Psycho has achieved a magnificent feat in the horror genre. With the eloquent use of manipulation, Hitchcock has managed to let his audience perceive the skew reality. Whether he is focusing on the money or the lingerie Marion is wearing, he has deprived the audience of their awareness and manipulated the audience into believing what they see. These manipulation techniques ultimately enhanced Psycho with its unexpected quality. Hitchcock was fixated on the aspect of manipulation to the extend that he was manipulating the audience till the very last 15minutes (till the skeleton Mother was turned).
There were many instances were he employed his manipulation technique, one such instance would be the shower scene where Marion was being attacked by the ‘Mother’. In this event, the ‘Mother’s face was completely black and not visible. Hitchcock purposely removed the features of the ‘Mother’ appearing on the screen and focused on the action of striking Marion and Marion’s
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Hitchcock made us sympathise with the villain as we view him to be a pitiful character covering up for his mother. His relationship with his Mother made him garner the viewer’s sympathy and affection. Sam interrogating Norman made us audience sympathise with Norman as he appears hopeless as till that point we thought he was covering up for his Mother and that he was innocent.
Psychological manipulation was imbedded in the film when it was finally revealed that Norman is ‘Mother’, it made us question how we identified with a deranged villain. Hitchcock manipulated us through psychological and narrative techniques by gaining the sympathy for Norman Bates before the crime is committed. Making us already have a basis for wanting Norman to be safe and unaccountable for his ‘Mother’s’ crime. In Psycho the villain is portrayed humanistically. This makes us audience question if it takes a normal human being to be a
He probably scared many women into giving up on improving their unsatisfying lives just as most propaganda and media at that time did. Hitchcock created a film that portrayed the feelings he observed in society. A work of art often says something about the culture that surrounds it and Hitchcock told women that they needed to stay in their roles if they wanted to lead a good
In conclusion in “Rear Window” Hitchcock is shown off as an auteur and realist though his modification and implementation of his own creative mind and as a realist by conveying reality and occurrences of everyday life respectively. He also used methods such as eye line matching, cinema as window and frame, and potentially character specific lighting to connect the audience with the characters and to give the main characters more individualized
Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho"-the movie the world recognised-was first premiered in the home town of New York on the 16th June 1960.The film follows the life and strife of a young beautiful woman Marion Crane, played by the Janet Leigh, who is on the run from the police after stealing $40.000, she manages to find refuge at the Bates motel where she makes her worst mistake possible. During and after the film production of "Psycho" Alfred Hitchcock had his aids buy as many copies as possible of the novel "Psycho"-written by Robert Bloch. Why? To conceal the ending form the public's eye so when the film was shown in cinemas the audience would'nt know the ending. When people found out the title of the movie Hitchcock said it was based on a greek love story "Psyche".
Suspense is only one of Hitchcock’s many techniques and themes. His themes range from the obvious violence, to the depths of human interaction and sex. From Rear Window to Psycho, Hitchcock’s unique themes are present and evident. Rear Window starts with something we all do at times, which is nosing in and stalking on others business, and turns it into a mysterious investigation leaving the viewer second guessing their neighbors at home. Psycho on the other hand, drags
Part of what makes Cooper’s unreliable narration work is the narrative expectations for suspense. Often called “The Master of Suspense,” Hitchcock was known for letting his viewers “play god” by giving them privileged information that the characters on screen don’t have in order to harness the audience's expectations and anticipation. Casetti described this as providing the audience with suspicion, the tools needed to construct a narrative and the motivations of characters (70). Since Cooper and Hitchcock withhold the correct information until near the end of the film they intentionally let viewer build the wrong story and experience a surprise deception. Surprise deceptions, such as the one found in Stage Fright, were not done in the Classic Hollywood Cinema and when paired with traditional models of trust in film open up many layers of exploration into the reaction of the
Perhaps no other film changed so drastically Hollywood's perception of the horror film as did PSYCHO. More surprising is the fact that this still unnerving horror classic was directed by Alfred Hitchcock, a filmmaker who never relied upon shock values until this film. Here Hitchcock indulged in nudity, bloodbaths, necrophilia, transvestism, schizophrenia, and a host of other taboos and got away with it, simply because he was Hitchcock.
