Hitchcock Psycho Editing Techniques

Psycho
Hitchcock once said that he migrated to the United States as a kind of cultural exchange, only nobody knows what was sent in return because, said Hitchcock "they are afraid to open it.” Branded as the master of suspense through his pioneering editing techniques, captivating story telling and ability to incorporate his audience into his dramatic films, Hitchcock virtually created the thriller genre in the world of cinema. In the article, Through a Shower Curtain Darkly: Reflexivity as a Dramatic Component of Psycho Edward Recchia argues that in the 1960 film Psycho, Hitchcock skillfully turns his audience from spectators to actors in this three dimensional story. Recchia illustrates this reflexivity that Hitchcock uses in the film by
261). Due to the fact that the audience tends to always identify with the protagonist, it is no surprise that we as viewers begin to connect emotionally with Marione. Recchia claims that we sympathize with her choice to commit a crime out of love and inevitably like her as a person. Thus, “Hitchcock reinforces this emotional link with a good number of subjective-camera and reaction shots. But in doing so, he also increasingly narrows the focus of our perspective: More and more we are limited to Marion's point of view; more and more she becomes the exclusive filter through which our interpretation of the rest of the film's incidents and characters pass” (Recchia, 1991, pg. 261). In this fashion, viewers are settled into Marione’s circumstance and by the time she decides to steal the money, we have become completely locked into a world depicted only by her perspective. Hitchcock sets the film up in this way so that when Marione is seen eagerly packing her suitcase, viewers already know what she is doing without it being told to
When first screening this film, I did not quite realize or catch onto a lot of the techniques Hitchcock used to entrap his audience. This article, for that matter was packed with a lot of detailed perspectives that Recchia saw not only in Marione, but also her co-workers, the highway officer, her lover and Norman Bates. Most noted, the relationship that the viewer builds with Marione was of most interest to me. In the text, it is referenced that audience members almost always side with the protagonist. Hence, it was to no surprise when I found myself rooting for her to not get caught as she anxiously fled Arizona. However, this article truly expanded my critical analysis of this film in general. Before reading this article, I was not at all aware of how Hitchcock narrowed my perspective to only Marione’s in the first half of the film. Here I am thinking that in the traditional way of viewing, I am just watching another story unfold on screen. Yet, as Recchia points out in his article, I somehow became an actor in the film. Once my perspective of Marione was swept from under me after her murder, I was transitioned to build a relationship with Norman. As Recchia points out the most important thought, essential to Hitchcock’s purpose in this film is that we are really not limited to any one characters perspective. Although, it seems that way in the beginning Hitchcock cleverly achieves this