one could see the influence of Psycho. De Palma has perhaps borrowed and revised from Psycho but only to show the darkness that Psycho had by using less discretion, more female sexuality, more male sexual anxiety, and showing the instability and chaos that really exists in the society. So Hitchcock’s Psycho has really been a lasting influence and De Palma made sure to bring out the darkness and the chaos that the film holds through the similarities and differences seen between Psycho and Dressed to Kill.
scenes which gives you the need to be one of the characters from the flick.
Psycho is a suspense-horror film written by Joseph Stefano and directed by Alfred Hitchcock. This film was loosely adapted from Robert Bloch’s 1959 suspense novel, Psycho. A majority of the movie was filmed in 1960 at Universal Studios in Los Angeles. Psycho is about Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), a secretary from Arizona who steals $40,000 from her employer’s client. She takes that money and drives off to California to meet her lover Sam Loomis (John Gavin) in order to start a new life. After a long drive, she pulls off the main highway and ends up taking refuge at an isolated motel owned and managed by a deranged Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins). In Alfred Hitchcock’s film, Psycho, symbols, character and point of view are three literary aspects used in the film to manipulate the audience’s emotions and to build suspense in the film.
In the world of cinema, there’s almost always a discussion regarding what scenes would be suitable for the grasping imagination of any audience, young or old. Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 film, Psycho, sparked a plug for the movie industry as it was the first movie of its kind to display such graphic scenes of sex and violence to a worldwide audience.
The film may have edited out one of the drastic details that made the novel’s success, explaining the film’s failure.
In the article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Laura Mulvey discusses the relationships amongst psychoanalysis (primarily Freudian theory), cinema (as she observed it in the mid 1970s), and the symbolism of the female body. Taking some of her statements and ideas slightly out of their context, it is interesting to compare her thoughts to the continuum of oral-print-image cultures.