- No explicit Nudity may be shown.
- Audience should not be made to sympathise with wrong doers.
- A wrong doer should not be shown to get away with any wrong doing.
- In addition, blasphemy and bad language (even words such as ‘Damn’ or ‘Hell’) were forbidden as was excessive, lustful kissing and embracing: which was considered totally unacceptable.
Alfred Hitchcock managed to keep within all these boundaries yet he was able to produce films which audiences of today, when rules are far more relaxed, find shocking.
There is no nudity shown. Even when Marion is showering in the shower scene no part of her body was shown that was not necessarily needed. Jus to be safe she wore a skin suit so that Alfred could justify the scene as a legal one by saying that the audience imagine her naked. The fact that the two actors were never in the room together for this particular scene makes Alfred’s justification stronger.
He managed to create such an effective scene by a lot of editing and great camera work. He showed the bits of a sequence that he was allowed to, and then edited out the bits that he was not allowed to show. He did this at a very fast rate with the shower scene containing 78 shots even though the scene only lasts 45 seconds.
Alfred left the audience to piece together the scene in there imagination, so they would imagine the knife entering the body, the audience are helped by the sound effects. This is because although you cannot see the knife entering the body you can hear it tearing through the flesh and this allows the viewer to visualise the act of violence which Alfred was not allowed to show.
The film was shot in black and white although colour was available. Alfred did this on purpose in order to prevent the film from being criticised for terrible amount of blood which would in colour have had a greater impact. Since the film was in black and white Alfred used chocolate syrup to represent blood.
The opening scene of the “Psycho” is perhaps one of the best examples of Alfred using his audience’s imagination to his advantage. The scene shows Marion lying on a bed in a hotel room, with only a skirt and a bra on whilst Sam is buttoning his shirt up. This leads the audience to believe that the two have spent the night together and Alfred quiet intelligently managed to avoid showing scenes which may have been considered inappropriate.
I will now talk about one particular scene from “Psycho”, the shower scene. It takes place right after Norman Bates has left the room. Marion is shown relaxed. She is under the shower with water pouring on her. It is important to keep in mind that Marion was not naked at the time but was wearing a moleskin suite. We get a shot from the head of the shower witch shows Marion’s facial expressions which indicate she is enjoying the shower. We then get a shot of Marion with the shower curtain in the background. We see a silhouette of a body appear right behind Marion who has her back to the curtain. This automatically disturbs the audience who have assumed that Marion is naked because it was inappropriate to show two people in such a situation. Suddenly the curtain is pulled back to reveal a darkened figure which appears to be of a woman. We get a close-up of Marion’s face and then her mouth which shows her screaming in obvious terror. The now very famous music of the “screeching Violins” then begins and is similar to the sound of Marion’s screaming which I think was deliberately done by Alfred to build tension, as I found it to have a greater effect than screaming alone would have had. The person attacks Marion and the sequence of alternating shots of the knife and Marion’s body begins, accompanied by high pitched music and the sound of a knife ripping through flesh. Here the audience is required to use their imagination in order to picture the knife entering the body as Alfred Hitchcock was not allowed to show this, as I have already explained. The amount of tension finally reaches its climax as the rapid editing emulates the fast stabbing that takes place. This not only helps the viewer visualise what Alfred was not allowed to show but also helps build the tension and atmosphere required. We then see her fall out of the shower, as this happens she pulls down the shower curtain which shows the fact that she is trying to hang onto her life. We then get a close up of her face and the camera zooms into her eye. This helps the viewer realise that she is actually dead as there is no movement. We then get a shot of the drain with blood (chocolate syrup) going down the drain which symbolises her life draining away. I think this again shows Alfred’s obvious genius.
In the scene we get shots from both the pint of view of the killer and Marion. This is used to give the viewer a better understanding of the event and perhaps, especially with the shots from Marion’s point of view, create greater suspense and tension. Another thing to take into account is that when the blood goes down the drain the music stops which shows that something big has just finished. It was appropriate for Marion to be shown to be murdered because under the Hays Code a film could not show a wrong doer to benefit from crime.
