How does Alfred Hitchcock gain the sympathy of the audience for Marian Crane in Psycho

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How does Alfred Hitchcock gain the sympathy of the audience for Marian Crane in Psycho?

Alfred Hitchcock directed the film ‘Psycho’ in 1960. At the end of its first year, the film earned fifteen million dollars. The film has generated three sequels and was the first “Madman with a knife” or “Slasher films.” Followed by films such as ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ or ‘Halloween’. It was also the very first horror film that looked at something realistic like a psychiatric situation instead of fictional horror characters like werewolves or vampires.

Alfred Hitchcock had his own new ideas in publicity and marketing. He made sure that everyone was seated before the film had started and that no one could enter half way through. Hitchcock had advertisements all over the place. He even went out and bought all of the ‘Psycho’ novels out of shops to make sure that no one could find out the ending without seeing the film. Hitchcock also asked people not to reveal the ending of the film when they came out from the cinema. By investing so much in publicity, Hitchcock manipulated the audience. More and more people wanted to see the film and there were loads of queuing people outside of cinemas all over.

Violence, sexual content and even the flushing of toilets were all new to audiences. They hadn’t seen a film like it before. The film was blamed for an increase of violent murders just as films are today.

Alfred Hitchcock was already a famous director before ‘Psycho’ was made. He was well known for his strange and macabre films. ‘Psycho’ was based on the book by Robert Bloch, about real killings of psychopath Ed Gein.

Many film studios rejected Hitchcock as they thought that the film would not pass the Hayes office for censorship and the Motion picture association, which meant that the film could not be released. Alfred Hitchcock decided to pay for the film himself as he had so much faith in it.

Music played a big part in the film. Bernard Herrman came up with an idea that strings would represent the sounds of stabbing actions of the knife.

Marian Crane is the main character at the beginning of ‘Psycho’. The audience is on her side until she gets killed off. Then the audience are not quite sure who to relate to. Usually, a film follows a certain pattern. You learn about a character, they have a problem, go on a quest to sort it out and then get to a resolution. The way ‘Psycho’ is different, is because the main character is killed off while she is trying to sort out her problem. She never does get to the end to sort things out.

In ‘Psycho’s’ famous shower scene, seventy-eight separate shots were needed to get it right. It also took a staggering seven days to film. To pass the Hayes office for censorship, Marian Crane (Actress Janet Leigh) had to have moleskin stuck all over her to make sure that she didn’t appear nude.

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In this assignment, I am going to analyse the way that Alfred Hitchcock gains the sympathy of the audience for Marian Crane even though she steals $40,000.

At the start of the film, the credits are shown. Hitchcock thought hard about the way he would show them. The screen is made up of black and white horizontal bars, which keep on splitting. This shows the two conflicting sides of the film (good verses evil!) During the credits, the ‘Psycho’ theme tune is played. This helps to create tension and suspense even before the film has started.

The ...

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