Alfred Hitchcock Psycho Shower Scene

Exploring the Shower Scene
Introduction
There have been millions of murder scenes filmed throughout history, but by far one of the most famous scenes is one from the movie Psycho. In this widely known scene, Marion Crane is taking a shower peacefully and all of a sudden Norman Bates comes in and murders her. The director, Alfred Hitchcock, had a lot of obstacles to work around in this scene like how he was not permitted to show nudity or a knife going through the skin. With this in mind, he had to work every single shot around that. He spend plenty of time figuring out the perfect length of each shot. Also, the positioning of each shot was crucial to the feel the audience receives from the scene. Although, Hitchcock focused a lot on the sounds in the scene to keep the audience intrigued and curious of what is going to happen too. Mainly, Hitchcock carefully paid attention to every little detail from the duration of each shot to the types of shots to the sound throughout each part of the whole scene.
Shot duration Throughout the shower scene in
He always keeps the audience pulled into feeling everything that Marion is feeling throughout the scene by setting up the mise-en-scene so that the audience feels they are with her. Hitchcock’s use of shot durations helps assist the audience in understanding what Marion is thinking, but not only shot durations do this. The use of different shot angles, types, and the movement of the camera is by far one of the most important features that guides the viewer’s understanding of this scene. On the other hand, sound can arguably be just as important because it is the sound that keeps the audience pulled in close to what is happening at a particular moment. All in all, Hitchcock’s uses of these three elements of film are not easy to recreate since this scene is such an amazing creation in film