Development of Suspense by Hitchcock in Psycho
'Psycho,' the somewhat infamous film by Alfred Hitchcock was produced
in 1961, a time when the American censors, The Hays Office, still
dominated the film industry with their strict rules and principles. It
earned its notoriety by defying the traditional cinematic convections
of that time and pushing the boundaries of what could be shown in
mainstream cinema. The rules implemented by The Hays Office were far
stricter than they are today, and Hitchcock uses all available means
to reach and go slightly beyond the set limit. Using clever and
different camera angles, he implies things that are not shown. He
proves that innuendoes can portray the same image and retract the same
audience responses as blatant actions and pictures.
In most films, 'good' would triumph over 'evil,' and whatever side a
character was on was painfully obvious. 'Psycho' defies this unspoken
rule by not having a definite villain. 'Mother' was undoubtedly the
killer until 'mother' was discovered to be a skeleton, and even when
the psychiatrist tells Norman Bates' story, who the villain was is
still yet to be determined. How could Bates be the villain when he was
clearly schizophrenic, and if it was his 'mother' side that was doing
the murdering, how could he be to blame? That would mean that the
villain was actually a character that wasn't even in the film. Marion,
the 'heroine' was supposed to be on the 'good' side - but immoral
criminals weren't usually the 'goodies.' These were all concepts that
had never been previously explored in mainstream Hollywood films.
Marion, the stereotypical blonde and beautiful...
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...lored, there have been hundreds
more, and hence 'Psycho' is considered to be the beginning of a new
genre. Many of the techniques were either new or not even considered
to be used in that context. Even before the film was released, the
audience were in suspense as to what it was about. There were no
previews, no launch campaigns or reviews. When the film was finally
released, people were only allowed to watch it from the very
beginning. The cast and crew were sworn to secrecy about the plot and
people who had seen it after it was released were advised not to tell
those who hadn't. There were strict rules about not allowing people to
enter after the film had commenced. All this created suspense for the
audience before they even walked into the cinema, and Hitchcock
managed to sustain this suspense until the final scene.
Psycho is a suspense-horror film written by Joseph Stefano and directed by Alfred Hitchcock. This film was loosely adapted from Robert Bloch’s 1959 suspense novel, Psycho. A majority of the movie was filmed in 1960 at Universal Studios in Los Angeles. Psycho is about Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), a secretary from Arizona who steals $40,000 from her employer’s client. She takes that money and drives off to California to meet her lover Sam Loomis (John Gavin) in order to start a new life. After a long drive, she pulls off the main highway and ends up taking refuge at an isolated motel owned and managed by a deranged Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins). In Alfred Hitchcock’s film, Psycho, symbols, character and point of view are three literary aspects used in the film to manipulate the audience’s emotions and to build suspense in the film.
Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho"-the movie the world recognised-was first premiered in the home town of New York on the 16th June 1960.The film follows the life and strife of a young beautiful woman Marion Crane, played by the Janet Leigh, who is on the run from the police after stealing $40.000, she manages to find refuge at the Bates motel where she makes her worst mistake possible. During and after the film production of "Psycho" Alfred Hitchcock had his aids buy as many copies as possible of the novel "Psycho"-written by Robert Bloch. Why? To conceal the ending form the public's eye so when the film was shown in cinemas the audience would'nt know the ending. When people found out the title of the movie Hitchcock said it was based on a greek love story "Psyche".
Suspense is only one of Hitchcock’s many techniques and themes. His themes range from the obvious violence, to the depths of human interaction and sex. From Rear Window to Psycho, Hitchcock’s unique themes are present and evident. Rear Window starts with something we all do at times, which is nosing in and stalking on others business, and turns it into a mysterious investigation leaving the viewer second guessing their neighbors at home. Psycho on the other hand, drags
...he story, unless they happen to die at the end. But in Psycho, the main character Marion is killed midway through the story. Most films have an ending that leaves the viewer satisfied and content because they know that there is an actual end to the story. Yet in The Birds, the four characters leave the bird stricken town of Bodega Bay, but the birds are still left behind at the Brenner home. This leaves the viewers with a question: What happened to them? Hitchcock uses these unusual twists to create a sense of suspense; another element in most of his films.
