How does "Alfred Hitchcock's" PSYCHO create and sustain suspense for a modern audience?

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How does “Alfred Hitchcock’s” PSYCHO create and sustain suspense for a modern audience?

Psycho is undoubtedly one of the most thrilling movies ever made. The director Alfred Hitchcock is universally regarded as one of the best directors who ever lived. The way that he is able to create and sustain suspense throughout all his movies and able to keep the audience glued to the T.V is believed to be magical. However, we are now living in the twenty first century and the methods that Alfred Hitchcock uses, may not attract a modern audience. With computer aided designs (CAD) and special effects around, Psycho may not be able to keep up with the gripping thrillers, like the trilogy of ‘Scream’.

The main plot of the story is about a girl called Marion Crane who is an accountant. While she is on a lunch-time session with her boyfriend Sam Loomis, she finds out that her lover is in debts from his father’s death and that the only way that they would be able to get married is by getting money. When she returns to work she is given forty thousand dollars to put into a bank. However, she doesn’t put the money in the bank and leaves town. All sorts of suspicious things happen between the period of her leaving her home-town Phoenix and arriving in a small motel in the middle of nowhere called the Bates Motel. As soon as you see the house that shadows the motel, you know something is going to happen. The famous shower scene, where Marion is murdered in the showers takes place in the motel and the murder of Detective Milton Arbogast. Eventually Marion’s sister Lila Crane and her boyfriend Sam Loomis begin to find out the truth about Norman Bates. The mystery is solved in the cellar of Bates’ house and we eventually find out that he has a split personality. He can become wild and be the Psycho or he can be a nice normal man. He is finally put away in a Psychiatric Hospital. Throughout the movie Hitchcock uses many ways of keeping the audience glued to the T.V including, camera angles, lighting, sex, music and wrong decisions. All these factors have made Psycho one of the best movies made and millions of copies are still being sold worldwide. For the past fifty years Hitchcock has made the public aware of him and his movies and will surely never be forgotten.

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In the first scene of Psycho we see Marion Crane having a lunch-hour tryst with her lover Sam Loomis. Their love-making is frustrated by the fact that Marion and Sam are unable to get married because of his dead father’s debts. In the modern world that we live in sex is a factor that will keep either elderly or youthful people glued to the screen. This is why it is a good starting scene that will keep viewers watching. We see Marion in her blouse which at the time would have aroused men. However, in this day and age there are ...

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