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AS Film Studies: FM2 British & American Film Psycho Case study
AS Film Studies
British & American Film
Section C: American Film Comparison
Case Study 1: PSYCHO
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AS Film Studies: FM2 British & American Film Psycho Case study
Psycho, 1960
Director Alfred Hitchcock,
Studio Universal, US,
Budget $807, 000
Gross $32, 000, 000
Written by Joseph Stefano (Based on Robert Bloch’s book)
Cast:
Anthony Perkins Norman Bates
Janet Leigh Marion Crane
John Gavin Sam Loomis
Vera Miles Lila Crane
Martin Balsam Milton Arbogast
Plot summary:
Marion Crane is a Phoenix, Arizona working girl fed up with having to sneak
away during lunch breaks to meet her lover, Sam Loomis, who cannot get
married because most of his money goes towards alimony. One Friday,
Marion's employer asks her to take $40,000 in cash to a local bank for
deposit. Desperate to make a change in her life, she impulsively leaves town
with the money, determined to start a new life with Sam in California. As night
falls and a torrential rain obscures the road ahead of her, Marion turns off the
main highway. Exhausted from the long drive and the stress of her criminal
act, she decides to spend the night at the desolate Bates Motel. The motel is
run by Norman Bates, a peculiar young man dominated by his invalid mother.
After Norman fixes her a light dinner, Marion goes back to her room for a
shower....
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AS Film Studies: FM2 British & American Film Psycho Case study
Psycho notes
Some key points…
• Psycho is a very different type of horror picture.
• Rather than have the antagonist be that of a visual monster, Norman
Bates is attractive, “normal”, and welcoming.
• Horror of human psychology and the realistic terror associated with the
probability of meeting a disturbed individual allowed this picture to
achieve new heights of terror and suspense.
Pre-production
• The film is based on the novel by Robert Bloch, which was in turn
based (although very loosely) on the crimes of Wisconsin serial killer
Ed Gein. Hitchcock acquired the film rights anonymously through an
agent for $9,000.
• Hitchcock embraced Psycho as a means to regain success and
individuality in an increasingly competitive genre. He had seen many B
movies churned out by William Castle such as House on Haunted Hill
(1958), and by Roger Corman such as A Bucket of Blood (1959) that
cleaned up at box offices despite being panned by critics. With Psycho,
he seized on it not only for its originality but also as a way to retake his
mantle as an acclaimed director of suspense.
• Hitchcock himself said in an interview with French critic and director
François Truffaut that "I think the thing that appealed to me was the
suddenness of the murder in the shower, coming, as it were, out of the
blue. That was about all.
• Hitchcock chose to film Psycho in black and white, keeping the budget
under $1,000,000. Other reasons for shooting in black and white were
to prevent the shower scene from being too gory.
Shower scene
• The film's pivotal scene, and one of the most famous scenes in cinema
history, is the murder of Janet Leigh's character in the shower
• It features between 71 and 78 angles (the exact number is unknown).
The scene runs 3 minutes and includes 50 cuts.
• Most of the shots are extreme close-ups, except for medium shots in
the shower directly before and directly after the murder.
• The combination of the close shots with the short duration between
cuts makes the sequence feel longer, more subjective, more
uncontrolled, and more violent than would the images if they presented
alone or in a wider angle.
• The soundtrack of screeching violins, violas, and cellos was an original
all-strings piece by composer Bernard Herrmann entitled "The Murder."
• The blood in the scene is in fact chocolate syrup, which shows up
better on black-and-white film, and has more realistic density than
stage blood.
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AS Film Studies: FM2 British & American Film Psycho Case study
• The sound of the knife entering flesh was created by plunging a knife
into a melon.
• The knife I never seen to actually penetrate Leigh’s skin
• Although Marion's eyes should be dilated after her death, the contacts
necessary for this effect would have required six weeks of
acclimatization in order to wear them, so Hitchcock decided to forgo
them.
Promoting the film
• Hitchcock did most of the promotion on his own, forbidding Leigh and
Perkins from making the usual television, radio, and print interviews for
fear of them revealing the plot. Even critics were not given private
screenings but rather had to see the film with the general public, which,
despite possibly affecting their reviews, certainly preserved the plot.
• The film's original trailer features a jovial Hitchcock taking the viewer on
a tour of the set, and almost giving away plot details before stopping
himself..
• The most controversial move was Hitchcock's "no late admission"
policy for the film, which was unusual for the time. Hitchcock thought
that if people entered the theatre late and never saw the star actress
Janet Leigh, they would feel cheated. At first theatre owners were up in
arms claiming that they would lose business, but after the first day the
owners enjoyed long lines of people waiting to see the film.
• The film was so successful that it was reissued to theatres in 1965.
Legacy
Psycho is a prime example of the type of film that appeared in the 1960s after
the erosion of the Production Code (i.e. censorship).
• It was unprecedented in its depiction of sexuality and violence, right
from the opening scene where Sam and Marion are shown as lovers
sharing the same bed. In the Production Code standards of that time,
unmarried couples shown in the same bed would be taboo.
