The Gods of Filmmaking is not affiliated with any of the celebrities.  If you would like to try to contact them try here

Psycho (1960)

Nominated for the Academy Award for art direction/set decoration, cinematography, director, and supporting actress.

Won the American Film Institute's top one hundred movies of all time: number eighteen.

This is undoubtedly the film that Hitchcock will be most well remembered for.  The story follows a young woman named Marion as she flees to go be with her lover after she has embezzled from her employer. On her way there, she stops and stays the night at the "Bates Motel", a little dive off the side of the highway.

There she meets Norman, a seemingly nice young man with an demanding and obsessive mother. Before turning in for the night, the woman goes in to take a shower and her murder that follows is one of the most famous scenes in all of movie history. The story picks back up as Norman discards of his "mother’s" victim and tries to cover up the crime from those who come to investigate it.

This film has been torn apart and analyzed so many times that it’s difficult to choose what angle to focus on in a short synopsis. But what we think is most effectively done in this classic is putting the audience in the mind of a psychopath.  Marion is without question the lead character in the first half of the movie. When she is murdered half way through the film, it leaves the audience searching for someone to identify with.

The person that Hitchcock offers is Norman Bates.

This change of lead characters is very disorienting and leaves you on edge for the rest of the movie as you try to relate to Norman. It’s absolutely brilliant, expert story telling and filmmaking.  Also, Hitchcock has sort of made a trademark in his career of filming scenes in the bathroom; a place where things happen that most Americans are embarrassed of and uncomfortable talking about. Not only is Marion killed in the bathroom, but this film contains a scene where she flushes a toilet.

It may sound like nothing now, but it was completely unheard of in 1960. Hitchcock’s brilliance was always enhanced by his desire and ability to push the envelope.

(Directed by Alfred Hitchcock)

Links:

Famous Why