"How did Hitchcock create sustain and sustain it in Psycho?"

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PSYCHO

“How did Hitchcock create sustain and sustain it in Psycho? 

Psycho, by Alfred Hitchcock, was shocking for its time. Made in the 1960’s when film censorship was very tight to today’s standards, Hitchcock pushed the limits of what could be shown and did with psycho things that had never been done before. The cinematic art, symbolism and sub-conscious images in this film were brilliant for the time and still are now. Realised for this, psycho has been copied in many ways and the things that made it great have become very clichéd.

From the very first scene in psycho, it is clear that the viewer will be sucked into the world of Marion Crane and Norman Bates. The opening shot is an aerial shot from the sky, pausing momentarily and seeming to pick a window at random, suggesting these were randomly chosen people, normal people like you and I, Hitchcock includes very normal things in psycho to let us relate to it, creating sympathy and empathy.

The film is generally about guilt. Two different personalities are brought together because of their secrets based on sex, Marion’s affair with a married man and Normans murder of his mother and her lover in bed.

Hitchcock uses either conscious or sub conscious symbolism, concentrating on the story, we get the feelings Hitchcock wants us to have, based on the symbolism, without even properly realising it, for example one I didn’t notice while watching psycho for the first time was that Marion’s underwear changed from white to black after she decided to steal the money.  Knowing that showing a girl in her underwear was going to shock people, Hitchcock knew that this is what the focus would be on, he used this to show that she turned evil. In psycho black and darkness refers to evil and light and white refers to good this happens many times.

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Taxidermy is a very big part of the film, it hints to the ending, creates a scary atmosphere, describes Norman’s character and is used before something evil happens. The stuffed birds prey down on Norman and seem to haunt him (as his mother does).

They mirror the way the dark, gloomy, gothic house watches over the hotel and also how Mother psychologically watches over Norman, this creates suspense as the audience wonder how he will use the tension he is building up.

Another example is when Arbogaust gets killed and when Norman is taking his mother downstairs, we watch ...

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