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Essay about Hitchcock's Psycho

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Hitchcock's Psycho Hitchcock had to make Psycho in a time of very strict censorship in the USA. To get the film to the maximum audiences without having to change his ideas he showed in the film, Hitchcock used devious techniques to get past the strict censors. Janet Leigh (the actress playing Marion) said in an interview that she thought the strict censorship rules made Hitchcock a better filmmaker, as he had to be more creative. This is a good point as if you have a film were there is a killer running around killing people with blood and guts everywhere it can get boring after a while since you're seeing the same thing repeatedly. Whereas if you have to be more creative in the way you make a …show more content…

This technique also worked to distract the censors from scenes he wanted to keep but were pushing the edge of the censorship rules. He was also willing to sacrifice some scenes to keep other more important ones. For instance he told the censors he was willing to get rid of the embrace between Marion and Sam in the first scene if he could keep the shower scene. This embrace was unacceptable as one of the censorship rules were "excessive and lustful kissing, lustful embracing, suggestive gestures and postures are unacceptable." In the end Hitchcock got to keep both because on the day of the re-shoot of the first scene when they were going to get rid of the embrace the censors never showed up. Hitchcock also used devious tactics like at one point the censors said the shower scene was unacceptable so he took it back and pretended to edit it. He then resubmitted it and the censors approved of the scene. The censors also allowed the shower scene to pass in the end, as they couldn't decide whether there actually was nudity or not. Nudity would've been unacceptable as one of the censorship rules clearly states, "Explicit nudity is unacceptable." This was another good example of Hitchcock's techniques as he made it seem like you where seeing nudity when you weren't. This scene was very difficult and took 70 cameras and 7 days to film the 45-second scene. He would always keep the

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