Analysis of the Film Psycho

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The film Psycho, details the story of a woman by the name of Marion Crane, as played by Janet Leigh. The film starts of a with a bedroom scene where Marion starts to discuss her future with her lover Sam. After her brief encounter with Sam, she returns to her work where she comes into contact with $40,000 in cash. With possession of such a large sum of money, Marion runs off with the money; it's implied that she wishes to run away with Sam and the money so they can start fresh. While on the road, she stops at a motel which becomes the scene of her murder and also the scene that will be explored in greater deal. However, after running away with the money, private investigators are hired to track her down to avoid having to involve police. The investigators find her far too late and find and arrest a psychotic man who lives as the memory of his controlling mother. While the film was just absolutely chilling, the one scene that sticks out the most is the infamous shower scene. While I had never watched this film, I came in with the basic knowledge that the shower scene was just brutal to watch; the music scoring and actions of this scene have been parodied in countless movies and shows. One thing I noticed was the very obvious fact that the movie was shot in black and white. This film was produced at a time where color film was widely available and it seemed at first, somewhat pointless to shoot something in black and white when better options were present and also easily accessed; this meant that shooting in color would not greatly increase production values. However, this is far from the actual truth as the black and white adds an element of darkness to the actual picture and creates a depth that would not have existed otherwise... ... middle of paper ... ...here the dark can conceal many things, such as a killer. Another thing that I noticed was the lack of special effects. During the shower scene, besides the music score, the only sounds were the screams of Marion and the stabbing sounds. The knife also did not touch her flesh but it is instead left to the imagination to the viewer to put together the scene. This is a very sharp contrast to what modern horror films do. Often, more modern horror films will use a lot of special effects to make it actually look like a head was hacked off or that a knife went right through someone's chest. While this does look very gory, more often than not this cheapens the overall effect of it when compared to the execution of the stabbing done in this scene. Rather than the intended effect of looking horrifying, it often is poorly executed and at best is cheesy and maybe a bit bloody.

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