Audience Expectations In Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho
How does Hitchcock exceed audience expectations in Psycho?
The director of the 1960 film Psycho was directed by Alfred Hitchcock, born 13th August 1899, in London. He died 29th April 1980 aged 80. He was a British filmmaker and producer who pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in the United Kingdom in both silent films and early sound films, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood. In 1956 he became an American citizen while retaining his British citizenship.
Hitchcock directed more than fifty feature films in his career lasting six decades. He remains one of the most popular and most famous filmmakers of all time. People recognised him due to cameo appearances in his own films and …show more content…
the series of television dramas he hosted, Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
The production was filmed at the Universal studios but Hitchcock had to pay out of his own money for the use of the studios. The film company Paramount agreed to distribute the film and gave Hitchcock 60% of the earnings. Paramount would not support the making of the film. Hitchcock paid nine thousand dollars for film rights. He gave up his two hundred and fifty thousand dollar directors’ fee.
The film had a reasonably tight budget.
You can see this by the fact that Hitchcock cast fairly unknown actors. Anthony Perkins, who played Norman Bates, was known as a supporting actor and does not play main lead or “anti-hero” this was unexpected for the audience. The unknown actors meant that the audience could not tell what the film will be about due to the type-coating of the actors.
Hitchcock was clever with the censorship. Censorship was very strict in 1960s. Directors were not allowed to show explicit nudity, sexual activity and violent scenes including blood and on-screen death etc. Hitchcock gets round the censorship in the first scene by showing Sam and Marion in the hotel room getting dressed, the bed also is unmade. This leads to the audiences’ assumption of them sleeping together, this all happens without the audience seeing any explicit shots.
In the shower scene Hitchcock got round the censorship by Marion wearing a skin coloured bikini so it looks like Marion is naked but she actually is not. The film is shown in black and white so they can show blood as it was illegal to show blood in colour, chocolate sauce was used as blood. The sound of the attack on Marion was made by stabbing a watermelon. The camera-angles were clever as not one actually showed the knife stabbing
Marion.
A director will use lots of shots and quick cuts to create and action filled and exciting scene. The different types of shots are:
Close up: Camera is zoomed in on a face or the key object. It makes it stand out and shows its impotrance.
Long Shot: Location and characters. It gives the “whole picture”
Location Shot: Sets the scene usually sweeping or panning shot, gives the audience a chance to look around the whole scene.
High angle shot: Camera is high it looks down on the whole scene usually a Birdseye view.
Low angle shot: Camera at the bottom it looks up. For example when Arbogast falls down the stairs.
In the shower scene there are 78 different camera angles and cuts used to edit this scene. The whole scene took seven days to film and was shot in an independent scene with removable wall panels etc. to allow access for the cameras.
The musical score was created by Bernard Herrann. He convinced Hitchcock to have music in the shower scene as he originally wanted the shower scene to be silent. The score is played by only stringed instruments, the violins were used at a high pitch which evokes the stabbing sound of the knives
Mise-en-scene is used a lot in psycho it translates into French meaning put in the scene. It refers to objects that appear as part of the background in the film scenes.
The choice of objects gives the audience a clue about what may happen later in the film or could give clues about the significance of objects and characters later in the film.
A good example of mise-en-scene in this film are the birds of prey in bates’ office. The birds signify attacks, swooping down, menace and death. The stuffed birds shows he preserves objects for example his mother’s corpse.
The scence around the back of the motel symbolizes the motel is decaying. The car and broken boxes shows this, the mop is used to clean the blood of Leela’s sister this is ironic as she does not realise the mop which killed her sister. The decaying scene behind the motel also symbolises Bates’ decaying mother.
Publicity was a big issue with psycho. Hitchcock changed the way audiences’ view films, previously they called enter when ever they wanted and the film was shown on a loop. Psycho had to be seen from the beginning-late arrivals were not allowed in the had to queue up this caused a publicity sensation
If this film was released today I do not think it would be such a huge success because people are used to horror films with terrifing plots. This is because psycho was a pioneering film. It made other directors want to direct horror films because the thought it would make them money. This meant there were a lot of similar films made and in this age people expect this kind of storyline in horror films.