• In addition, the censors were upset by the shot of a flushing toilet; at
that time, the idea of seeing a toilet onscreen - let alone being flushed -
was taboo in American movies and TV shows. According to
Entertainment Weekly, "The Production Code censors... had no
objection to the bloodletting, the murder theme, or even the shower
scene—but did ask that Hitchcock remove the word ‘transvestite’ from
the film. He didn't."
• Psycho is widely considered to be the first film in the slasher film genre.
Interpretation and themes
• The film often features shadows. The shadows are present from the
very first scene where the blinds make bars on Marion and Sam as
they peer out the window.
• The stuffed birds' shadows loom over Marion as she eats, and Mother
is seen in only shadows until the very end. More subtly, backlighting
turns the rakes in the hardware store into talons above Lila's head.
• There are a number of references to birds. Marion's last name is Crane
and she is from Phoenix. Norman's hobby is stuffing birds, and he
comments that Marion “eats like a bird”. This makes clear his morbid
intentions and Marion’s grisly fate.
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AS Film Studies: FM2 British & American Film Psycho Case study
DIALOGUE AND SCENE ANALYSIS:
Bates Motel/Marion’s arrival
Rain drops begin to splash on the windshield, as oncoming headlights blind
Marion's tired eyes (she has been traveling for almost 30 hours with nothing to
eat and an uncomfortable Friday night's sleep in her car). The rainstorm
becomes more violent, and the windshield wipers slash back and forth
through the water across her window, accentuated by the soundtrack. [A
perfect visual metaphor for the celebrated shower scene to come!] Although
the rain has a cleansing, climactic effect and her inner monologues cease
(and the music dies down), her vision is blurred and obscured - literally - and
she becomes lost and driven off the main road. Glaring car headlights (from
behind or ahead) disappear. The side road she has been derailed onto is dark
- suddenly up ahead, a neon "BATES MOTEL VACANCY" sign appears (seen
from her point of view) - almost conjured up like all her other interior
imaginations. Her escape is aborted. She pulls in to the out-of-the-way,
deserted, and downbeat roadside motel - a modest but seedy looking place.
The parlor is decorated with his birds mounted on the walls or on stands - an
enormous predatory, nocturnal owl with outstretched wings, a raven (an icon
of horror stories/gothic horror movies) and paintings of nude women. As he
sits straight up and leans forward while she nibbles on a sandwich he looks
on, fondles a stuffed bird, and talks about his "uncommon" and "cheap" hobby
"to pass the time" - his interest in bird taxidermy.
He dutifully confides that he doesn't have other friends - his "best friend is his
mother." Their conversation leads to speaking about how human beings
become imprisoned "in our private traps" - in a narrow and minimal existence -
in the course of their private lives. Marion sees parallels in her own life - she is
caught in a degraded and draining relationship with a weak-willed Sam,
similar to how Norman is debilitated by his enforced caring for his mother.
Assertively, Marion insists that he can free himself from the traps that he feels
have possessed him since birth - in actuality, she is in the process of healing
herself and ready to renounce her own madness. She can't believe that he is
traumatized so harshly by his mother - and suggests he should break away
from her. According to Norman, he was raised by his widowed mother after
the age of five. He was the central focus of his mother's attention until she fell
in love with a man who talked her into building the Bates Motel. When his
mother's lover died under unusual circumstances and she was bankrupted, "it
was just too great a shock for her" and she went insane.
Norman: “She had to raise me all by herself after my father died. I was only
five and it must have been quite a strain for her. She didn't have to go to work
or anything like that. He left her a little money. Anyway, a few years ago,
Mother met this man, and he talked her into building this motel. He could have
talked her into anything. And when he died too, it was just too great a shock
for her. And, and the way he died. (he smiles broadly at the thought) I guess
it's nothing to talk about while you're eating. Anyway, it was just too great a
loss for her. She had nothing left.”
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AS Film Studies: FM2 British & American Film Psycho Case study
• Watch the sequence in the parlour. What do we learn about Bates in
terms of representation? Provide examples from the following:
o Dialogue:
o Cinematography (lighting, camera, framing)
o Mise-en-scene (props, location, set)
Theorist Syd Field suggests that successful narratives require a ‘three act’
structure. These break down as follows:
Act 1: Set-up where the action takes place; introduce characters; suggest
what might happen in broad terms
Act 2: Key confrontation involving the main character facing a series of
obstacles that he/she will need to overcome to restore order
Act 3: All plots and sub-plots are resolved
Theorists interested in narrative suggest that all stories are structurally the
same. Tzvetan Todorov suggests that all narrative structures have the
following:
1. Equilibrium is established (balance in the narrative ‘world’)
2. Disruption occurs
3. Equilibrium is re-established
In filmic terms, this translates to:
1. We are introduced to the world of the hero/heroine
2. The normality of this world is disrupted
3. The hero/heroine sets out to restore order
In other words, film narratives can often be boiled down to good versus evil, or
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AS Film Studies: FM2 British & American Film Psycho Case study
order versus chaos. Some films take this approach more literally than others
but most follow this structure to a greater or lesser extent.
• As we have established, the first act of the film sets up a conventional
thriller narrative. This sequence sets out to significantly alter the
narrative of the film. How does this scene achieve this?
