Alfred Hitchcock's' film "Psycho" contains a lack of guilt and violence, which leads to horror and suspense.

Psycho

Psychopath- a psychopath is a mentally ill person who behaves violently without feeling guilty. From that simple description from the Oxford dictionary we can already see that the genre of Alfred Hitchcock’s’ film “Psycho” contains a lack of guilt and violence, which leads to horror and suspense. This is a great premise and on this the film is based. The use of a weighted title is just one of the many techniques that Alfred Hitchcock would use to make his film one of the best in its kind. He used a variety of methods to achieve a wide range of emotions and effects throughout the film of “Psycho”. But one of his best-used techniques is the red herring. The red herring would include Alfred Hitchcock directing the film to mislead the audience into a false sense of security. One of the prime examples of this was the scene where we see Marion running away with the money she had stolen. You see her being followed by the police and trading in her car. By this time we think that this is the main plot but when really it is just the lead up to the scene full of shock, horror and suspense, “The shower scene”.

Another one of Alfred Hitchcock’s many techniques is the use of his music, composed by Bernard Herrman. He would use an orchestra made up of stringed instruments. When the film came up to an important scene filled with suspense, the orchestra played the deafening tones of the screeching stringed instruments playing an un-even tune. You have a long, calm lead up to the main scene and then all of sudden the non-diagetic sounds alarm the audience almost at once (this style of music is further developed in Hitchcock’s films; Vertigo and North by North West).

Hitchcock loved to use irony; we could see this throughout the film. He would add small lines of irony whenever he could. We begin to see most of the irony whilst Marion is in the motel. We have the Traffic officer telling Marion

“There are plenty of motels in the area…I mean… just to be safe”

When we know that the motel Marion checks into is far from safe. One of the most famous lines of irony in Hitchcock’s film is the line including Norman explaining his mother’s behaviour to Marion.

“What’s the phrase ….she isn’t quite herself today”

At the time we don’t know it but you soon realise that mother isn’t really mother at all and Norman likes to pretend to be her. That’s how the line adds a comical and ironic line to the film.

Whenever there was a different scene you were almost bound to see a mirror. Hitchcock used a lot of mirrors in a scene that would be of great importance. He would use this technique to show the characters as their images. When we look into a mirror it isn’t actually ourselves we are looking at, it is a reflection. This is what Hitchcock was trying show. He was showing the characters as reflections and not their real identification. He used this a lot and was one of his recurring motifs. Another one of his recurring motifs was his shots of bottomless depths. This is when you see the camera focusing on a main object that has great importance. The camera focuses on the object then slowly fades away. We see this effect when Norman is sinking Marion’s car with her dead body in it. You see the car in the swamp and the camera focuses on it while it slowly sinks but pauses to create suspense.

We also see a lot of different camera shots; this shows variety. The film starts off with the bird’s eye view coming down on the apartment where Marion is having an affair. We see a lot of different camera shots throughout the film; it gives a good range and shows different views from different angles. That way we are able to see the film in depth and look at the scenes as more then just an audience. With that we feel as if we are actually participating with in the story line.

A mise en scene. This is ...

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A mise en scene. This is where everything that we can see in the frame is either deliberate or symbolic. When we see Norman’s office in the motel we see a lot of stuffed birds. We can see that Norman is interested in taxidermy. Which is both ironic and symbolic, as Norman stuffed and preserved his mother and thought as her as a real person.

There were a lot of things both in and out the film that surprised people. People were very surprised that the main actress Janet Leigh was killed half through the film. Normally as we all know the main character is there throughout the film and saves the day, in some films of today the main characters has even been known to come back to life in order to save the day from destruction. But in this film she was killed and rid of just half way through. Alfred Hitchcock didn’t like to be the same as everyone else. He was always willing to try original ideas and was always there pushing the boundaries as far as he could. He wanted his film to be one of the best thrillers ever made and he used just about every effect and technique going to do this.

Through out the film Hitchcock was able to manipulate the audience. There were a few scenes that showed this more then the others. When we see Marion running away with the money she has stolen; we see her been followed by the police and therefore forced to change her car. This is where Hitchcock manipulates the audience into feeling sorry for Marion and wanting her to escape. We feel worried and anxious for her and even though we know what she is doing is wrong, we want her to escape and get away with the crime she has committed. We see another scene that makes us feel that way, this time though it is a lot worse. Normally with what Norman has done we would want him to get caught. But when he has put a dead women into the trunk of her own car and pushed her into the swamp we want him to get away with it. A huge amount of suspense is created and we all sit there on the edge of our seats wanting the insane Norman to get away with the awful crime.

There are many critical moments in the film, which we now identify as the main scenes. This is because of the original ideas that Hitchcock was able to think up. One of the “main scenes” is the parlour scene. Here we see Marion and Norman talking over a light supper. This is after Norman has supposedly talked to his mother about Marion and that she shouted at him. Marion and Norman sit in the parlour room discussing Normans mother. Normans uses the famous ironic line about his mother not being quite her self whilst they discuss her actions. He tells Marion that mother doesn’t like strangers and that is why she reacted like she did. He is very quick to protect his mother and he make up excuses for her behaviour.

