Hitchcocks Psyco - An examination of the film which reflects the censor's code of ethics of the 1960 USA and yet remains an important film for students of cinema in 2003.

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Name: Marc Simpson                                Candidate Number: 0206

GCSE English                     Centre No: 14225                        October 2003

Hitchcock had to make Psycho in a time of very strict censorship in the USA. To get the film to the maximum audiences without having to change his ideas he showed in the film, Hitchcock used devious techniques to get past the strict censors. Janet Leigh (the actress playing Marion) said in an interview that she thought the strict censorship rules made Hitchcock a better filmmaker, as he had to be more creative. This is a good point as if you have a film were there is a killer running around killing people with blood and guts everywhere it can get boring after a while since you’re seeing the same thing repeatedly. Whereas if you have to be more creative in the way you make a film and people are murdered this comes across to the audience and makes it more entertaining. This can be proved true as Tarantino is often criticised for relying on killings, violence, sex, and drug taking instead of using character development so we know more about them. In “Pulp Fiction” for instance you are distracted by the vivid killings, violence, sex, and drug taking, which takes place in almost every scene, and you never get to know the characters that well. You also don’t get the same witty conversation as you do in Hitchcock films although there is humour in what the characters say in “Pulp Fiction” at times, for instance when they are robbing the restaurant or when John Travolta & Samuel L. Jackson are talking about what burgers are called in France. This lack of character development does make the characters seem more cartoon like.

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 To make it seem like he was co-operating with the censors Hitchcock would add in scenes that were considered unacceptable just so when the censors asked him to get rid of them he would straight away. This technique also worked to distract the censors from scenes he wanted to keep but were pushing the edge of the censorship rules. He was also willing to sacrifice some scenes to keep other more important ones. For instance he told the censors he was willing to get rid of the embrace between Marion and Sam in the first scene if he could ...

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