DIALOGUE AND SCENE ANALYSIS:
Shower scene and body disposal…
Walking back into the shadowy dark parlor and shutting the door behind him, motel manager
Norman listens at the wall for sounds in the adjoining Cabin Room 1. Then, he removes one
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AS Film Studies: FM2 British & American Film Psycho Case study
of the nude paintings from a hook (a replica of Susanna and the Elders - in which a nude is
assaulted by two males) revealing a jagged hole chipped out of the wall with a bright
peephole in its center.
When he leans down to peer at Marion through the hole, his eye, in profile view, is illuminated
by the light from her bedroom. The camera angle shifts and from Norman's point of view, he
sees her undress down to her black brassiere and slip in front of her open bathroom door [a
subjective camera placement implicates the audience in his peeping voyeurism].
A gigantic closeup of his large unblinking, profiled eye fills the screen - at precisely the same
instant that he is lustfully watching Marion undress. At the door to the office, he again glares
up toward the house (in profile) and then begins bounding up the steps to his hillside home.
Inside the house, he pauses at the carved staircase, places his hand on the banister post -
and then with his hands in his pockets, retreats to the kitchen and sits hunched over the table
at an odd angle. He twirls the cover on the sugar bowl. [The schizophrenic camera - or his
Mother - voyeuristically watches him - and he appears to sense and realize it.]
In her motel room, Marion begins to reconsider her crime.
To hide all evidence, she decides not to use the wastebasket and flushes the shreds down
the toilet in the gleaming white bathroom - the noisy flush is emphasised as she watches the
pieces circle around the bowl. [This was a convention-breaking taboo - to show a toilet and
flush in a mainstream American film. This drain and 'flushing' imagery foreshadows the one of
her own blood circling down the shower drain following her death. She closes the lid on the
toilet bowl, shuts the bathroom door, removes the robe from her naked back, drapes the robe
over the toilet, steps naked into the bathtub (the camera displays her bare legs), pulls across
the translucent shower curtain and prepares to take a shower before retiring - a final soul-
cleansing act.
[In the next scene, the classic, brutal shower murder scene, an unexplainable,
unpremeditated, and irrational murder, the major star of the film - Marion - is shockingly
stabbed to death after the first 47 minutes of the film's start. It is the most famous murder
scene ever filmed and one of the most jarring. It took a full week to complete, using fast-cut
editing of 78 pieces of film, and 70 camera setups, in a 45-second montage sequence. The
audience's imagination fills in the illusion of complete nudity and fourteen violent stabbings.
Actually, she never really appears nude (although the audience is teased) and there is only
implied violence - at no time does the knife ever penetrate deeply into her body. In only one
split instant, the knife tip touches her waist just below her belly button. Chocolate syrup was
used as 'movie blood', and a melon was chosen for the sound of the flesh-slashing knife.]
The infamous scene begins peacefully enough. She opens up a bar of soap, and turns on the
overhead shower water - from a prominent shower head nozzle (diagonally placed in the
upper left) that sends arched needles of spray over her like rain water. There in the vulnerable
privacy of her bathroom, she begins to bathe, visibly enjoying the luxurious and therapeutic
feel of the cleansing warm water on her skin. Marion is relieved as the water washes away
her guilt and brings energizing, reborn life back into her. Large closeups of the shower head,
that resembles a large eye, are shot from her point-of-view - they reveal that the water bursts
from its head and pours down on her - and the audience. She soaps her neck and arms while
smiling in her own private world (or "private island") - oblivious for the moment to the
problems surrounding her life.
With her back to the shower curtain, the bathroom door opens and a shadowy, grey tall figure
enters the bathroom. Just as the shower curtain completely fills the screen - with the camera
positioned just inside the tub, the silhouetted, opaque-outlined figure whips aside (or tears
open) the curtain barrier. The outline of the figure's dark face, the whites of its eyes, and tight
hair bun are all that is visible - 'she' wields a menacing, phallic-like butcher knife high in the air
- at first, it appears to be stab, stab, stabbing us - the victimized viewer! The piercing,
shrieking, and screaming of the violin strings of Bernard Herrmann's shrill music play a large
part in creating sheer terror during the horrific scene - they start 'screaming' before Marion's
own shrieks. [The sound track resembles the discordant sounds of a carnivorous bird-like
creature 'scratching and clawing' at its prey.] Marion turns, screams (her wide-open, contorted
mouth in gigantic close-up), and vainly resists as she shields her breasts, while the large knife
repeatedly rises and falls in a machine-like fashion.
The murderer appears to stab and penetrate into her naked stomach, shattering her sense of
security and salvation. The savage killing is kinetically viewed from many angles and views.
She is standing in water mixed with ejaculatory spurts of blood dripping down her legs from
various gashes - symbolic of a deadly and violent rape. She turns and falls against the
bathtub tiles, her hand 'clawing and grasping' the back shower wall for the last shred of her
own life as the murderer (resembling a grey-haired woman wearing an old-fashioned dress)
quickly turns and leaves. With an unbloodied face and neck/shoulder area, she leans into the
wall and slides, slides, and slides down the wet wall while looking outward with a fixed stare -
the camera follows her slow descent.
