Term Paper on "Hindering) the Audience: Hitchcock's Usage"

Term Paper 8 pages (2175 words) Sources: 8

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Thus, at no moment does the audience ever "see" violence (a knife piercing human flesh, for instance) or, for that matter, those parts of the human anatomy which when exposed amount to "nudity" (in the eyes of the censors). Hitchcock's fragmenting of the scene is both artistic (in the sense that it conveys to the subconscious the shattering of one reality and the implementing of another) and practical: the censors simply would not permit such graphic violence/nudity -- therefore, it had to be implied (Truffaut 19; Durgnat 134-5; Rebello 58; Spoto 239).

The nature of the "game-changing" scene is indicated, however, from the beginning of the sequence, when the camera focuses on the toilet flushing. A toilet had never been flushed on a Hollywood screen before, and Rebello quotes Psycho screenwriter Stefano as saying, "This is where you're going to begin to know what the human race is all about. We're going to start by showing you the toilet and it's only going to get worse" (Rebello 47). The image of the toilet in the shower scene montage is deliberately placed to provide a realistic sense to the scene. This emphasis on realism is now whole-heartedly embraced as Hitchcock resumes a documentary style filmmaking in the scene that follows the murder: Norman returns to the room, finds the corpse, gasps -- and the audience (itself still gasping) watches the odd and off-kilter but seemingly affable Norman Bates proceed to an orderly cleansing of the room. The drain expels the dirt and grime washed away by water. The hotel caretaker expels the dirt and grime of the hotel room -- as though disposing of bodies were all in a day's work for Norman. Obviously, he takes murder matter-of-factly -- and this is Hitchcock's point as he essentially sets the camera down and obliges the audience to see psychopathy in action. Playing games is nice and fun -- but this is not North by Northwest. The rug has been pulled out from under the feet of the viewers in the theater; the bottom has given way -- and what is behind the false-bottom is an impenetrable mystery, which Hitchcock will now exploit for the remainder of the film, for both his own delight and those in the audience who have caught on to the real plot of the story (Gottlieb xxii).

In conclusion, one may speculate on why Hitchcock would be so fascinated with the potential of misdirection and the possibility of using montage to realize that potential. The answer may lie in his desire to "play games" with the audience, as Berne suggests all adults do in some psychological way or another (Berne 122). In Psycho Hitchcock does indeed trick the audience into believing it "knows" what the film is about by playing up the "romantic" struggles aspect of the first portion of the film; awakening a sexual/psychological tension with the early montages; and giving viewers a familiar woman-on-the-run narrative (Durgnat 88). However, through it all, Hitchcock drops subtle hints and suggestions which indicate the true bent of the film. He is, after all, only "playing." By revealing the false-bottom and employing the disorienting shower scene montage, Hitchcock pulls the rug out from under the viewer, exposing the actual subject -- psychopathy (as the title, of course, blatantly suggests) -- but delivering a grand "slice of cake," as he himself stated he desired to do (Truffaut 103).

Works Cited

Berne, Eric. Games People Play: The Basic Handbook of Transactional Analysis. NY:

Grove Press, 1964.

Durgnat, Raymond. A Long Hard Look at Psycho, 2nd Ed. UK: Palgrave

Macmillan, 2010. Print.

Eisenstein, Sergei. Film Form: Essays in Film Theory. NY: Harcourt, 1949. Print.

Gottlieb, Sidney (ed). Hitchcock on Hitchcock: Selected Writings and Interviews.

Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

"Hitchcock Explains the Kuleshove Effect." Youtube. 23 Apr 2013. Web.

Kapsis, Robert. Hitchcock: The Making of a Reputation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.

Rebello, Stephen. Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho. NY: Dembner… READ MORE

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