Hitchcock makes Psycho a frightening and worrying experience for his audience by maintaining suspense at pivotal moments throughout the film.

The film is a frightening and worrying experience at times, the audience feels involved in the film because the camera angles were made in a way which made you feel like you were involved. Hitchcock chose to have this film in black and white to manipulate the audience into fear and to being frightened. Hitchcock clearly shows his desire to involve the audience as much as possible to create suspense and to make the audience frightened and worried throughout.

When the policeman is talking to Marion we feel her fear because of her emotions, for example her eyebrows raised, biting of lip and the nervous pitch to her voice. We also feel Marion's fear because the policeman's face has backlighting on it which chisels out features and the glasses conceal identity which makes you feel cautious.

The Bates house is gothic looking and it is dark and daunting which makes the setting feel uninviting.

When Norman Bates was speaking to private detective Arbogast he said "Old habits die hard". There are other scenes where there is irony like when Arbogast was murdered the way he fell down the stairs Alfred Hitchcock tried to make it look funny in a very sick sense of humour. There is a tree next to Norman Bates in a poster, the tree is dead, the branches have been broken, and it's a sort of description of Norman Bates. The camera creates suspense in the film for example, when Arbogast was in the Bates household while he was walking up the staircase the camera moved onto his mother's room where we saw the door open but Arbogast didn't see it and he got killed. Also another part of the movie where the camera creates suspense is in the shower scene, Marion Crane is having a shower the camera moves towards the door she does not realise but someone has come in. Norman Bates then pulls the shower curtain and kills her.

The high pitch music warns the audience that something bad is going to happen and in the shower scene when the murder is happening there is a lot of quick edits which show the chaos of the scene. The audience feel involved but also frightened because we never see the stabbing and it is left to our imagination. As the audience is feeling involved, when Marian is in the shower we feel vulnerable and frightened of what might happen. When the killer emerges there is back-lighting which conceals identity and this is worrying as we cannot identify or clearly see the killer.

Throughout the film the audience is involved and we are very frightened when Marian is struggling and there is close-up's of her which makes the audience feel involved and feel her struggle. An element of pathetic fallacy is present when Marian is driving into the Bates Motel which hints that something bad is going to happen. When Norman Bates clears the murder scene you can clearly see he is mechanical with his clear-up and makes you assume that he has done this before.

During the shower scene we can see Marion looks vulnerable in 'Picture B' and we sense that something is going to happen. We see the terror and desperation in Marion's face with a close up of her mouth opened wide shown in 'Picture A.'

The shower scene is a brilliant scene which employs great techniques:

Mother/Norman arrives, and the violins start...

Marion screams, and I think we do also.

Famous image and extraordinarily dramatic: Marion stabbed to death, slides along the wall.

Blood flows. This part was accused to be one of the most shocking and Hitchcock was accused to use the noise of the water falling down a toilet. This technique is wonderful cross-fading on Marion's dead eye.

Throughout 'Psycho', high pitch music, backlighting and close-up camera angles create tension in the film Psycho and make the audience feel involved but also frightened and worried.

Picture A Picture B

Christopher Hartley

Chris Hartley