This is how the main red herring is manufactured: You see Marion Crane going to work, just getting on with her life as usual, further more portraying the idea of the film being based on her. While she is at work a very wealthy man named Mr Cassidy arrives to buy a house, he seems to be attempting to flirt with Marion and keeps boasting about his money. Most his comments though turn out to be very arrogant and chauvinistic. Hitchcock chooses the actor to play Mr Cassidy very well. He’s a middle-aged man, a very stereotypical American rich guy and with the cheesy grin and strong accent he just has a sense of arrogance that makes you side with Marion, in the event which is soon to happen. Mr Cassidy takes out an extremely large wad of cash, $40,000 to be exact, (The equivalent of $400,000 today), and makes the very confident statement of
“I only carry as much as I can afford to lose” Now he says this trying to impress Marion and as I will explain one of Hitchcock’s main favourite tools was irony, and that line just as many others turns about to be very ironic because he does indeed lose it, Marion steals it.
The ironic lines aren’t so much a suspense builder as a tool used by Hitchcock to really make the audience think about what is and has been going on in the film so far. The ironic lines are also used before big events in the film to get the audience involved. For example, an officer tells Marion to go to a motel just to be safe, so when you see the outline of Marion's murderer moving towards the shower, you remember that line and start kicking yourself over the fact she listened to the officer, even though its just a film and you cant control what goes on.
The music is possibly the single most important part of the illusion created by Hitchcock to portray horror. The music, which kicked in during the shock events such as the stabbings and when Marion's sister Lila stumbles across Bates’s mother in the fruit cellar. Composed and conducted by Bernard Herrman, with an orchestra made up solely of string instruments which was, up until then, un-heard of in the film industry. The music was extremely high pitched, its purpose was to shock and frighten the viewer and it certainly worked. In the highly acclaimed shower scene, in which Marion is brutally murdered, the contrast between noises is what causes the most shock. The sound made by the water running is brought to the viewer’s attention. It sounds very diagetic, it is used as a tool to relax the audience so when the shower curtain comes back and the music kicks in, it’s like having ice thrown down your back or someone running there fingernails down a blackboard. The high pitched screeches of the violins etc. are a frightful sound to be brought to attention by and at the time the film was made the censorship laws were ridiculously strict so the way the murder is shown it can only add to the fear and shock that must have been experienced by an unsuspecting audience. This ingenious technique is used every time the film looks as if it is going nowhere and the audience feel they can finally relax but how wrong they are.
Hitchcock was a very intelligent director/producer and he knew exactly what people would expect to happen next so he did the exact opposite and he caught them every time, hook line and sinker. Hitchcock took the happy ending where big star steals the show, kills the bad guy, and everyone goes home singing and dancing plot, made it look as if that’s what was going to happen, and just as the audience felt content and confident about what was coming up, he dramatically changes it, without any kind of warning. This immediately whipped the audience into frenzy
“How can that be, Janet Leigh, one of Hollywood’s
most renowned actresses dead, and only a third of the way through the film????” Hitchcock was incredibly daring to do this because Janet Leigh, being one of the biggest stars of the period had to survive. The only thing people thought they could be sure on with all these red herrings and moments of irony floating around was the survival most famed, and even that didn’t happen. Hitchcock simply ignored convention and made the rules as he went along. He was the puppet master and anyone who stepped on his set, or into a theatre to see his movie became his puppets and the more they struggled to get away from his grasp more tangled their strings became
Hitchcock used a lot of voyeurism, allowing audiences to feel are looking at what they shouldn’t be, and he does it in such a fashion it makes the viewer feel guilty. He also manipulates the camera angles so that it appears as if the viewer is the one looking, not the actor. This kicks in right from the beginning of the film when he uses a crane shot to go over the city in through a hotel window to find Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) in bed with another man, having an affair. The first person view makes you feel uncomfortable, as if you’re actually in the hotel room watching something you most certainly shouldn’t be. Once again this technique is used when and Norman Bates removes a picture in his parlour to reveal a peephole through the wall into Marion’s room. You see Norman but his face to the peephole but then the camera switches to a first person shot so you feel that you are the one now looking. Watching Marion undress to get into the shower, and it makes you feel awkward and out of place. But these shots are very cleverly performed by Hitchcock and his camera men because even if its only for a minute, the onlooker is inside the mind of the character, seeing what they see, thinking what they think and possibly most important of all, feeling what they
Marion ends up at this motel because as she’s driving away with the money she notices there is a police car tailing her. She looks anxious and starts to worry. The audience are now on the edge of their seats, will he catch her or wont he. Then on goes the siren and Marion pulls over, everyone in the watching is biting their nails, wondering if she’ll get caught, they feel scared for her. But then they can breath a sigh of relief. The cop leaves and she’s back on her way. The officer says something to her that is very significant to the rest of the film
“You should pull into a motel instead of driving at night, you’ll be safe there” This is very ironic as pulling into this motel turns out to be anything but safe. Actually it’s the exact opposite.