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AS Film Studies: FM2 British & American Film Psycho Case study
In a closeup, Marion outstretches her hand (toward the viewer), clutches onto the shower
curtain and pulls it down from its hooks (one by one) upon herself as she collapses over the
edge of the bathtub - her face pitches forward and is awkwardly pressed to the white
bathroom floor in front of the toilet. She lies bleeding on the cold, naked floor, with the shower
nozzle still spraying her body with water [the soundtrack resembles soft rainfall].
The camera slowly tracks the blood and water that flows and swirls together counter-
clockwise down into the deep blackness of the bathtub drain - Marion's life has literally gone
down the drain. The drain dissolves into a memorable closeup - a perfect match-cut camera
technique - of Marion's dead-still, iris-contracted [a dead person's iris is not contracted but
dilated], fish-like right eye with one tear drop (or drop of water). The camera pulls back up
from the lifeless, staring eye (freeze-framed and frozen at the start of the pull back), spiraling
in an opposite clockwise direction - signifying release from the drain. [The association of the
eye within the bottomless darkness of the drain is deliberate, as is the contrast between
Norman's 'peeping tom' eye and Marion's dead eye. Her eye is slightly angled upward toward
where Norman was positioned.]
On the soundtrack gushing shower water is still heard. The camera pans from Marion's face
past the toilet and into the bedroom for a zoom close-up of Marion's folded-up newspaper on
the nightstand. The bedstand also supports an empty ashtray and erect lampstand with a
circular base. The camera continues to pan over along the flowery wall-papered wall to the
open window where the house is visible. From there, Norman's voice is heard crying:
Mother! Oh, God! Mother! Blood! Blood!
[From a common-sense point-of-view, how could Norman have known?]
Norman scrambles down the hill to the scene of the crime in Cabin one, accompanied by the
shrill music once again. At the bathroom door after viewing the curtain-less shower and the
dead body, he turns away and cups his hand to his mouth, revulsed and nauseated by the
horrific scene and possibly stifling a scream - and 'knocking off a bird' picture from the wall
[Norman has literally knocked off a 'bird'].
He regains his composure, closes the open window, sits shaking in a chair, and then closes
the cabin's door - camera angles often include the newspaper. He turns out the light, leaves
the room, pauses outside, enters his motel office, and then shuts off the lights after closing
the door behind him. [Hitchcock lingers on a view of the closed and darkened motel office
door from the outside - note that the shadow of the roof overhang on the door's window forms
the deathly silhouette of a guillotine blade-wedge!]
Dutifully, he re-appears from the office, carrying a mop and pail to methodically clean-up
following the murder. [The audience is left with sympathetically identifying with the devoted,
dutiful, automaton son who is once again cleaning up the mess and covering up for his
misguided, insane mother's behavior. Clearly, the murder is not motivated by a lust for
money.] He enters the bathroom, turns off the shower water, and then spreads out the shower
curtain on the floor of the bedroom. He drags Marion's limp/nude corpse to the curtain and
afterwards shows off his 'dirty' hands to the camera on this "dirty night." [Subjectively, his
hands are really the audience's hands.] He washes his hands in the sink - blood and water
again swirl down the drain. He rinses the sink clean of blood and then obsessively swabs and
wipes up every trace of the bloody murder in the bathroom with the mop, after which he dries
everything with a towel. He drops his towel and mop into the empty bucket at the conclusion
of the laborious, ritualistic process.
Norman tiptoe-edges around her body as he goes outside to back Marion's car (and trunk)
closer to the room's door. Then, he wraps her up in the plastic curtain [rolling and bundling
her up like the money in the newspaper in the make-shift shroud], carries her over the door's
threshold (!) and onto the porch, and places the corpse in the trunk of her car. He straightens
up the bird picture that had fallen to the floor, packs up her few belongings, and also tosses
them in the car. The final lingering trace of Marion and another crime - her folded newspaper
concealing the money - is the last thing found in the room. Without looking inside, he non-
chalantly tosses it into the car trunk and slams it shut. He drives off - a camera closeup of the
car's rear end reveals its license plate - NFB 418 [signifying 'Norman F Bates' - the F
represents Francis, a reference to St. Francis, patron saint of birds] and drives to a nearby,
bordering swamp-hole filled with quicksand.
He gets out and pushes the light-toned car into the dark thick morass of waters to submerge
the evidence, watching nervously and nibbling as it slowly gurgles lower and lower into the
muck. He cups his hands in front of his chin, fearful that it won't sink entirely. The car sinks
only part way in - and then halts. Norman, looking remarkably like a scared bird, darts his
head around anxiously. Then he grins approvingly when it is finally swallowed up - again
down a drain of sorts - by the blackness. He is relieved that the evidence is covered up.
9
AS Film Studies: FM2 British & American Film Psycho Case study
[Audience identification shares Norman's relief.] The scene fades to black.
• Using the passage above to help you, explain how would this scene
come to be a key reference point for more formulaic slasher movies?
Consider both representation and narrative. Include film language
(micro aspects) in your answer.
DIALOGUE AND SCENE ANALYSIS:
Lila’s discovery in the Bate’s family home…
• What technical methods does Hitchcock employ in creating tension
and, ultimately shock?
