Exploring How Alfred Hitchcock Manipulates The Audience In Psycho

does this by using a variety of shocking and unusual details and figurative language throughout

For example, in the scene when the birds begin to attack the gas station in town, Hitchcock focuses greatly on the sound of birds cawing and flapping wings. This technique shows the viewer that the birds are the most important and dominant element of the scene, as well as making the viewer feel like they are partaking in the scene. The loud cries of birds and people make you feel anxious and apprehensive about the result of the scene and how the characters will be after the scene. Additionally, when the birds are about to break into the Brenner’s home through the chimney, the sounds of banging and thudding progressively gets louder. This increases the viewer’s anxiety about what the sounds are, why they are getting louder, and what is going to happen later through the plot. As you can see, Hitchcock’s film adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s “The Birds” better uses and creates suspense by increasing sound to create a feeling of anxiety and apprehension in the

Shocking audiences of the 1960’s, Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’ is one of the most influential films in motion picture history, often being referenced to as the the origin of thriller films. Hitchcock successfully incorporates cinematography, music, and multiple techniques, rendering the perfect amount of tension and suspense right until the climax of the film. Thus, evoking the thrill after which the genre is named.

For example, if a confused or sarcastic voice was used when presenting evidence that Shirley Turner had murdered Andrew Bagby, then no one would believe she was capable of such an act. But by the negative connotations in narrations, viewers are malleable in their perspectives on the argument. By the middle of the film, we are all made to believe that Shirley Turner was the murderer, even with little evidence to go off of.

Hitchcock’s Psycho is a great representative of horror and thriller genres. The director masterfully creates an atmosphere of suspense and creates tension. Hitchcock blends characteristics of a thriller with horror, making the audience terrified. The director creates situations that can happen to anybody of the viewers, and thus, makes such scenes even more scaring and disturbing. For instance, the scene of the murder in a shower impresses the audience to a

     Hitchcock uses misery, tragedy, and death to show the emotions of his characters. At no point is this more obvious than the end of the movie. Hitchcock spends the entire movie building up to this point and in the end he makes it extremely clear how tragedy has changed the relationship of everyone. After the nagging husbands murder of his wife has been confessed you see

Alfred Hitchcock’s film Shadow of a Doubt is a true masterpiece. Hitchcock brings the perfect mix of horror, suspense, and drama to a small American town. One of the scenes that exemplifies his masterful style takes place in a bar between the two main characters, Charlie Newton and her uncle Charlie. Hitchcock was quoted as saying that Shadow of a Doubt, “brought murder and violence back in the home, where it rightly belongs.” This quote, although humorous, reaffirms the main theme of the film: we find evil in the places we least expect it. Through careful analysis of the bar scene, we see how Hitchcock underlies and reinforces this theme through the setting, camera angles,

He does the majority of the work and leaves enough clues for Lila and Sam to continue his job. The early deaths of the 'main characters' shocked the audience enough to leave them mystified and at the edge of their seats for the remainder of the film. Hitchcock had succeeded in creating suspense in his film using a new and different convention that had never been tried before.

One of the most famous horror films not just of the 1960's but of all

This hugely increased the despair and shock, the feeling of loss even when a character is brutally murdered. Straight away Hitchcock begins to build our sympathies for Marion Crane. He uses several cinematic techniques to create a mise-en-scene. Mise-en-scene is everything a viewer can see within a certain frame and consists of many aspects. For instance, Hitchcock uses a high-angle, mid range establishing shot to put Marion in her context, and highlight her vulnerability.

more creative. This is a good point as if you have a film were there

In Rear Window, Hitchcock uses visuals in order to capture the perfect cinematic film and experience. We as the viewers identify with Jeff because much like how he is watching his neighbors, we are also speculating his life as a film. Our hero, L.B. Jeffries or “Jeff”, out of boredom creates an outdoor theater for himself by spying on his the people outside his window. Hitchcock uses “murder-as-entertainment” and the idea of watching a cinematic film as ways to captivate the viewers and make us subconsciously take part in intruding on someone else’s life. Hitchcock then punishes Jeff and the viewers for being “peeping toms” and casting our unwanted voyeurism on other people’s private lives. Through fear and embarrassment, Hitchcock puts our actions into perspective as we become self-conscious of our indecent objectification toward human lives.

Though he is tricked, he believes that due to his vertigo he lets her die which could represent how he was hesitant to commit to her. Moreover, it is Scottie’s fear of heights that makes him lose the women that he loves. Through this theory, along with Freud’s, Hitchcock better shows the fear of commitment in men. This shows a deeper understanding than that of many, during this era as when the movie was filmed (1958) and the nuclear family was evident. Men and women were supposed to be married and not have any feelings for anyone outside their marriage.

Before the Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock made its way into theaters across the world, film was produced in a completely different way. Some of the elements that were in Psycho were things that nobody saw in movies before. According to Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleiberman, when the movie came out, it took place in “an atmosphere of dark and stifling ‘50s conformity” and that the elements of the film “tore through the repressive ‘50s blandness just a potently as Elvis had.” (Hudson). Alfred Hitchcock changed the way that cinema was made by breaking away from the old, “safe” way of creating a movie and decided to throw all of the unwritten rules of film making out the window. The main ways he accomplished this task was by adding graphic violence, sexuality, and different ways to view the film differently than any other movie before its time.

Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in! I moved it slowly --very, very slowly, so that I might not disturb the old man's sleep.” His madness is definitely on a different level than just a psycho. He is insane and loosing it every moment of the story, repeating words and using disturbing metaphors and similes. He compares many things such as referring to the eye of the old man as the “evil eye”, and “eye of a vulture”. Metaphors are used constantly to confuse the readers. “I undid it just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye.”