Thursday, 27 November 2014

PSYCHO SCENE ANALYSIS


 
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
This scene from Psycho is the infamous shower scene, where protagonist Marion gets stabbed to death. This scene features body horror even though we never see the knife go into Marion the audience assumes that she is being stabbed due to the loud sound effects. This technique is called restricted narration, as a lot of the violence happens off screen this is due to the institutional context of when Psycho was made as there were limitations of the Hays Code. Hitchcock used a fast montage in order to create an emotional response from the spectator, using 57 shots from 8 different angles during the scene in total. Hitchcock loved soviet montage films from the 1920s, like Battleship Potemkin, and this really influenced his style, so this shows Hitchcock’s auteur influence in the film; something that would have been written about my Andrew Sarris and critic who wrote about Auteur theory. Low key lighting is used as an effect to create shadows and also a few point of view shots putting us as the spectator either in the position of the killer or the victim. The killer also uses a phallic weapon to kill Marion representing male power as well as Norman's sexual frustration that Marion is not attracted to him.                                                                     

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