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10 November 2015
Alfred Hitchcocks Psycho
Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock is a psychological thriller that was released in the year 1960
and stars Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, John Gavin and Janet Leigh in lead roles (Psycho:
IMDB) with Anthony Perkins playing the role of the main antagonist in the movie who is
psychologically depressed due to a history of abuse meted out on him by his mother. The movie
is considered one of the best works by Alfred Hitchcock (AFI 100 years 100 movies) due to the
use of profound music that horrifies the audience to a chill, usage of bold scenes and
characterization that broke many film conventions of those times and the use of dark themes
which were not a main stream Hollywood marquee of the 1960s cinema. The film is about a man
named Norman Bates, who runs a motel owned by his family. Norman is a victim of his sick
mothers love. His mother is depicted to become sadistic when Normans concentration gets
detracted from her needs. This motion picture is a learning of personality, apprehension, and
storytelling; all the reasons that make this movie a classic in the horror genre. This motion
picture is exceptional due to numerous factors: its appearance, its containment two dissimilar
position of views with a deduced third point of view, and it has some of the most extraordinary
camera employment for its time.

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Psycho contains numerous symbols and performances that pushed the boundary of adequate
filmmaking in the 1960s. The violent behavior had to be restrained in such a way that the
spectators would not be robbed of the movies core understanding. Hitchcock consummated this
by constructing the film in black and white. Not only did it support him on the financial front,
but by this the audience was able to handle the realistic nature of the motion picture with this
procedure. The use of black and white as a contrivance as to not draw attention away from the
focal summits of the scenes, without visual disturbance, the spectator becomes more attached to
each character. There are many similarities between the movie and Glaspells works, especially
from her true journalistic work on The Hossack Murder case. This is evident from the fact that
both the works heavily feature deeds supposedly committed by people who have taken years of
abuse and hence were compelled to obligate the crime that they were convicted of. Moreover, the
movie Psycho features many scenes that redefine the portrayal of women as strong minded
against the then rhetoric of them being shown as femme fatales. This is evident from many
scenes like, the starting scene in which a lady is shown to be in her undergarments, supposedly
having just made love with a man who is not her husband in a hotel room; this particular scene
broke many apprehensions of then Hollywood cinema by showing semi nudity and many cultural
barriers by portrayal of the lady in a peculiar way, depicting her to be independent and strong,
just like Glaspell showed women in her literary works. After this the movie also shows the
character of Marion Crane to be the one to take initiative to bail out her beau out of his debt by
stealing money and setting on a journey to surprise him so that they could be married and get
respectable. In the process of her character play, Marion also breaks many gender stereotypes
by stealing money, buying a car and driving it solo on a long journey to be with her beloved. The
quantity of currency involved in "Psycho" would have surprised the spectators because forty

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thousand dollars was a lot of money in 1960 and it was extraordinary to see this amount of cash
on screen that too being handled by a woman. This scene from an economical point of view
made a huge impact on the viewers minds as that kind of money was a day to day occurrence for
the general public back then.
All in all, Psycho was a movie decades ahead of its time and an all out masterpiece. It
laid the foundation of aesthetic usage of nudity in mainstream cinema by using it in a way that
makes it enjoyable and discreet for the audience and not downright crass. The movie also break
many female stereotypes by portraying a strong female character who is willing to go to any
length for what she thinks is right and achieve it by all means and is a free thinking independent
woman. Moreover, the technical tenacity of Alfred Hitchcock is evident from the sordid direction
and usage of music at proper points like to show tension or upcoming dangerous events, high
pitched music is used, to establish danger and authority low angle shots are used and to establish
vulnerability, high angle shots are used. Also, the director succeeds in hiding the secret of the
murders right till the end without the audience getting suspicious at any of the characters shown
on the screen. The movie is so well written, directed, acted and the music is so brazenly horrific
that it sets high standards even for todays cinema that involves highly evolved graphics and
technical systems yet is unable to provide that sheer raw horror that Psycho in its time was able
to produce.

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Works Cited
"AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies - 10th Anniversary Edition." American Film Institute. American
Film Institute. Web. 8 Nov. 2015.
"Psycho." IMDb. IMDb.com. Web. 8 Nov. 2015.