Scene Analysis Of Psycho

From the opening seconds, when Alfred Hitchcock’s camera closes in from afar on a private lunchtime rendezvous, Psycho makes clear that its focus is on the secretive and reserved. This scandalous scene is the first of many that initiates the viewer to the notion that beneath the surface lays a distorted and crudely reticent domain. Hitchcock seems determined to trick the audience, delightfully subverting character tropes and conventional setting as the plot descends further into darkness. This high-strung thriller may at first glance appear nothing more than a simple murder mystery, but on closer examination the film makes an argument for a lurking, sinister omnipresence. Psycho reveals that there is a twisted world hidden beneath everyday

Instead of fulfilling a happy relationship with Sam, Marion is forced into crime, when she attempts to resolve her mistakes, the sins come back and devastate her, the shower murder cutting short the typical redemption story. Norman’s constructed world is hollow and warped. Norman himself is deprived of any semblance of ordinary life, forced to live in fantasy that hides the dark truth. The main cause of his murderous personality is a passionate reaction to feelings of love. The life he lives is a veiled illusion. Psycho contains many images of light succumbing to darkness. The camera switches from sunny Phoenix at noon to the cramped hotel room quarters. The dark spheres of the officer’s sunglasses blot out Marion’s view. The only time extensive light is used is for a blinding absence of color, such as the pure white of the shower scene, which is then filled by Mother’s Shadow. The final reveal of Mother’s existence is a lone exposed light bulb illuminating the boundless darkness of the

Many acclaimed auteurs have attempted to show the universality of darkness, from Robert Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. Modern films, from Se7en to American Psycho to No Country for Old Men contain the same cynical message, displaying the prevalence of such gloomy perspective. Artists are continually fascinated with exploring the topic because it grounds a larger human worldview, founded on skepticism and uncertainty. It questions people’s inherent morality, struggling with the fundamental belief in innate societal morality and implicating an underlying depravity. If such a misanthropic view proves to be correct, then the world is indeed a twisted