Dr Caligari Comparison

Alfred Hitchcock in the film Psycho and Peter Shaffer in his stage production Equus both explore the true nightmares that manifest from sexual and emotional repression. The writers emphasise the motives and the reason for the characters actions opposed to how the causations of this repression occurred. Conversely, both works draw on the common theme of the disturbed human psyche, offering a critical perspective on the upbringing of each individual with regards to their early development, each characters subcontious fixations and abnormal behaviours through the use characters behaviours and representations. The characters Norman Bates and Marion Crane in Psycho and Allan Strang and Martin Dysart of Equus all face internal struggles against

“Psycho” is a classic suspense film directed by Alfred Hitchcock which features a central female protagonist, a seemingly ordinary young woman named Marion Crane, who crosses paths with a dangerous mentally ill motel owner, Norman Bates. As their strange relationship develops, a dominant theme of good versus evil is introduced to the audience through the use of characterisation, editing, mise-en-scene and various other media techniques.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a German Expressionist film that was released in 1920. The film was directed by Robert Wiene. Expressionism is defined as a visible world that is reshaped and even, distorted by internal forces such as soul, spirit, subjectivity, and emotion. A major component of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is it contains various examples of mise-en-scène, which is associated with visual aspects such as props in the background or clothing and the makeup the actor is wearing. Moreover, “boxes within boxes” is seen numerous times throughout The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. One example where “boxes within boxes” is seen in the film is in Dr. Caligari’s tiny shack, where he has Cesare

He insists near hysterically that he is sane, all while telling the reader his impersonal tale of murdering a loved one. The narrator doesn’t comprehend the fact that murder is amoral, obssessed only with ridding the world of the old man’s eye. Hallucination and reality are one and the same for him, and he attempts to explain it away, yet the reader understands what the narrator does not say. The narrator is a puppet, his strings pulled by his own mind, whispering lies in his ear. Can one who suffers so be truly blamed for a crime, even that of murder? His thought process is impaired, pushed and prodded by illusion and paranoia. Is he not, after all, a victim as

Though we are disturbed at the evil things he is doing, we feel a sense of sympathy towards him. We feel for him because of how his mother had treated him. We in turn teach our sub consciousness to start blaming the mother for all the murders that have been committed, just like Norman does. Both Norman’s façade of normality and our ambivalence towards his character verifies him as a quintessential psychopath.

Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” is an ingenious tale, that contains terrifyingly evocative details. In the “Tell-Tale Heart” there comes a man that committed an iniquitous crime, who constantly assures the readers that he is sane simultaneously, while proceeding to perpetrate homicide. Edgar Allan Poe applies supernatural that contains a reasonable explanation, dramatic irony, and the dangers that dwell inside a human, to reinforce the horror of the story and to uncover that humans cannot endure guilt and must eventually confess.

Poe has a history of presenting characters with personal flaws who often confess to atrocious deeds. Both The Tell-Tale Heart and The Black Cat tell the story of a seemingly senseless murder complicated by the vaugery of preternatural occurrences. The reader is forced to question whether or not they should believe what they are being told. Both of these narrators, the wife killer and the landlord killer, are unreliable and have a similar theme. The narrators are both mentally unstable however their conditions vary. The psychological implications of each character's’ attitude suggests while both are crazy, one is a sociopath and the other is a psychopath.

Personally to us, the director’s intention was to show how the psychology state of a man depending on his condition can affect his life and those around him. In this case, Norman Bates is affected by the various scenarios that happens in his life. His mother’s passing affected him the most as he murdered her. He took over his mother figure to get rid of guilt and started being her. He was in need of help, but he isolated himself from the outside world and this ‘mother’ personality had a very dominant role in his personal life which resulted in the murders he

In the Movie, American Psycho, Patrick Bateman demonstrate challenges to identify his unique type of personality theories. The purpose of this essay is to review a selected film as a Psychology student, and discuss it from a psychological perspective. Also in this paper providing a diagnosis for a character in the movie and discuss the behaviors that support the selected diagnosis, and to explain and discuss the mental illness depicted in the film.