The director of the 1960 film Psycho was directed by Alfred Hitchcock, born 13th August 1899, in London. He died 29th April 1980 aged 80. He was a British filmmaker and producer who pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in the United Kingdom in both silent films and early sound films, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood. In 1956 he became an American citizen while retaining his British citizenship.
Hitchcock directed more than fifty feature films in his career lasting six decades. He remains one of the most popular and most famous filmmakers of all time. People recognised him due to cameo appearances in his own films and …show more content…
the series of television dramas he hosted, Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
The production was filmed at the Universal studios but Hitchcock had to pay out of his own money for the use of the studios. The film company Paramount agreed to distribute the film and gave Hitchcock 60% of the earnings. Paramount would not support the making of the film. Hitchcock paid nine thousand dollars for film rights. He gave up his two hundred and fifty thousand dollar directors’ fee.
The film had a reasonably tight budget.
You can see this by the fact that Hitchcock cast fairly unknown actors. Anthony Perkins, who played Norman Bates, was known as a supporting actor and does not play main lead or “anti-hero” this was unexpected for the audience. The unknown actors meant that the audience could not tell what the film will be about due to the type-coating of the actors.
Hitchcock was clever with the censorship. Censorship was very strict in 1960s. Directors were not allowed to show explicit nudity, sexual activity and violent scenes including blood and on-screen death etc. Hitchcock gets round the censorship in the first scene by showing Sam and Marion in the hotel room getting dressed, the bed also is unmade. This leads to the audiences’ assumption of them sleeping together, this all happens without the audience seeing any explicit shots.
In the shower scene Hitchcock got round the censorship by Marion wearing a skin coloured bikini so it looks like Marion is naked but she actually is not. The film is shown in black and white so they can show blood as it was illegal to show blood in colour, chocolate sauce was used as blood. The sound of the attack on Marion was made by stabbing a watermelon. The camera-angles were clever as not one actually showed the knife stabbing
Marion.
A director will use lots of shots and quick cuts to create and action filled and exciting scene. The different types of shots are:
Close up: Camera is zoomed in on a face or the key object. It makes it stand out and shows its impotrance.
Long Shot: Location and characters. It gives the “whole picture”
Location Shot: Sets the scene usually sweeping or panning shot, gives the audience a chance to look around the whole scene.
High angle shot: Camera is high it looks down on the whole scene usually a Birdseye view.
Low angle shot: Camera at the bottom it looks up. For example when Arbogast falls down the stairs.
In the shower scene there are 78 different camera angles and cuts used to edit this scene. The whole scene took seven days to film and was shot in an independent scene with removable wall panels etc. to allow access for the cameras.
The musical score was created by Bernard Herrann. He convinced Hitchcock to have music in the shower scene as he originally wanted the shower scene to be silent. The score is played by only stringed instruments, the violins were used at a high pitch which evokes the stabbing sound of the knives
Mise-en-scene is used a lot in psycho it translates into French meaning put in the scene. It refers to objects that appear as part of the background in the film scenes.
The choice of objects gives the audience a clue about what may happen later in the film or could give clues about the significance of objects and characters later in the film.
A good example of mise-en-scene in this film are the birds of prey in bates’ office. The birds signify attacks, swooping down, menace and death. The stuffed birds shows he preserves objects for example his mother’s corpse.
The scence around the back of the motel symbolizes the motel is decaying. The car and broken boxes shows this, the mop is used to clean the blood of Leela’s sister this is ironic as she does not realise the mop which killed her sister. The decaying scene behind the motel also symbolises Bates’ decaying mother.
Publicity was a big issue with psycho. Hitchcock changed the way audiences’ view films, previously they called enter when ever they wanted and the film was shown on a loop. Psycho had to be seen from the beginning-late arrivals were not allowed in the had to queue up this caused a publicity sensation
If this film was released today I do not think it would be such a huge success because people are used to horror films with terrifing plots. This is because psycho was a pioneering film. It made other directors want to direct horror films because the thought it would make them money. This meant there were a lot of similar films made and in this age people expect this kind of storyline in horror films.