The 1960 film Psycho includes one of the most well-known murder scenes to ever be filmed by Alfred Hitchcock. Through the use of editing Hitchcock was able to draw his audience in and make them feel as if they were there in room watching every event unfold before their own two eyes. Critical analysis of the killing of Marion Crane will include analysis of the editing and camera angels used in her final moments of her life. This scene has been reviewed thousands of times and is still today considered ahead of its time. Hitchcock composed Marion Crane’s murder using the three attributes of editing to draw the scene together and make it look like a particularly vicious, these three attributes are of course: creating meaning through collage, tempo, and timing. …show more content…
Crane was attacked while staying in the Bates Motel by an unknown female character, who was originally presented to the audience as female. We later find out is actually Norman Bates, the motel owner. Norman Bates, however, in this scene was not “Norman Bates” he was actually “Mother.” “Mother” was a second personality the Norman had adopted after his actual mother died. “Mother” was an alternate personality no one was aware of until the ending, in which Norman acting for “Mother”is caught in the act of committing another murder. In the scene where “Mother” kills Marion she sneaks into Marion’s motel room while she showers and surprises her. Then stabs her to death, and then leaves her to bleed out in the bathtub. “Mother” acts in a wildly, animalistic fashion during this scene, which is aided by the style in which Hitchcock films and edits his
Alfred Hitchcock’s film North by Northwest (1959) is famed as a classic man-on-the-run thriller, following protagonist Roger Thornhill as he flees across state lines in a mad dash to save his life and unravel the mystery to his extraordinary predicament. However, mid-way through the film Thornhill’s quandary is further complicated by the introduction of Eve Kendall, a beautiful yet mysterious woman he encounters on a train during his escape from the authorities and people trying to kill him. During the dining room scene on the train, Hitchcock expertly uses the camera to convey the characters thoughts and feelings. Interestingly, in a film that has several sequences with complicated cinematography and editing, the dining car scene is
Normans mother is dead, but is alive in the mind of Norman. She is therefore dominating Normans mind. Alfred Hitchcock makes us infer that the mother was alive throughout the film. This manipulates the audience throughout the film. The audience thinks that the mother is alive, and therefore, she can potentially be the killer in the film.
Hitchcock uses misery, tragedy, and death to show the emotions of his characters. At no point is this more obvious than the end of the movie. Hitchcock spends the entire movie building up to this point and in the end he makes it extremely clear how tragedy has changed the relationship of everyone. After the nagging husbands murder of his wife has been confessed you see
Throughout the story Connie and her mother didn't get along very well. Connie felt neglected because her mom would always brag about her sister and never seemed to speak nicely about Connie. Connie actually wished her mother was dead and so was she so it could all be over ‘He didn't bother talking much to them, but around his bent head Connie's mother kept picking at her until Connie wished her mother was dead and she herself was dead and it was all over. "She makes me want to throw up sometimes," she complained to her friends. She had a high, breathless, amused voice that made everything she said sound a little forced, whether it was sincere or not.’ Despite their fall out, Connie still calls for her mom with her attempt to get away from this older man realizing that she is not a mature adult and still needs her mother by her side.
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
Hitchcock’s Psycho is a great representative of horror and thriller genres. The director masterfully creates an atmosphere of suspense and creates tension. Hitchcock blends characteristics of a thriller with horror, making the audience terrified. The director creates situations that can happen to anybody of the viewers, and thus, makes such scenes even more scaring and disturbing. For instance, the scene of the murder in a shower impresses the audience to a
This hugely increased the despair and shock, the feeling of loss even when a character is brutally murdered. Straight away Hitchcock begins to build our sympathies for Marion Crane. He uses several cinematic techniques to create a mise-en-scene. Mise-en-scene is everything a viewer can see within a certain frame and consists of many aspects. For instance, Hitchcock uses a high-angle, mid range establishing shot to put Marion in her context, and highlight her vulnerability.
