Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock - Movie Review Example

The scenes create a full impact on what Hitchcock intended even for a first-time viewer of the film. The film has brilliance in the editing. It will take the power of the power of the viewers’ imaginations to fill in the blanks of the film. The film’s black and white photography is a perfect one for its mood and tone.

The characters of the film contribute to the plot development through scene-to-scene margin. Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) steals money to help out her boyfriend Sam Loomis (John Gavin) from her employers. He flees and takes refuge at a rarely hosting motel where we meet owner Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) who lives with his mother. It is through this that we learn of his supposed sexual interest in Marion. There are events of Norman peeping through a hole as she undresses and an anonymous figure stabbing her to death. Sam is contracted by Marion’s sister Lila (Vera Miles) after Marion’s death. It is through their investigation that we meet Arbogast. He is also slashed to death. As the events stream by, we learn of more characters such as Mrs Bate and Norman’s tricks. Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Fred Richmond gets us informed of Norman’s fractured psyche.

The film's actions that entail the killing scenes are chilling and depicted in a detached manner, not very scary, and easy to predict. The film has various chilling and memorable performances. The strident, discordant music by Bernard Herrmann has been used in several other movies to denote the appearance of a “psycho”. As mentioned earlier, the film has brilliance in editing. If we go frame by frame through the film, we will note how much the film has left to the imagination. We can see a knife, blood (chocolate syrup), water, and a naked woman’s body (parts strategically concealed from a camera). We should notice that only a small penetration of the knife into the flesh is shown. The horror of the murder is only hinted at by the on-scene. The movie not surprisingly generated a wave of shower phobia in some people.

The film is based on a novel of the same by Robert Bloch in the year 1959. This novel was inspired by crimes of grave robber Ed Gein and Wisconsin murder. However, in 1998 the film had a remake. Although the scenes and the plot of the novel can be redone, the director should have opted to recapture the uniqueness of the movie. The idea of remaking Psycho is bad. Perhaps the question should be “How can he re-do a sequence that was faultless in its original form?” Although the film had a successful portrayal of the novel, the act of redoing the movie had various criticism that entailed capturing the uniqueness of the movie and the novel. For instance, people doubted Perkins's consideration to take the role of Norman Bate in the novel. The novel’s description of Norman is of a fat, balding, middle-aged voyeur. Perkins became completely unidentified with Norman Bate which altered the trajectory of his career. Read More