10
AS Film Studies: FM2 British & American Film Psycho Case study
• What elements make this sequence particularly disturbing? Consider
what we discover about Bates’ childhood. How much of this is typical to
the slasher sub-genre?
• Using Syd Field’s three act structure, explain how the film is concluded.
11

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Psycho analysis

  • 1. AS Film Studies: FM2 British & American Film Psycho Case study AS Film Studies British & American Film Section C: American Film Comparison Case Study 1: PSYCHO 1
  • 2. AS Film Studies: FM2 British & American Film Psycho Case study Psycho, 1960 Director Alfred Hitchcock, Studio Universal, US, Budget $807, 000 Gross $32, 000, 000 Written by Joseph Stefano (Based on Robert Bloch’s book) Cast: Anthony Perkins Norman Bates Janet Leigh Marion Crane John Gavin Sam Loomis Vera Miles Lila Crane Martin Balsam Milton Arbogast Plot summary: Marion Crane is a Phoenix, Arizona working girl fed up with having to sneak away during lunch breaks to meet her lover, Sam Loomis, who cannot get married because most of his money goes towards alimony. One Friday, Marion's employer asks her to take $40,000 in cash to a local bank for deposit. Desperate to make a change in her life, she impulsively leaves town with the money, determined to start a new life with Sam in California. As night falls and a torrential rain obscures the road ahead of her, Marion turns off the main highway. Exhausted from the long drive and the stress of her criminal act, she decides to spend the night at the desolate Bates Motel. The motel is run by Norman Bates, a peculiar young man dominated by his invalid mother. After Norman fixes her a light dinner, Marion goes back to her room for a shower.... 2
  • 3. AS Film Studies: FM2 British & American Film Psycho Case study Psycho notes Some key points… • Psycho is a very different type of horror picture. • Rather than have the antagonist be that of a visual monster, Norman Bates is attractive, “normal”, and welcoming. • Horror of human psychology and the realistic terror associated with the probability of meeting a disturbed individual allowed this picture to achieve new heights of terror and suspense. Pre-production • The film is based on the novel by Robert Bloch, which was in turn based (although very loosely) on the crimes of Wisconsin serial killer Ed Gein. Hitchcock acquired the film rights anonymously through an agent for $9,000. • Hitchcock embraced Psycho as a means to regain success and individuality in an increasingly competitive genre. He had seen many B movies churned out by William Castle such as House on Haunted Hill (1958), and by Roger Corman such as A Bucket of Blood (1959) that cleaned up at box offices despite being panned by critics. With Psycho, he seized on it not only for its originality but also as a way to retake his mantle as an acclaimed director of suspense. • Hitchcock himself said in an interview with French critic and director François Truffaut that "I think the thing that appealed to me was the suddenness of the murder in the shower, coming, as it were, out of the blue. That was about all. • Hitchcock chose to film Psycho in black and white, keeping the budget under $1,000,000. Other reasons for shooting in black and white were to prevent the shower scene from being too gory. Shower scene • The film's pivotal scene, and one of the most famous scenes in cinema history, is the murder of Janet Leigh's character in the shower • It features between 71 and 78 angles (the exact number is unknown). The scene runs 3 minutes and includes 50 cuts. • Most of the shots are extreme close-ups, except for medium shots in the shower directly before and directly after the murder. • The combination of the close shots with the short duration between cuts makes the sequence feel longer, more subjective, more uncontrolled, and more violent than would the images if they presented alone or in a wider angle. • The soundtrack of screeching violins, violas, and cellos was an original all-strings piece by composer Bernard Herrmann entitled "The Murder." • The blood in the scene is in fact chocolate syrup, which shows up better on black-and-white film, and has more realistic density than stage blood. 3
  • 4. AS Film Studies: FM2 British & American Film Psycho Case study • The sound of the knife entering flesh was created by plunging a knife into a melon. • The knife I never seen to actually penetrate Leigh’s skin • Although Marion's eyes should be dilated after her death, the contacts necessary for this effect would have required six weeks of acclimatization in order to wear them, so Hitchcock decided to forgo them. Promoting the film • Hitchcock did most of the promotion on his own, forbidding Leigh and Perkins from making the usual television, radio, and print interviews for fear of them revealing the plot. Even critics were not given private screenings but rather had to see the film with the general public, which, despite possibly affecting their reviews, certainly preserved the plot. • The film's original trailer features a jovial Hitchcock taking the viewer on a tour of the set, and almost giving away plot details before stopping himself.. • The most controversial move was Hitchcock's "no late admission" policy for the film, which was unusual for the time. Hitchcock thought that if people entered the theatre late and never saw the star actress Janet Leigh, they would feel cheated. At first theatre owners were up in arms claiming that they would lose business, but after the first day the owners enjoyed long lines of people waiting to see the film. • The film was so successful that it was reissued to theatres in 1965. Legacy Psycho is a prime example of the type of film that appeared in the 1960s after the erosion of the Production Code (i.e. censorship). • It was unprecedented in its depiction of sexuality and violence, right from the opening scene where Sam and Marion are shown as lovers sharing the same bed. In the Production Code standards of that time, unmarried couples shown in the same bed would be taboo. • In addition, the