Alfred Hitchcock Psycho Shower Scene

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For this essay I have chosen to write about the shower scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’. In this essay I will give a brief background of the film and the film score, and then will go on to analyze the shower scene in detail with particular reference to the score and its influences. The film ‘Psycho’ was released in 1960 and was directed and produced by Alfred Hitchcock. The film was a huge success as it was unlike any film that had ever been made before. In the film, Hitchcock pushed the boundaries of film making to a new level. Hitchcock is said to have had a very big ego and had very strong opinions on how he wanted to create his visions for a film. His attention to detail and his obsession with obtaining shots from very specific hard-to-get-to camera angles makes the film a masterpiece, in many peoples opinion. He was, in fact, in his time known by many as the ‘Master of Suspense’…show more content…
Some believe that music represents the sounds of birds screeching. This is interesting because many scholars have studies Hitchcock’s lifelong fascination with birds. He was often photographed with birds, he directed the film ‘Birds’ and also you will find many paintings of in the background of scenes etc. Some scholars have studied where this obsession may have come from and how it influenced Hitchcock’s work. His mother was a cockney and so he was exposed to lots of cockney expressions through her. The term bird is short for jailbird. The phrase originated in the 1500s and was used to refer to being caged. It then developed through time and went on to mean doing time in prison. This is interesting because many of Hitchcock’s films revolve around being trapped in different ways. 3 Bird is also an English expression used to refer to a woman. If this term did influence Hitchcock, it could explain the use of subtly placed paintings of women being abused, and also the idea of Norman ‘preying’ upon women in Psycho.
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