Norman
Bates is quoted in the film, Psycho
by Alfred Hitchcock, saying “I think I may have one of those faces you can’t
help believing.” This is very
interesting because it is very true. Norman
Bates is not someone that people would normally think was psycho. This statement also seems accurate when
addressing Marion. She does not seem
like a person who would steal $40,000 from her boss’s client on a whim. In Psycho
situations and particularly people are disguised in order to create such an eerie
atmosphere and twisted plot.
This
film is all about disguise. There is a
detective and murders involved, so there is obviously a sense of disguise. However there is also a sense of disguise
that is a little more subtle. Norman
Bates is a well dressed, attractive, young man.
When he first meets Marion, he is very peppy and enthusiastic. There is absolutely no reason to suspect him
of anything strange or out of the ordinary.
He even asks her to dinner at his house, and seems innocent when we hear
a voice that sounds like a mother telling him that she can’t eat with them, and
he then promptly tells Marion he cannot eat with her in the house. We see a “momma’s boy” as innocent, loyal,
and very trustworthy. However in the end
we find out that this seemingly innocent man’s situation with his mother is
actually extremely creepy and psychologically unstable, to say the least. When there is an extreme close-up on Norman
Bates, the camera shows him sweating, stuttering and avoiding eye contact,
which gives the detective further reason to question him, although their meeting
begins with a calm and casual Norman.
At
the beginning of the movie, the audience sees Marion as a woman with a good job,
who is comfortable with her boss and co-worker.
She is dressed nicely and seems to have a routine at work, from which we
can infer that the people that work with her have reason to trust her. However, Marion steals the $40,000 that her
boss trusted her with. Using another
extreme close up view, the camera allows the audience to look straight at Marion
as she is avoiding the police and looking in her rear-view mirror at the town
and life she left behind her. The
audience now sees her as a criminal.
Camera
techniques cause the audience to be unsure of what will happen next in the
scene. The use of backlighting in the
scenes where the murders take place combined with the ominous music, add to the
suspense. The backlighting allows the
audience to be able to focus on the single character without distractions of
many props. For example when Detective
Arbogast is on the stairs trying to find Norman Bates in the house, there is
some backlighting and a severe camera angle from above to make it seem as though
someone is watching him and he is walking into an extremely undesirable
situation, like a trap. The camera is
looking at him and not what’s in front of him, so the audience is unaware of
what he is seeing or what is going to occur.
The
main disguise of this film is Norman Bates’s split personality. The audience does not discover the real truth
until the end when the psychiatrist explains that Norman’s mom murdered Marion,
although it was physically Norman. The
lighting from the house in the window and the voice that sounds like a woman
coming from the house causes everyone to think that Norman’s mom also lives
there. When he carries “his mom” to the
cellar to hide her, the audience thinks that she is alive. However, when Al Chambers says she died a few
years back, the audience is confused.
The
disguise of Norman’s real life is what makes this plot so intriguing. Hitchcock’s use of disguise, causes the
audience to be in suspense and allows the main characters to be misleading in
the initial vibe they give off to others.
Before Norman is discussed, the motif of ordinary people ending up in extraordinary situations is very prominent when discussing Hitchcock films. From "The Man Who Knew Too Much" to "Strangers on a Train", Hitchcock loves to spice ordinary peoples' lives with unexpected action. In this film, an ordinary girl who would seemly spend her days working, steals forty thousand dollars form her boss and runs away only to find herself in the arms of a psychopath. As you stated in the blog, the movie contains all sorts of events and ideas that seemingly normal people find themselves into. It's also a tad interesting that even though Marion stole the money from her workplace and found herself in extraordinary circumstances, she was in the process of putting back the money and writing down the losses in order to pack up and resume her normal life. Shortly before this happens though, we see Norman end this transition by ending Marion's life and keeping her in the unusual circumstances. The characters themselves seemed trapped in their worlds unable to get back to where they once were. For example Norman states that he cannot leave her mother because people say, a mother is a boys best friend. Obviously this lends itself to the Freudian theory that a boy is sexually attracted to his mother but also allows the audience to observe the psychological binding that Norman feels towards his dead mother. In conclusion, the motif of normal people in disguises is heavily used throughout Psycho to provoke thought and sympathy for those characters trying to get back to their normal state.
ReplyDelete~ Group 1
Many of Hitchcock’s movies put major emphasis on characters. In the film Psycho, I agree that the characters are important, in that, the disguise of what they may seem like is not present. What compliments this is the use of music, camera angles, and lighting. The examples given in the blog post show this very well. By doing this, Hitchcock keeps the viewers intrigued at what will happen next and also keeps the viewer uneasy. The uneasy feeling is toward the true intent of each character and what their real intentions may be. Although the disguises of the characters are prevalent in Psycho, there is another motif involving the characters that is even more prevalent and possibly one of the main themes of the film. This element is the identity of the characters. Throughout the film the true identity of the characters is not known right away by the viewer, but develops as the film goes on. By having developing characters, Hitchcock keeps the viewer unsure of what will happen next and by using this theme it also adds to the suspense of the film. One developing character is Marion. At first, it seems as if Marion is just an average person with relationship problems and attends her day-to-day job in a routine sense, but as the film progresses Marion unexpectedly steals the $40,000 that needs to be deposited in the bank. She does this with much caution, but continues to skip town even with the police skeptical of her situation. This convinces the audience that she is sticking with her risky business of theft, never to turn back. After arriving at the hotel and eating with Norman, Marion unexpectedly, to the viewer, starts adding up the losses to the $40,000 and decides to head back to town. This unexpected decision shows how Marion is a developing character as we do not see her true identity until this point and then is killed. Hitchcock’s use of developing characters plays into the major theme of Psycho, the element of suspense.
ReplyDelete- Dan Bowman, Group 2
Disguise does play a significant role in the movie Psycho. Throughout the film, the audience is led to believe that the characters are as they appear. However, the director’s use of a blinding or shielding technique has kept the audience from witnessing their true intentions in the film.
ReplyDeleteAlong with the characters’ appearances that are misleading, Hitchcock also presents an actual barrier in the film which is intended to shield the audience from the truth about each character. In the opening credits, the names are presented using a “blind-in” technique. This slideshow technique is used as a blockade, maybe to create a delusion or mislead the audience of the characters’ true identities.
In the first scene, as we enter into the room where Sam and Marion are staying, the camera takes the viewers through the window. Covering the window are blinds, which are used to protect or conceal the events that are happening in the room. Throughout this scene, the blinds are shown in the background as if to hide the truth from the rest of the world. In hopes to finally expose their love and get married, Sam opens the blinds to declare their freedom from hiding in secrecy.
When Marion first arrives at the Motel, she looks up at the house and sees a dark figure behind the window shade. The window shade creates a barrier which obstructs the audience from discovering who is inside the house. The use of this shade is to help conceal the identity of the person in the window. Throughout the entirety of the film, Hitchcock displays many different ways to obstruct the viewer’s sight in order to disguise the characters.