The narrator of the story suffers from heightened senses which makes the narrator despise the clouded eye of his roommate. Due to his condition, he is driven to the point of plotting the murder of the cloudy eyed man. However, the narrator argues that since he planned the deed so meticulously, he could not be crazy and that “madmen know nothing” and he was no madman. There is reason to believe he is lying about the state of his sanity because the narrator does end up killing the man to rid himself of the evil eye. Affected by his anxieties, the narrator begins to hear what he believes to be the heartbeat of the man he has murdered. The heartbeat did not create a sense of regret in the narrator, rather “it increased [his] fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.” The unreliable source of narration is due to the mental illness which allows for the narrator’s judgment to be misconstrued. Guilt of conscience is the main theme and allows for the overall character arch of the narrator as his heightened senses, or more realistically, his anxieties, are the cause of his confession. Although the narrator had killed the man, he was not evil. The narrator was not in the right mind to take action and immediately had the guilt weigh heavy on his mind, causing it to slowly collapse. Nevertheless, the narrator, for these reasons, remains unreliable and mentally

The 1960 Alfred Hitchcock classic thriller, Psycho and the psychological thriller novel, The Talented Mr.Ripley by notable American author Patricia Highsmith both challenge the audience’s perception of the noir protagonist through pronounced exploration controversial themes via the. Through the use of a range of stylistic features, the authors aim to blur the line between innocence and guilt in order to develop a false sense of empathy for the protagonists Tom Ripley and Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins). Characterisation of both of these protagonists, used in a way that forces the audience to connect with them and adopt an controversial point of view, transforms the audiences perception of how the murderer of a psychological thriller should behave. Hitchcock uses

The dark and eerie tone of the murder story and its unusual setting contribute to the story’s theme of defense of one’s honor and avenging wrongdoing. The haughtiness and conceited attitudes of the two men create an extension of this theme in which Poe wants to show how far some men will go when they receive a blow to the ego. The story’s setting in the

Alfred Hitchcock is widely considered one of the most essential directors of all time and has undeniably revolutionized the cinematic art form and horror genre movement. A key ingredient to his productions is the psychoanalysis of the movie’s villains and the deceivery at comes with deep psychosis. These elements are what have taken Hitchcock from a good director to a legend. Hitchcock layers his movies in ways in which every time one watches his films they can pick up on a new detail that deepens the meaning and effects of the storyline. This is exactly what he does in his 1960 film, Psycho. By layering Freudian psychoanalysis, creating a twist ending and suspense, and giving the villain of the story, Norman Bates, a deeply rich background story, Hitchcock creates phenomenon in the audience arguably scarier, then Norman’s murders. Through this use the psychoanalysis and backstory, the audience also feels sympathy for Norman. This duality is what makes Hitchcock a wonderful artist and Psycho, a piece of art.

We see the reverse psychology in the narrator as he gradually changes from someone gentle to a murderer in the story (Snodgrass, 1). From the beginning of the story we find that the narrator is in prison for the crimes that he recently committed and he is writing down his crime to “unburden his soul”. In this story, we see how gentle the narrator was as a kid. “From my infancy, I was noted for the docility and humanity of my disposition. My tenderness of heart was even so conspicuous as to make me the rest of my companions” (Poe,1). The unsanctified and selfless love he has for animals can never lead anyone to believe that the narrator can kill his pet, but his psychological change makes him do so.

Poe’s Characterization also helps the reader understand the theme. I believe the narrator is remained unnamed to give a sense that the story could happen to anyone. The theme that everyone has an evil side show all humans are capable of committing a murder and or crime like this. Just like everyone is capable of committing this kind of crime, everyone will also feel the guilt after the crime has been committed. As