Sunday, August 31, 2008

Psycho Review

This film really caught me off guard. To be completely honest, I had initially only thought of Hitchcock films as cheesy horror films from my parents’ childhood…something that I really did not want to waste my time on. I had seen pieces of Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) and I had seen Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) in its entirety, but I had always thought of Psycho as the cheesiest Hitchcock horror film. However, after viewing Psycho, my mind has been changed. Hitchcock was able to create dramatic and intense moments that the viewer could relate to. For me personally, the most influential moments in this film were the moments when Marion was going through dialogue and different situations in her head; most of these moments taking place while leaving town. I was able to connect with the character, because had I been leaving town, I would have been going through those same circumstances in my own mind. Rather than creating a new scene that displayed the actual situation going on back at the town while Marion was leaving, the scene was restricted to a shot of Marion’s anxious face and different desperate facial expressions while driving her car. This created a more realistic display of what it might feel like or what one might be thinking if they were leaving town.