Analyse how Hitchcock Uses a variety of presentational devices and visual images To disturb and shock the audience In the two murder scenes in Psycho.

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Lewis Webb Year 10 Coursework

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Question: Analyse how Hitchcock

Uses a variety of presentational devices and visual images

To disturb and shock the audience

In the two murder scenes in Psycho

"Hitchcock stunned the world in 1960 with the horror film that pushed back the boundaries of acceptability. He wanted a reaction, and he got one. Audiences fainted, walked out and boycotted screenings but they wouldn't forget the horror that was Psycho."

We have been studying the acclaimed thriller 'Psycho' produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

In this essay I will be analysing the two murder scenes and how visual images, (images seen on screen that stick in the mind of the audience or have some greater significance), and careful presentational devices, (camera shots, sound, lighting etrc) have created this filming masterpiece.

The film was released on June 16th 1960 and premiered in New York. Audiences across the world were shocked and disturbed about the graphic content of the film. The film had a number of issues that would change censorship laws forever. For example, then the film was certified 18 but now it is 15, which proves there has been a huge change in the way films are perceived by the present generation of people.

In the film we see sex out of marriage, nudity, murder and hints of transvestism. The film proved to be a landmark in cinematography. And the mise en scene (put into the scene) is brilliantly produced to give the film several different levels of meaning.

The traditional Hollywood film would have a beginning, middle and an end but in Psycho the audience can't follow the film because Hitchcock broke all the traditional film making rules. If you start with the leading lady you end with the leading lady but he doesn't. Instead forty five minutes into the film she is killed and the audience is left feeling shocked and confused. The typical horror genre in a Hollywood film nearly always involved vampires and ghost's but this film was based on a series of situations that could happen anywhere anytime in the real world. An example of this is where Marion and her boyfriend John Gavin is a couple in debt having sex out of marriage in dark sleazy hotels with ordinary jobs. Hitchcock, very unusually for the time, used 50mm camera lenses, a lense with the closest relation to the human eye to give it a sense of realism and so the audience would feel as if they are there while it's being shot on location.

Hitchcock based the film on the true life story of serial killer Ed Gern and bought all the rights to the film for $9000 and bought as many books as he could to keep the film's story as secret as possible. He went to extraordinary lengths to keep the film secret, his film crew and cast had to swear to an oath of secrecy on the first day of shooting, and no unauthorised personnel were allowed on or of set. Hitchcock was a master of PR stunts and did many things to give his film as much free publicity as possible. After the entire budget for the film was $800,000 as paramount refused to fund this risqué project?

Because of the low budget, costs had to be kept to a minimum where ever possible. Hitchcock used his film crew from his new T.V program and produced the film in black and white for three reasons one it was much cheaper to produce the film using mono-colour then coloured film, to cover up the gory scenes and to again make the film feel ordinary.

Janet Leigh (Marion Crane) didn't wear glamorous costumes for the movie but instead bought normal clothes from normal shops so that the audience could identify her role as an estate agent receptionist nor did she wear too much make-up instead kept it to a minimum and even done her own hair.
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Alfred's uncanny ways of boosting the hype surrounding Psycho were unlike anything ever heard of or seen before. In the sixties it was normal procedure for people to walk into a movie at anytime and leave when they want but it was strictly forbidden that anyone should enter the screening during it, instead it was the first case of fixed timings for films and the first use of ticket stubs.

Queues tailed back for blocks on end, in Chicago particularly, the cinemas were worried that the crowds would become unsettled and restless. Hitchcock ordered staff to buy ...

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