Psycho (1960): Alfred Hitchcock

After watching one too many horror films as a young child (I'm looking at you Insidious,) I have avoided frightening movies since.  It's not that I don't find them to be good pieces of film, but rather I find them to be a little too good, especially as a young child whose idea of fact and fiction overlapped.  Good horror films also often stick with me for a while in that I ponder the chilling characters and events that took place in the story, questioning their ability to exist in our own world.

Psycho did just that with its unique pacing, complex characters, and jolting twists.  

The first element of Psycho that really caught my attention was its unusual pacing.  The main character, Marion Crane, dies astonishingly early in the film.  As the narrative had been following Marion's storyline up to this point, the original narration dies in the shower scene with Marion.  This throws in a revolutionary element of surprise, leaving shocked audiences wondering how the film can go on for such a long time without its main character.  In killing off the character the narrative had been following, viewers are left feeling disoriented, suddenly losing the perspective they had been attached to up until this point.

Psycho also did an incredible job building complex and unfamiliar characters, particularly that of Norman Bates.  After stunning audiences with the revelation that the unsuspected Norman Bates is the murderer, viewers get insight into Norman's unusual past behaviors and motives.  We discover that Norman has a separate personality that takes on that of his deceased mother.  This appears to be parallel to an extremely vilified portrayal of what we now term Dissociative Identity Disorder.   For a time where this disorder was not yet identified in the way it is today and where mental illnesses in general were not as researched and spoken about, the film does an extensive job of developing the psych of Norman.  We are able to see why Norman suffers from this disorder and why the alter of his mother presents itself in the way it does.  Such an understanding of a villain was revolutionary for its time.

Overall, Psycho is a thrilling film that kept me interested and on the edge of my seat throughout its entirety.  It was very clearly a groundbreaking work, both within the horror genre and within film as a whole.

Comments

  1. Michael ZhangApril 11, 2021 at 7:26 PM

    It is so great that Psycho has kept you interested in horror films again. I totally agree that Psycho has unusual pacing. My impression when Norman kills Marion was so shocking, which I even thought Marion is faking the death. It's really unusual to see the protagonist dies at an early scene, but it's the fascination that Psycho creates.

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  2. AmyApril 25, 2021 at 7:10 PM

    I agree that its interesting how the film explores mental illness during a period when there wasnt much public discourse about it but still manages to shed light on it. I think the unusual elements of the plot and the pacing can be attributed to its unusual subject matter.

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