Comparing Hitchcock's Psycho And The Art Of Pure Cinema

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Psycho is a 1960 horror film produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock starring Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles and John Gavin. It is considered a very significant movie in the history of Hollywood. I read the article “Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and 'The Art of Pure Cinema’”. by Peter Wilshire to analyze and get a deep understanding about what goes into the production of a movie like Psycho.

The author starts the article discussing how Alfred Hitchcock directed most popular movies during the time period of 1960s. Psycho has been remade multiple times. It has three sequels and was also made for television. A color version of the movie was also remade in the year 1998. The article continues by marking that the original Psycho movie was …show more content…

This was his most experimental movie, he describes this film to be an assembly of pieces to create fright and considered it the strongest demonstration of ’the pure cinema’ Hitchcock invoked it, pure cinema meant using the camera to tell the story. For example, instead of a character saying what a character intends to do pure cinema will cut between their incomplete task and the person to imply what is going on in their mind. Pure cinema was used to create an overly dramatic environment in place of dialogue. The director does not leave the viewer to watch the movie from a distance as someone who did no belong there instead. The movie’s psychological situation is built combining details and these details reveal the psychological meaning. The audiences feel like a part of the story as if they were present in the movie. The movie is based on a novel ‘Psycho’ by Robert Block which was inspired by real life events. This movie was Hitchcock’s 47th feature movie. Hitchcock wanted to experiment with a low budget, black and white horror movie. Although he was successful, he wasn’t able to pursue Paramount studios to finance this movie Hitchcock then made the film with his own company, with an economical budget. The author further talks about

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