Given that Norman Bates takes on the identity of his mother in response to a strange attachment that he has to her, as Norman himself says, “a boy’s best friend is his mother,” and that his mother is his “trap” that he “was born into,” it appears that Hitchcock’s lifelong interest in Freudian psychology is very intense in that Norman Bates had an Oedipus complex. If this is true, Psycho contains the emasculation of Norman at the hands of a woman, who happens to be his mother. The idea that Norman Bates remained in love with his mother and that Marion has the power to provoke this pathology, Psycho is another example of a female having power over a man, or a “boy”—in the case of Norman Bates.
One major attribute in Hitchcock films is how creatively Hitchcock tricks the audience about the fate of the characters and the sequence of events. Many people argue that it is a tactic by Hitchcock to surprise his audience in order to increase the suspense of the movie. For example, in Shadow of a Doubt, the audience assumes that young Charlie is an innocent young girl who loves her uncle dearly. However as the movie progresses, Young Charlie is not as innocent as the audience suspects. Young Charlie, once a guiltless child, ends up killing her evil uncle. In Vertigo, the same Hitchcock trickery takes place. In the beginning, the audience has the impression that the Blond women is possessed by another woman who is trying to kill her. The audience also has the notion that the detective is a happy man who will solve the murder case correctly. Just before the movie ends, the audience realizes that the detective was specifically hired by a man to kill his wife. The detective, in the end, seems to be the hopeless, sad victim.
Norman Bates is arguably the most unforgettable character in the horror genre. His movements, voice and aura at first radiate a shy young man but transform into something more sinister as the movie Psycho (Hitchcock, USA, 1960) progresses. How has the director, Alfred Hitchcock, achieved this? Norman Bates was a careful construct: the casting, body language, lighting and even the subtle use of sound and mise-en-scène created the character.
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 article, “Psycho at Fifty: Pure Cinema or Invitation to an Orgy?” by John A. Bertolini, he describes how the images and scenes throughout the whole movie and its more arguable parts are what made the film stick with the imagination of Hitchcock’s audience. He goes on to give an explanation of how Hitchcock is as well one of few directors who is able to mix a little humor to go along with his vicious plot. Bertolini speculates that the audience was thrown off by savagery depicted in this film and more concerned with the emotions that were created by Hitchcock’s movie. He also outlines how much controversy the film created Psycho by stating how it, “reflected the changes at work in the larger society, especially the increasing insiste...
Alfred Hitchcock developed his signature style from his earlier works The Lodger and Blackmail. These films were the framework for his signature films later on. His themes of “an innocent man who is accused of a crime” and “the guilty woman” were first seen in these two films and are repeated throughout Hitchcock’s cinematic history
Hitchcock has a way of throwing clues in the face of the spectator, yet still allows some room for the spectator to find their own less obvious details. In the same museum scene, Hitchcock shows the viewer exactly what he wants them to see. In a sense, Hitchcock can be very manipulative with the camera. The audience sees the picture containing the women with a curl in her hair holding flowers, and then the direct connection is made by the camera, by showing the curl in Madeline’s hair, and the flowers sitting next to her. The spectator is led to believe that they have solved the mystery and she is truly possessed by the women in the picture. However, Hitchcock does this on purpose to lead the audience away from the truth that she is only acting. It is for these reasons that Hitchcock’s work at an auteur adds a level of depth and intrigue.
The two films Psycho and The Birds, both directed by Alfred Hitchcock, share similar themes and elements. These recurring themes and elements are often prevalent in many of Hitchcock’s works. In Psycho and The Birds, Hitchcock uses thematic elements like the ideal blonde woman, “the motherly figure”, birds, and unusual factors that often leave the viewer thinking. Hitchcock’s works consist of melodramatic films, while also using pure cinema to help convey messages throughout the film.
There are three key scenes that best exemplify Hitchcock’s technical competence. After Alicia’s party and run in with the police, she is shown lying in bed with a hangover. We see a close up of a concoction Devlin made Alicia for hangovers. The next shot is a Dutch angle of Devlin, arms crossed and in shadow. Alicia drinks more of the concoction and camera’s perspective is in Alicia’s point of view. The Dutch angle slanted to the right rotates clockwise to an upside down shot of Devlin because Alicia is lying upside down on the bed. Coincidently, after the elaborate camera work, Alicia sits up and says, “What’s this all about? What’s your angle?”. Hitchcock’s technical competence in this scene is a testament to his authorship.