Analysis on Psycho (1960)

George Tomasini's editing turned Alfred Hitchcock's psychological thriller into a masterpiece receiving four Academy award nominations. This movie received abundant fame for the famous shower scene which was only 45 seconds long but included 78 different shots which were all done with extreme precision.

This clip starts off with a medium close up of the women in her robe with the diegetic sound of the paper being flushed down the toilet suggesting that this women is going to take a shower because she removes her robe. Due to certain issues when Psycho was filmed, it was banned to show inappropriate content and therefore, Hitchcock carefully planned his shots avoiding to show anything that would cause trouble and worked around this issue by showing her stomach, hands and face at most times. As the women steps into the shower, the medium close up cuts away to an eyeline match of the shower head as if Hitchcock was showing us the female's perspective. The fact that the first shot was a close up rather than an establishing shot already creates an enigma code for the audience, as we start to question aspects of this sequence without watching any further in regards the narrative and the setting. As we continue to watch on, the audience is rewarded with a variety of angles cutting on action while she is seen showering up until we see the over the shoulder shot. Up until 0.42 seconds, we only saw slow paced cuts which built up the tension and suspense. Thinking about composition, the women was placed in the bottom right corner which already creates an enigma code because the audience start to question what will they see in the rest of the space within that shot. At this point all the audience could here was the diegetic sound of the shower and the water coming down but then the camera starts to zoom in on to the shadow that is present behind the curtain. This is significant because it relates back to the position the audience are in as in some sense they are kept behind the scenes and hidden watching the women because she is unaware that we are watching her. This acts as an enigma code as the audience may question who is the person behind the curtain even though the figure is distinguishable as a female.

This part of the scene can be seen as the climax because the smash cut shows the murderer pull the curtain but also the change in sound is significant too. The sound has a dramatic change from diegetic to non diegetic sound of a thriller/slasher classic track which is quite faced paced and creates tension and emphasises the sound itself because it has become louder too. The use of the low key lighting is significant because it keeps the murderer in the shadows which creates a sense of mystery as the face remains hidden throughout this short sequence. The frightened women turns around to an eyeline match shot of the murderer holding the knife from a low angle view to make the murderer look dominant. From 1.00 minute to 1.25 seconds, the murderer repeatedly attacks the women which is shown through faced pace cuts that keeps the audience intrigued. The faced pace cuts has been edited in a montage style that keeps cutting back and forth from the women and the murderer. This was a smart choice because it avoided showing anything inappropriate but it was still understandable for the audience as to what was going on. The repeated stabbing was mirrored with sound and the fast paced editing. The audience were also given a few birds eye view shots where some were blurred suggesting that there was a lot of action going on and things weren't quite clear. The blurred aspect is an enigma itself because the audience may question what is going and who is this murderer?

Even though Hitchcock wasn't allowed to show the full female body, he made a wise choice of using close ups of some parts on the body for example the stomach, the hand and the face to show the audience where she was being stabbed. By 1.40 seconds the sound was back to the normal diegetic sound of the shower with the slow paced cuts as if Hitchcock just showed us a mini narrative within the film and to show that the climax of the scene has passed. The close up of the hand clearly shows the audience the struggle of the women and how till the very ast second she tried to save herself unfortunately she dies. From 2.10 seconds, the zoomed in shot of the drain dissolves into the extreme close up of her eyes which suggests to the audience that everything she did and her whole life was a waste of time and all her efforts went down the drain because it just resulted in her death. The fact that were was no dialogue is significant because actions and expression conveyed a lot throughout this clip. This scene ends with the close up of the door just like how it started showing a cyclical narrative within this scene.