Noir In Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho

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In Psycho, Hitchcock uses the conventional noir characters in the film, although Hitchcock begins to challenge the conventions of the stereotypical characters of noir by telling the story of psycho. In the first half of the film, Norman Bates was displayed as the typical ‘wrong place, wrong time’ motel owner who was seen as very vulnerable and isolated with only him and his ‘mother’ at the motel until Marion turns up. In the second half of the film, Hitchcock challenges the stereotype of Norman’s character as we learn that he has got a multiple personality disorder and is revealed to be a serial killer. Norman gives his ‘mother’ half of his mind, speaking for her, acting as her and even wearing her clothes and a wig This was not stereotypical of the conventions of noir and shocked many audience members as psycho was one of the first films to reveal a character with…show more content…
The shower sequence in the film created one of the first slasher film genre which Hitchcock used to challenge the femme fatale as Marion was killed within the first 40 minutes of the film. This was very unusual for film noir as the femme fatale wasn't killed until the height of her sexual manipulation. Milton Arbogast is presented as the stereotypical morally questionable private detective who takes on what seems to be a simple case of Marion stealing the $40,000 from her employer and tries to track her down. Hitchcock again challenges the conventions of noir for Arbogast as when he goes to search for Norman’s ‘mother’ , Arbogast is killed as he's met by his mother at the top of the stairs.This challenges convention as Arbogast is unusually killed early in the film like most of the key characters in the film such as
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