Psycho Film - FOW

 Psycho (1960) Film Analysis

Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho was first screened in New York on 16 June 1960. It was an immediate box-office success. From the start, expectant filmgoers began queuing in Broadway at 8.00am setting a pattern for audiences worldwide. By the end of its first year, Psycho had earned $15 million – over fifteen times as much as it cost to make.  

 

Psycho was a watershed in many ways. As well as making Alfred Hitchcock a multimillionaire, it was to win huge critical acclaim and enshrine him as a master filmmaker. Psycho’s commercial success was due, in part, to a superbly orchestrated publicity and marketing campaign that set new standards for audience manipulation. 

Introduction:

The film is about a young lady called Marion, who stole $40,000 from her employees' client and goes on the run so that she and her lover may be together. How? She goes to the "Bates Motel" a motel that's off the main road, which is going to be hard to see from the roads and no one else's staying there, which is very mysterious. Suddenly the film becomes very intense when she lightly gets introduced with Norman Bates, which becomes one of the main protagonists which is found to be under the domination of his 'Mother', causing problems of Marion. 

My Opinion Towards Psycho:

Although I didn't personally find this movie scary, I did find that I was feeling suspense throughout the whole movie. When Norman Bates was introduced he seems very awkward, shy and reaches out to Marion as she's his first love. And so he brings her food which makes the audience feel empathy towards Norman until they have a conversation together. This is when he starts to become very open and his attitude shifted when Marion insists that his mother should attend to the mental institute. We can tell straight away that Norman is very sensitive towards his mother, and he continues to talk on how awful the mental institute is which creates a very creepy sense of him. This atmosphere was created by enhancing lighting and mise-en-scene in the room. The room is very dark which created shadows on his face making him look terrifying. Including the room decorated as the mise-en-scene, they've included birds of preys stuffed and hung up on the walls such as ravens, which suggests that he has an obsession with these birds, and he may be a bird of prey himself. 

• MOTIF - Birds

The birds are a prominent motif in Psycho. The use of birds Hitchcock has used them as a language to emphasize the themes of isolation and duality. Firstly it's interesting when Norman and Marion sat down to dine together in the parlour and he tells her she eats like a bird, which suggests he knows plenty of stuffing a bird rather than knowing on how birds behave and how they are alive. 
This truly tells the audience Norman doesn't know how to coexist with his "Mother". Additionally, Hitchcock specifically uses crows and owls, whereas owls belong to the night world (as they're watchers), and in the other hand crows also belongs to the night world (as hunters). 

Famous Scene In Psycho:

The scene when Marion is killed in the shower. This scene is was attended very quickly as the female protagonist was killed off in the first half an hour. The scene wasn't seen as a very gore and bloody part, instead, the horror comes from the psychological mind. As being in the shower, wheres a place to feel 'safe'. The horror is expressed in many ways such as being seen in Marion face expressions and her screams. While we didn't see the knife go through her body, they've included the sound of cutting flesh that would make people believe it is.