Every aspect of The Big Sleep was taken even further with perhaps Alfred Hitchcock’s best film, Psycho. One of the most interesting elements of this film is how the main character and plot completely changes halfway through the film. For the first part of the film, the audience follows Marion Crane (Janet Leigh). Marion is in love with Sam Loomis (John Gavin) and decides to skip town after she steals $40,000 dollars from the company she works for. She eventually arrives at the Bates Motel where she meets Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), who runs the motel for his mother. In a twist of events, Marion is killed in a dramatic shower scene, after which the story completely shifts to follow the investigation of Marion’s disappearance, as well as the mystery of Norman and his mother. This is a very experimental way of structuring a film, but worked
Norman Bates from Psycho was sheltered by his mother. Being taught that no woman will be greater than his mother and practically smothered by her every day, Norman realized he was not only attracted to his mom, but also wanted to have sex with her. This anger for his confused sexuality and distressed nature of his gender is the driving factor for his
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.
Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller ‘Rear Window’ (Hitchcock, 1954) begins with the immediate use of mise-en-scène in order to establish a sense of atmosphere, equilibrium and the mundane, soon to be disrupted as the events of the film unfold and are observed through the eyes of the voyeuristic protagonist, Jeff. Setting, cinematography and various other expressive mise-en-scène techniques work together to influence the overall appearance of the film. Though, by taking a closer look, these techniques reveal the significance of the narrative and characters. In the opening sequence, Hitchcock’s original visual style provides signposts for the audience to recognize what will be significant in the future: instead of establishing what is only happening in the moment in time; mise-en-scène is used to suggest what is to come. This arrangement of the “Classical Hollywood” narrative - starting with the setting and characters in a state equilibrium - acts as a seemingly all-purpose, archetypal opening by establishing location and introducing character. Simultaneously we can see that this sequence is vastly different from the rest of the film: it is leading the viewer into a false sense of security – the calm before the storm – as Jeff soon happens to piece together information leading to the possibility that one of his neighbors murdered their wife. This sequence is one of the only moments in the film we see things the protagonist does not, thus this carefully constructed opening is preparing
Alfred Hitchcock's, Psycho, is a black and white psycho-horror film with gothic influences, set in the cities of Phoenix, Arizona and Fairvale, California. It was released in 1960 and at the time was extremely groundbreaking in terms of the violence and sadistic nature of the film. Before Psycho was released, films did not have the amount of violence and that appalling aspect that the film presents. Hitchcock's film changed the horror genre and even created its own sub-genre in psycho-horror. The film stars Janet Leigh as Marion Crane, Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates, Vera miles as Lila Crane, and John Gavin as Sam Loomis.
Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) kills Marion Crane (Janet Leigh). Marion who wanted to lead a happy family life with her boy friend Sam Loomis (John Gavin) after marriage and hence steals money and flees Phoenix and becomes a prey for the psychopath Norman Bates. Norman Bates overpowered by his dead mother’s personality kills the woman who comes in between the relationship with his mother. Norman has no other motive. Only his frustrated sexuality when he meets a woman can be the motive. As the case of a split personality syndrome Norman takes the role of his dead mother, and targets those women who come to his motel. Possessed by his mother, he dresses like her and here he slashes Marion on the shower. When Lila Crane (Vera Miles) along with Sam comes in search of
Psycho (In Italics) Analysis There are many reasons movies become classics but all classic movies share one thing in common, they either shaped or revolutionised cinema in one way or another. These elements can include certain techniques of mise en scene, or a story or theme that has never been explored in previous films, or hasn’t been executed in the same manner. Psycho (1960, Alfred Hitchcock) changed cinema in many ways, either through its themes of graphic violence, which hadn’t been seen in mainstream media before, or it being one of the first well executed movies, in which suspense played a key role. This intertwined with the villain being a human was also very uncommon during this time. These aspects of the movie changed cinematography forever.
Before the Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock made its way into theaters across the world, film was produced in a completely different way. Some of the elements that were in Psycho were things that nobody saw in movies before. According to Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleiberman, when the movie came out, it took place in “an atmosphere of dark and stifling ‘50s conformity” and that the elements of the film “tore through the repressive ‘50s blandness just a potently as Elvis had.” (Hudson). Alfred Hitchcock changed the way that cinema was made by breaking away from the old, “safe” way of creating a movie and decided to throw all of the unwritten rules of film making out the window. The main ways he accomplished this task was by adding graphic violence, sexuality, and different ways to view the film differently than any other movie before its time.