censors were upset by the shot of a flushing toilet; at that time, the idea of seeing a toilet onscreen - let alone being flushed - was taboo in American movies and TV shows. According to Entertainment Weekly, "The Production Code censors... had no objection to the bloodletting, the murder theme, or even the shower scene—but did ask that Hitchcock remove the word ‘transvestite’ from the film. He didn't." • Psycho is widely considered to be the first film in the slasher film genre. Interpretation and themes • The film often features shadows. The shadows are present from the very first scene where the blinds make bars on Marion and Sam as they peer out the window. • The stuffed birds' shadows loom over Marion as she eats, and Mother is seen in only shadows until the very end. More subtly, backlighting turns the rakes in the hardware store into talons above Lila's head. • There are a number of references to birds. Marion's last name is Crane and she is from Phoenix. Norman's hobby is stuffing birds, and he comments that Marion “eats like a bird”. This makes clear his morbid intentions and Marion’s grisly fate. 4
  • 5. AS Film Studies: FM2 British & American Film Psycho Case study DIALOGUE AND SCENE ANALYSIS: Bates Motel/Marion’s arrival Rain drops begin to splash on the windshield, as oncoming headlights blind Marion's tired eyes (she has been traveling for almost 30 hours with nothing to eat and an uncomfortable Friday night's sleep in her car). The rainstorm becomes more violent, and the windshield wipers slash back and forth through the water across her window, accentuated by the soundtrack. [A perfect visual metaphor for the celebrated shower scene to come!] Although the rain has a cleansing, climactic effect and her inner monologues cease (and the music dies down), her vision is blurred and obscured - literally - and she becomes lost and driven off the main road. Glaring car headlights (from behind or ahead) disappear. The side road she has been derailed onto is dark - suddenly up ahead, a neon "BATES MOTEL VACANCY" sign appears (seen from her point of view) - almost conjured up like all her other interior imaginations. Her escape is aborted. She pulls in to the out-of-the-way, deserted, and downbeat roadside motel - a modest but seedy looking place. The parlor is decorated with his birds mounted on the walls or on stands - an enormous predatory, nocturnal owl with outstretched wings, a raven (an icon of horror stories/gothic horror movies) and paintings of nude women. As he sits straight up and leans forward while she nibbles on a sandwich he looks on, fondles a stuffed bird, and talks about his "uncommon" and "cheap" hobby "to pass the time" - his interest in bird taxidermy. He dutifully confides that he doesn't have other friends - his "best friend is his mother." Their conversation leads to speaking about how human beings become imprisoned "in our private traps" - in a narrow and minimal existence - in the course of their private lives. Marion sees parallels in her own life - she is caught in a degraded and draining relationship with a weak-willed Sam, similar to how Norman is debilitated by his enforced caring for his mother. Assertively, Marion insists that he can free himself from the traps that he feels have possessed him since birth - in actuality, she is in the process of healing herself and ready to renounce her own madness. She can't believe that he is traumatized so harshly by his mother - and suggests he should break away from her. According to Norman, he was raised by his widowed mother after the age of five. He was the central focus of his mother's attention until she fell in love with a man who talked her into building the Bates Motel. When his mother's lover died under unusual circumstances and she was bankrupted, "it was just too great a shock for her" and she went insane. Norman: “She had to raise me all by herself after my father died. I was only five and it must have been quite a strain for her. She didn't have to go to work or anything like that. He left her a little money. Anyway, a few years ago, Mother met this man, and he talked her into building this motel. He could have talked her into anything. And when he died too, it was just too great a shock for her. And, and the way he died. (he smiles broadly at the thought) I guess it's nothing to talk about while you're eating. Anyway, it was just too great a loss for her. She had nothing left.” 5
  • 6. AS Film Studies: FM2 British & American Film Psycho Case study • Watch the sequence in the parlour. What do we learn about Bates in terms of representation? Provide examples from the following: o Dialogue: o Cinematography (lighting, camera, framing) o Mise-en-scene (props, location, set) Theorist Syd Field suggests that successful narratives require a ‘three act’ structure. These break down as follows: Act 1: Set-up where the action takes place; introduce characters; suggest what might happen in broad terms Act 2: Key confrontation involving the main character facing a series of obstacles that he/she will need to overcome to restore order Act 3: All plots and sub-plots are resolved Theorists interested in narrative suggest that all stories are structurally the same. Tzvetan Todorov suggests that all narrative structures have the following: 1. Equilibrium is established (balance in the narrative ‘world’) 2. Disruption occurs 3. Equilibrium is re-established In filmic terms, this translates to: 1. We are introduced to the world of the hero/heroine 2. The normality of this world is disrupted 3. The hero/heroine sets out to restore order In other words, film narratives can often be boiled down to good versus evil, or 6
  • 7. AS Film Studies: FM2 British & American Film Psycho Case study order versus chaos. Some films take this approach more literally than others but most follow this structure to a greater or lesser extent. • As we have established, the first act of the film sets up a conventional thriller narrative. This sequence sets out to significantly alter the narrative of the film. How does this scene achieve this? DIALOGUE AND SCENE ANALYSIS: Shower scene and body disposal… Walking back into the shadowy dark parlor and shutting the door behind him, motel manager Norman listens at the wall for sounds in the adjoining Cabin Room 1. Then, he removes one 7