Alfred Hitchcock is undoubtedly extremely successful at creating horror/thriller films but I do not think that he would be as successful as he is without the help of the musicians he worked with particularly Bernard Herman who chose the famous “screeching violins. Alfred Hitchcock admit that he was surprised when he was told that “strings” would be providing the music to such a horrific murder scene
As with “Psycho”,” The Birds” also produced similar results in the sense that it created tension and suspense before reaching a climax. I think Alfred misleads the audience at the beginning of the film when “love birds” are mentioned; this is in fact totally opposite to the behaviour of the birds later on in the film.
I am looking at one scene in particular which is probably the most famous scene of the film. I will refer to it as the school scene. It takes place as Melanie is sitting outside the school, next to a white fence with her back to the school playground, waiting for the teacher to come out. Then a cutaway shot shows a solitary black bird swoop across the skyline and rest on the playground climbing frame. There is then a perspective shot. Another shot shows her lighting her cigarette with the number of birds increased to four. This slow edit builds up tension and begins to foreshadow the attack which is about to take place. Another bird goes and perches on the frame however she still does not notice the birds behind her. Then a shot shows her spotting a single bird fly across the sky she follows it with her eyes and sees it rest on the climbing frame which is by now covered with birds as are a fence and structure behind it. It is important for us to notice that Alfred deliberately built up the tension with the viewer before he does with the characters. I think this was very clever to shoot the scene because the viewer feels uncomfortable as he/she can see what is going on yet can’t do anything to change it. Making him wait longer until the tension has built up and is paramount.
The children are shown to be innocent and safe for the moment at least. Alfred showed them this way by making them sing a song obediently and showing that to be unaware of what was happening outside. I think that Alfred was lucky to get away with showing innocent children under threat. Melanie returns into the school and all the children are asked to slowly walk out. They are instructed not to run until told to do so. All the editing at this point is very slowly however once the birds begin to attack and the children start running the editing becomes much quicker in correlation to the increasing amount of tension. There is no music what-so-ever as the birds squawking, flapping birds and the screaming children dominate the sound. This in effect helps to create a tense atmosphere because everybody knows that as long as the squawking goes on the birds will be around. One girl in a red sweater is pecked at. Her glasses break and she is helped into a car and safety by Melanie and the school teacher.
Obviously Alfred had no control over the birds so it required great skill to produce a film which made the experience so realistic. He did this by sending out his camera crew to rubbish dumps and filming hoards of birds. The crew shot the birds while they were picking at garbage. As they were in their “natural” surroundings their movements seemed more realistic. He did this before the shooting the actors parts so that the actors could work in accordance to the movement of the birds. I think this alone deserves credit for the unusual way in which the scene was thought out.
He used the blue screen to merge the two films once he had shot them. However there was a problem with this as a white line appeared around the bodies which had been edited into the film. To eliminate this Alfred used sodium lighting.
After reading and understanding the points that I have made it is evident that Alfred Hitchcock is a man of pure genius. He created thrillers which compete with modern day thrillers in the excitement and tension levels. A recent film poll showed “The Birds” and Psycho to be in the top 100 thrillers of all time with Psycho being at number 1. I think this is a huge achievement taking into consideration the fact that Alfred had much greater restraints placed on him by the Hays Code. He has created films which will be watched by generations to come simply because he achieved something which most people would think was impossible. He cleverly used editing and music to symbolise things that he could not legally show. Alfred Hitchcock himself sums up how he created such effective thrillers when he simply says: “I ensure that terror is accompanied by suspense”. So basically Alfred Hitchcock reached a specific audience by staying within the limits of the rules and working around them where possible. The audience’s imagination was of great help to him as he triggered it in scenes such as the shower scene from “Psycho”.
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