Psycho, A review

Psycho is a Alfred Hitchcock film made in 1960. The story is about a woman who steals $40 Thousand from her boss and goes on the run and ends up in the Bates Motel, where she is promptly murdered by the real story begins. Her murderer, Norman Bates, runs the hotel along with his mother, although he killed his mother years ago and has developed a sort of second personality of her to fill the void left. More people turn up looking for the woman, including a Private Investigator, her sister and her boyfriend. Bates kills the PI and the sister and the boyfriend eventually find out the truth,finding the decaying remains of Mrs Bates, subdue Bates and call the police. It is revealed that the personality of Mrs Bates was the one doing the killing, and Norman was cleaning up after her. And also the personality of Mrs Bates had completely taken over Norman.

https://monstersmoviemayhem.wordpress.com/2015/03/04/psycho-classic-movie-talk/
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Overall it was a good film, firstly it doesn't show us who are main character is first. Personally, I thought Marion(the girl who gets killed) was going to go mad because she stole the money, and there were hints of this within the first hour or so. She drives all night after stealing the money and sleeps in her car at the side of the road instead of going to a Motel, she sells her car and buys another in a hurry because a police officer is following her (most likely because he didn't think she was ok). But at the Motel, Norman seemingly makes her change her mind and give back the money. It's interesting that the character going a bit crazy is brought back to sanity by the character that is completely psycho.

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The shower scene, arguably the most famous scene form the movie, is a textbook example of how Hitchcock creates suspense and horror. He uses different camera angles, ones focusing on Marion and others on Norman holding the knife. It shows us that something is about to happen and that Marion doesn't know about it. Also when she is being stabbed there were lots of quick shots, some looking at Marion, a couple from her point of view and others focusing on where she's being stabbed.

There is also the famous score of violins playing the same notes over and over, creating a really jagged and cutting sound. It really puts you on edge and makes everything seem much more tense. According to a document called "Mr Hitchcock's suggestions for placement of music (08/JAN/1960)"  there was to be no music during the shower scene, however Bernard Herman convinced Hitchcock to try adding in the strings an Hitchcock agreed that it made the scene more intense, and almost doubled Herman's salary.

http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/Hitchcock_Gallery:_image_2973

afreens10, "Analysis of Psycho - Shower scene" (Oct 4, 2013), Accessed via https://www.slideshare.net/afreens10/analysis-of-psycho-shower-scene