“Its not as if mother were a maniac, a raving thing. She just goes a little mad sometimes. Haven’t you?”

He is defending his mother but at the same time referring back to Marion wanting to find out more about her. In the parlour we see a room filled with stuffed birds. The birds are positioned in such a way that it looks as if they are crowding round the characters looking over them in a menacing fashion (this theme of birds being sinister and threatening is further developed in Hitchcock’s film “The Birds”). We know that Norman, ironically is interested in taxidermy. Which is why the birds are shown. Norman and Marion have a very serious conversation and you begin to see that maybe they trust each other. However when Marion decides to depart and go to bed, Norman begins to kick up a fuss. He complains a little but lets her go. When Marion goes into her bedroom she changes but whilst she does this Norman is in the next room spying on her through a hole. This shows that maybe he is attracted to her but at the same time it shows that maybe something isn’t quite right with Norman and that he is slightly strange.

Another one of the main scenes is the famous shower scene. This scene is after the parlour scene. We see Marion in the shower but Hitchcock is very careful and doesn’t show any of Marion’s flesh from her upper thigh to her shoulders. Whilst Marion is in the shower we see a shadow emerge from behind the curtain. The shadow becomes clearer and we see a clearer picture of a knife. The shower curtain flies open and we see a dark figure stab Marion viciously with a knife. We never see the knife make contact with her skin. Unlike thrillers and horrors of today, where we see every limb torn apart and every stab wound spilling out blood. Hitchcock just showed us clips of the moving knife and parts of Marion’s skin. Chocolate was used for her blood as the film was black and white and for the sound of the stabbing, knifes were stabbed into melons. To make this scene more horrific and shocking Hitchcock used his stringed orchestra. The shower made a rhythmic and diagetic sound that contrasted with the high-pitched non-diagetic sounds of violins. The stabbing was in time with the music making it more shocking as the scene played on. The music created both suspense and horror. Many different angles were used with cameras in this scene. There were around thirteen different camera angles. They were short and changed quickly, this made it seem faster and more energetic. This enhanced the frenzied attack that was happening to Marion. Hitchcock used one of his recurring motifs in this scene. We see the bottomless depth technique used. When Marion is dead, she grabs the shower curtain and falls over the bath. We see her blood flow down into the plughole, where the camera focuses and stays there and the slowly changes into Marion’s eye that is still and not blinking. Her eye slowly fades and then goes onto the next scene. The last bit of the scene creates a very chilling and horrifying atmosphere.

I have learned a lot about the film Psycho, I have been able to see the techniques he used and study them with further depth. I can see how he used the red herring and how he was easily able to manipulate the audience. In my opinion he was one of the greatest directors yet and Psycho was one of the best thrillers I have seen. He made every scene have a special technique and feature. From the start of the film he was able to mislead the audience, the opening shot was of Marion having an affair. We automatically think that this could be the heart and soul of the film when really it is only the start and soon that story line disappears. He would make the audience jump and hold their breath in suspense at parts of the film, that weren’t that important. For example when Marion is in the car, the traffic cop, who only wants to warn her about the weather conditions, stops her. At the time though it puts us in suspense not knowing what he want with Marion. Alfred Hitchcock was able to put many different techniques into practise and also pull them off very successfully. He was able to get a horrifying thriller past the very strict censorship. In 1960 when the film was made the censorship was very strict and every film had to pass to get onto the cinema screens. Morality was a lot tighter and sex and violence was strictly forbidden. Hitchcock had a plan to get his film through the censor and of course it worked. To get his film past the censors he would put the most obscene shots into his film that were almost certain to be banned, in doing this it made his most outrageous scenes look like nothing and they would pass the censors with flying colours (another red herring). At first Hitchcock had made a reference that Norman and his mother had a sexual relationship. Of course that was banned straight away. The shower scene was the scene that caused the most concern, but you never saw the knife touch the skin and you would never see any part of Marion’s body from her neck to her thigh. As we know the censors wouldn’t allow any contact of the knife on the body to be shown. There for a film produced like Scream made in 1996 wouldn’t have stood a chance in 1960, they would just simply laugh at it. The censors had asked Hitchcock to edit that scene but he managed to trick them by saying that he had, when he hadn’t made any changes at all. Hitchcock loved his shower scene so much that he was willing to get rid of the sexual scenes at the beginning of the film just to keep that scene. But he ended up with both. All of these techniques mentioned show just what an imaginative and creative director Hitchcock actually was. His film may have only taken three weeks to film and cost less than one million pounds but he still managed to get it through the censors and make it one of the best thrillers of its kind and one of the best known films of today. There have been many directors that have copied his techniques that he originally used. He is one of the most imitated film directors of all time. And as they say imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.

By Charlotte Leach-Rogers 10W