Week 15 - Early film in thriller genre analysis – Psycho (1960)

Psycho (1960)

Psycho (1960) is an early thriller film by Alfred Hitchcock, one of the greatest directors in thriller genre. The storyline is about Marion Crane, a Phoenix office worker, who is fed up with the way life has treated her. She can’t get marry with her lover, Sam, because he gave his money away in alimony. One day, Marion robbed 40,000 dollars from her employer in order to run away with her boyfriend. After traveling to avoid the police, she stops for a night at the ramshackle Bates Motel and meets Norman Bates a young man with an interest in taxidermy and a difficult relationship with his mother.

The genres of this movie are horror, mystery, and thriller. It’s from USA under Shamley Production with an estimated budget about $806,947.

Lacey’s Repertoire of Elements Analysis Grid

setting

Like other thriller films, the main settings are all in cities and houses (motel). This type of setting reflects both safety and danger. For this film, it definitely reflects danger in the safe place, as it deliberately shows murdering scene in the shower, which shows how vulnerable people are when they are in their home. This helps in thrilling the audiences and make the scene becomes more memorable.

Characters

The characters in this film reflect the old tradition idea of male gaze, which is when a media is presented from the male perspective and sexualize on female body parts and actions. This idea is one of the main reasons why thriller film often stereotyped women as victim and weak. Here are some of the main characters of this film

Marion Crane

She is a young, single woman who works as a secretary in real-estate office. She has a boyfriend named Sam Loomis, whom she wants to marry with.

This character has shown a typical idea about women of thriller films. It shows bad stereotypes about women as victim and bandit, which is not pleased to some audiences in the topic of gender equality and male gaze. This character also shows vulnerabilities of women and the intention of showing body parts in the shower scene, however, we can’t argue that it also makes the scene becomes more intense with how she screams and helpless in that scene.

Sam Loomis

He is a handsome man who run a hardware store. He loves Marion Crane and sees her whenever he is in Phoenix on business. Unfortunately, due to Sam's father's debts and his alimony payments, he does not have enough money to marry her.

Sam is also a typical character as the protector or the strong man who is handsome and look reliable, but the storyline of the movie turns him in to an ordinary who have to face the smart antagonist. He also takes an important part after Marion’s death in a role of investigator, not the protector.

Norman Bates

He is the owner of Bates Motel with his mother, and he can be count as one of the greatest villains in thriller film. Even his existence as a murder is still typical in this genre because of the usage of strong men as villains and violence, his psycho personality that he has impersonated himself as his mother when he killed someone is really shocking and twisting. It helps fitting in psychological thriller genre really well which makes this film become one of those famous original films.

The villain of this film also shows great intelligence and tricky moves which differs from some villains who just goes straight in killing others. It crates intensity to the protagonists which makes them solve the problem harder.

Narrative

Even the narration is in linear like other thriller films, the focus of the characters who proceed the story is changed during the film, unlike others that focus on the same survivor groups since the beginning to the end. At the start, Marion is the one who is focused, until she is killed by the villain. The focus of the story then shifts to those who try to investigate and find her. Most films usually leave the protagonist alive throughout the story. By suddenly killing the first protagonist, it can create a great twisting plot to the story.

Iconography

Like other thriller films, knife and blood are shown when it comes to the murder scene, however, because of the hard sensors in movies during that age, the films can’t show disturbing scenes like wounds and other creepy graphics. Still, they can manage to thrill the audiences using only camera angles, knife shots, and the flowing of the blood in water. Some scenes also show the reflect in the mirror to show symbolic meaning in characters’ identities.

Style

Although many films start to use colours in that period, this film decides to use black and white colour instead following the trend. Still, it creates even more intense textures and depths to the whole film. As it is a psychological thriller film, the cops and detectives also engage to solve the problem like other movies.

Reference

Is This Just Fantasy? (2016). Understanding Psycho: The Uncanny, [Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FMkGEZP3w0 [Accessed 19 February 2021]

Boghani, A. (2016). Psycho Character List, [Online] Available at: https://www.gradesaver.com/psycho/study-guide/character-list [Accessed 19 February 2021]

Rose-Szabo, C. (2017). The Male Gaze: Psycho. [Online] Available at: https://crxsses.wordpress.com/2017/09/20/the-male-gaze-psycho/#:~:text=The%201960%2Dclassic%20Psycho%20is,are%20less%20human%20than%20men.