So Marion starts to get tired and notices a motel just off the old highway ‘the Bates motel’. It’s a small family owned motel with a large old house behind it hit up on a hill with some rather spooky looking steps up towards it. I think the two buildings symbolise Normans Bates’s mind, there’s the motel, tidy, forgiving. Very polite looking. This is what Norman has control over. Then there’s the house, up those frightful steps to the scarier part of the property. Large and overpowering, looks over the lowly motel the way mother looks over her child, ready to stop anything trying to knock the building down and take her baby away. The house is Normans Mothers share of the mind. As soon as Norman steps into the house, he is powerless to his Mothers commands
Once Marion has checked into the motel her and Norman Bates chat for a while and he asks her to join for something to eat. So she waits in his parlour and Norman runs off to ask his mother if she can stay but “mother” loses it and tells Norman that Marion isn’t allowed near the house. So Norman brings Marion some sandwiches and they go into the parlour to eat them. During this scene allot goes on which is of importance to the rest of the film. First of all when Norman invites her into his parlour, the famous nursery rhyme starts ‘come into my parlour said the spider to the fly…’ and in reference to this Norman is the spider and Marion the fly. Another ironic line is when Norman and Marion are speaking of his mother and Norman says, “we all go a little mad sometimes, don’t you?”
This is ironic because Norman is mad, mother doesn’t exist other than in Normans head. The pair also speak of Normans hobby of taxidermy and as you look around the parlour you see stuffed owls and rooks, Both of which are birds of prey that come out at night, just as mother does. This is also quite ironic because as it turns out Norman has stuffed and preserved his mothers corpse.
Shortly after this scene is one of the most renowned movie scenes of all time, the shower scene. It is a perfect example of Hitchcock’s talents to escape the censorship board and also a great example of how all his scenes had to be perfect. The shower scene involved seven tiring days worth of work and the final product included around 15 different camera angles. Hitchcock managed to graphically portray a naked women getting stabbed to death in a shower without showing a knife piercing skin or a bare breast, which he had to do to get through censorship. Hitchcock was very clever in the way he got through the censorship laws. He added parts to the film which he knew would be removed to make the more controversial scenes seem not as bad as they were. For example Hitchcock showed Bates having a sexual relationship with his mother. He knew this would be cut out and didn’t want it in there but used it as a decoy to attract the attention away from other scenes
I come now to the conclusion of this essay by stating Hitchcock’s genius and persistency in creating such an incredible film. To create suspense, he made the audience interact with the characters and get a feel of the surroundings, making them feel they were a part of the movie; there were also some truly horrific scenes for the time such as the stabbings, the first time we see mother in the fruit cellar and the most disturbing sight of all, at the end, when mothers face faintly appears over Normans face which already looks frightening enough with his evil eyes and horrifying grin.
Terror is often accompanied by suspense in the unfolding of a thrilling narrative - or, to put it another way, a story which gives the reader a feeling of terror necessarily contains a certain measure of suspense- (Alfred Hitchcock)