  • 8. AS Film Studies: FM2 British & American Film Psycho Case study of the nude paintings from a hook (a replica of Susanna and the Elders - in which a nude is assaulted by two males) revealing a jagged hole chipped out of the wall with a bright peephole in its center. When he leans down to peer at Marion through the hole, his eye, in profile view, is illuminated by the light from her bedroom. The camera angle shifts and from Norman's point of view, he sees her undress down to her black brassiere and slip in front of her open bathroom door [a subjective camera placement implicates the audience in his peeping voyeurism]. A gigantic closeup of his large unblinking, profiled eye fills the screen - at precisely the same instant that he is lustfully watching Marion undress. At the door to the office, he again glares up toward the house (in profile) and then begins bounding up the steps to his hillside home. Inside the house, he pauses at the carved staircase, places his hand on the banister post - and then with his hands in his pockets, retreats to the kitchen and sits hunched over the table at an odd angle. He twirls the cover on the sugar bowl. [The schizophrenic camera - or his Mother - voyeuristically watches him - and he appears to sense and realize it.] In her motel room, Marion begins to reconsider her crime. To hide all evidence, she decides not to use the wastebasket and flushes the shreds down the toilet in the gleaming white bathroom - the noisy flush is emphasised as she watches the pieces circle around the bowl. [This was a convention-breaking taboo - to show a toilet and flush in a mainstream American film. This drain and 'flushing' imagery foreshadows the one of her own blood circling down the shower drain following her death. She closes the lid on the toilet bowl, shuts the bathroom door, removes the robe from her naked back, drapes the robe over the toilet, steps naked into the bathtub (the camera displays her bare legs), pulls across the translucent shower curtain and prepares to take a shower before retiring - a final soul- cleansing act. [In the next scene, the classic, brutal shower murder scene, an unexplainable, unpremeditated, and irrational murder, the major star of the film - Marion - is shockingly stabbed to death after the first 47 minutes of the film's start. It is the most famous murder scene ever filmed and one of the most jarring. It took a full week to complete, using fast-cut editing of 78 pieces of film, and 70 camera setups, in a 45-second montage sequence. The audience's imagination fills in the illusion of complete nudity and fourteen violent stabbings. Actually, she never really appears nude (although the audience is teased) and there is only implied violence - at no time does the knife ever penetrate deeply into her body. In only one split instant, the knife tip touches her waist just below her belly button. Chocolate syrup was used as 'movie blood', and a melon was chosen for the sound of the flesh-slashing knife.] The infamous scene begins peacefully enough. She opens up a bar of soap, and turns on the overhead shower water - from a prominent shower head nozzle (diagonally placed in the upper left) that sends arched needles of spray over her like rain water. There in the vulnerable privacy of her bathroom, she begins to bathe, visibly enjoying the luxurious and therapeutic feel of the cleansing warm water on her skin. Marion is relieved as the water washes away her guilt and brings energizing, reborn life back into her. Large closeups of the shower head, that resembles a large eye, are shot from her point-of-view - they reveal that the water bursts from its head and pours down on her - and the audience. She soaps her neck and arms while smiling in her own private world (or "private island") - oblivious for the moment to the problems surrounding her life. With her back to the shower curtain, the bathroom door opens and a shadowy, grey tall figure enters the bathroom. Just as the shower curtain completely fills the screen - with the camera positioned just inside the tub, the silhouetted, opaque-outlined figure whips aside (or tears open) the curtain barrier. The outline of the figure's dark face, the whites of its eyes, and tight hair bun are all that is visible - 'she' wields a menacing, phallic-like butcher knife high in the air - at first, it appears to be stab, stab, stabbing us - the victimized viewer! The piercing, shrieking, and screaming of the violin strings of Bernard Herrmann's shrill music play a large part in creating sheer terror during the horrific scene - they start 'screaming' before Marion's own shrieks. [The sound track resembles the discordant sounds of a carnivorous bird-like creature 'scratching and clawing' at its prey.] Marion turns, screams (her wide-open, contorted mouth in gigantic close-up), and vainly resists as she shields her breasts, while the large knife repeatedly rises and falls in a machine-like fashion. The murderer appears to stab and penetrate into her naked stomach, shattering her sense of security and salvation. The savage killing is kinetically viewed from many angles and views. She is standing in water mixed with ejaculatory spurts of blood dripping down her legs from various gashes - symbolic of a deadly and violent rape. She turns and falls against the bathtub tiles, her hand 'clawing and grasping' the back shower wall for the last shred of her own life as the murderer (resembling a grey-haired woman wearing an old-fashioned dress) quickly turns and leaves. With an unbloodied face and neck/shoulder area, she leans into the wall and slides, slides, and slides down the wet wall while looking outward with a fixed stare - the camera follows her slow descent. 8