In Hitchcock’s narrative structure, he focuses on relationships. The relationship between society and their thoughts of morality, guilt and innocence. In the film, we never witness a murder, only the outcome of them. What we do see are the reactions to the killings. Every single week, the newspapers write
Both Poe and Hitchcock manipulate the audience to feel suspense using mood. Poe uses mood when talking about his wife before he kills her in "Black Cat." Poe uses very vulgar vocabulary to create a sense of suspense to the reader in his short story. "Goaded by the interference into a rage more than demoniacal, I withdrew my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain" (Poe 11). Poe uses vulgar language and strong diction to create a suspense for the reader because the reader didn't know what was going to happen in the very beginning of the quote. Only later in the quote does the reader find out he killed his wife. In Hitchcock's movies, the audience interprets mood in a different way. Hitchcock uses lighting to create mood in his movies. For example, in Rear Window the lighting goes completely dark in Jeffries' apartment, and the only lighting the
Psycho is successful in sustaining that eerie, creepy feeling throughout the film. Although it does not start off scary at all really, the fact that
Although some viewers and critics responded negatively to Psycho, their appraisal changed once they had time to reassess the value of the film. Nearly forty years after the film's release, Psycho is still cited as a masterpiece which has inspired many dozens of other films such as Dressed to Kill (1980) and Fatal Attraction (1987) (Nowell-Smith 491), and is used as "a yardstick by which other thrillers are measured" (Rebello 194). "The effect both in the short run, in establishing Psycho as the ultimate thriller, and the long run, in altering the cinema-going habits of the nation, is indisputable" (Clover 191).
Hitchcock used the subjective view of the two characters to put the audience into the same position and mindset of these voyeurs. This was used to create an uneasiness through the spying of vulnerable people. The ability to be a voyeur for the audience turns on us toward the end of both films through the breaking of the fourth wall. In Rear Window, Thorwald looks straight into the camera when he Lisa unintentionally endangers Jeff when she was pointing oddly at the ring. The glare he gives causes the audience to feel the same threat that Jeff is now under. In Psycho, when Norman/ “mother” is at the police station covered by the blanket, they are sitting there with her telling how she is harmless and that it was all Norman. Leading to her to look up straight into the camera audience, forcing them to feel the chilling glare of a
Perhaps no other film changed so drastically Hollywood's perception of the horror film as did PSYCHO. More surprising is the fact that this still unnerving horror classic was directed by Alfred Hitchcock, a filmmaker who never relied upon shock values until this film. Here Hitchcock indulged in nudity, bloodbaths, necrophilia, transvestism, schizophrenia, and a host of other taboos and got away with it, simply because he was Hitchcock.
Alfred Hitchcock's film Psycho Psycho, by Alfred Hitchcock, was shocking for its time. Made in the 1960's when film censorship was very tight to today's standards, Hitchcock pushed the limits of what could be shown and did with psycho things that had never been done before. The cinematic art, symbolism and sub-conscious images in this film were brilliant for the time and still are now. Realised for this, psycho has been copied in many ways and the things that made it great have become very clichéd. From the very first scene in psycho, it is clear that the viewer will be sucked into the world of Marion Crane and Norman Bates.
Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho has been commended for forming the film. archetypical basis of all horror films that followed its 1960 release. The mass appeal that Psycho has maintained for over three decades can undoubtedly be. attributed to its universality and awe. In Psycho, Hitchcock allows the audience to become a subjective character within the plot to enhance the film's psychological effects for an audience that is forced to recognise its own.
Cinematography of Hitchcocks Psycho Alfred Hitchcock is renown as a master cinematographer (and editor), notwithstanding his overall brilliance in the craft of film. His choice of black and white film for 1960 was regarded within the film industry as unconventional since color was perhaps at least five years the new standard. But this worked tremendously well. After all, despite the typical filmgoer’s dislike for black and white film, Psycho is popularly heralded among film buffs as his finest cinematic achievement; so much so, that the man, a big
Norman Bates is arguably the most unforgettable character in the horror genre. His movements, voice and aura at first radiate a shy young man but transform into something more sinister as the movie Psycho (Hitchcock, USA, 1960) progresses. How has the director, Alfred Hitchcock, achieved this? Norman Bates was a careful construct: the casting, body language, lighting and even the subtle use of sound and mise-en-scène created the character.
At the time of its release, the 1960 masterpiece film by Alfred Hitchcock, Psycho, with its psychopathic killer and iconic shower scene, was initially given a rating of what is now a considered a PG rating under the Motion Picture Production Code (MPP code), a code that reigned in Hollywood for much of Hitchcock’s career. Made twelve years later in 1972, the Hitchcock film Frenzy was the first film by Hitchcock to be given an R rating from the start and was noticeably not held under the MPP code as it went on to feature disturbing scenes of gruesome corpses and barefaced nudity. These two Hitchcock films displayed vast differences in the level of violence and nudity in narratives that contain psychopathic murderers of women. The twelve years in-between these two films witnessed the eventual collapse of the repetitively revised MPP code, a code, like