  • 9. AS Film Studies: FM2 British & American Film Psycho Case study In a closeup, Marion outstretches her hand (toward the viewer), clutches onto the shower curtain and pulls it down from its hooks (one by one) upon herself as she collapses over the edge of the bathtub - her face pitches forward and is awkwardly pressed to the white bathroom floor in front of the toilet. She lies bleeding on the cold, naked floor, with the shower nozzle still spraying her body with water [the soundtrack resembles soft rainfall]. The camera slowly tracks the blood and water that flows and swirls together counter- clockwise down into the deep blackness of the bathtub drain - Marion's life has literally gone down the drain. The drain dissolves into a memorable closeup - a perfect match-cut camera technique - of Marion's dead-still, iris-contracted [a dead person's iris is not contracted but dilated], fish-like right eye with one tear drop (or drop of water). The camera pulls back up from the lifeless, staring eye (freeze-framed and frozen at the start of the pull back), spiraling in an opposite clockwise direction - signifying release from the drain. [The association of the eye within the bottomless darkness of the drain is deliberate, as is the contrast between Norman's 'peeping tom' eye and Marion's dead eye. Her eye is slightly angled upward toward where Norman was positioned.] On the soundtrack gushing shower water is still heard. The camera pans from Marion's face past the toilet and into the bedroom for a zoom close-up of Marion's folded-up newspaper on the nightstand. The bedstand also supports an empty ashtray and erect lampstand with a circular base. The camera continues to pan over along the flowery wall-papered wall to the open window where the house is visible. From there, Norman's voice is heard crying: Mother! Oh, God! Mother! Blood! Blood! [From a common-sense point-of-view, how could Norman have known?] Norman scrambles down the hill to the scene of the crime in Cabin one, accompanied by the shrill music once again. At the bathroom door after viewing the curtain-less shower and the dead body, he turns away and cups his hand to his mouth, revulsed and nauseated by the horrific scene and possibly stifling a scream - and 'knocking off a bird' picture from the wall [Norman has literally knocked off a 'bird']. He regains his composure, closes the open window, sits shaking in a chair, and then closes the cabin's door - camera angles often include the newspaper. He turns out the light, leaves the room, pauses outside, enters his motel office, and then shuts off the lights after closing the door behind him. [Hitchcock lingers on a view of the closed and darkened motel office door from the outside - note that the shadow of the roof overhang on the door's window forms the deathly silhouette of a guillotine blade-wedge!] Dutifully, he re-appears from the office, carrying a mop and pail to methodically clean-up following the murder. [The audience is left with sympathetically identifying with the devoted, dutiful, automaton son who is once again cleaning up the mess and covering up for his misguided, insane mother's behavior. Clearly, the murder is not motivated by a lust for money.] He enters the bathroom, turns off the shower water, and then spreads out the shower curtain on the floor of the bedroom. He drags Marion's limp/nude corpse to the curtain and afterwards shows off his 'dirty' hands to the camera on this "dirty night." [Subjectively, his hands are really the audience's hands.] He washes his hands in the sink - blood and water again swirl down the drain. He rinses the sink clean of blood and then obsessively swabs and wipes up every trace of the bloody murder in the bathroom with the mop, after which he dries everything with a towel. He drops his towel and mop into the empty bucket at the conclusion of the laborious, ritualistic process. Norman tiptoe-edges around her body as he goes outside to back Marion's car (and trunk) closer to the room's door. Then, he wraps her up in the plastic curtain [rolling and bundling her up like the money in the newspaper in the make-shift shroud], carries her over the door's threshold (!) and onto the porch, and places the corpse in the trunk of her car. He straightens up the bird picture that had fallen to the floor, packs up her few belongings, and also tosses them in the car. The final lingering trace of Marion and another crime - her folded newspaper concealing the money - is the last thing found in the room. Without looking inside, he non- chalantly tosses it into the car trunk and slams it shut. He drives off - a camera closeup of the car's rear end reveals its license plate - NFB 418 [signifying 'Norman F Bates' - the F represents Francis, a reference to St. Francis, patron saint of birds] and drives to a nearby, bordering swamp-hole filled with quicksand. He gets out and pushes the light-toned car into the dark thick morass of waters to submerge the evidence, watching nervously and nibbling as it slowly gurgles lower and lower into the muck. He cups his hands in front of his chin, fearful that it won't sink entirely. The car sinks only part way in - and then halts. Norman, looking remarkably like a scared bird, darts his head around anxiously. Then he grins approvingly when it is finally swallowed up - again down a drain of sorts - by the blackness. He is relieved that the evidence is covered up. 9
  • 10. AS Film Studies: FM2 British & American Film Psycho Case study [Audience identification shares Norman's relief.] The scene fades to black. • Using the passage above to help you, explain how would this scene come to be a key reference point for more formulaic slasher movies? Consider both representation and narrative. Include film language (micro aspects) in your answer. DIALOGUE AND SCENE ANALYSIS: Lila’s discovery in the Bate’s family home… • What technical methods does Hitchcock employ in creating tension and, ultimately shock? 10
  • 11. AS Film Studies: FM2 British & American Film Psycho Case study • What elements make this sequence particularly disturbing? Consider what we discover about Bates’ childhood. How much of this is typical to the slasher sub-genre? • Using Syd Field’s three act structure, explain how the film is concluded. 11