Film Critique: (Psycho 1960)


Jennifer Sanchez

Professor Bomboy

Arts and Humanities 101

23 April 2017

Psycho Film Critique

            I have chosen to critique the movie Psycho directed by Alfred Hitchock. This movie was adapted from the novel Psycho by Robert Bloch. I chose to critique the way the camera and the music were portrayed in this film which made it interesting.

            The film Psycho was made to make Roberts Bloch novel come to life and it gave the audience an emotional response to it. If I didn’t mention this movie is also a thriller/suspense film. This film shows the deadly effects of money and victimization of a crime. Hitchcock, lets the audience become an individual character. He lets the audience see the world through a character’s eyes. The plot of the film gives the audience a psychological effect on good and evil and how that exists in everyone. The audience and the characters in the film too exhibit this. The films show a lot of different personalities within the main characters.

            The movie consists of two main characters. These characters are Norman Bates and Marion Crane. There are also a few other characters that play an important role in the film and they are Sam Loomis, Lila Crane, and Milton Arbogast. This film takes place in the 1960’s and the film uses a lot of violin scratching sounds which made the movie scarier. It also uses orchestra, tremolo.

            The music used in this film creates a feeling to audience of suspense and thrill. Hitchcock did this because he knew that music was used to create a mood in the audience and his purpose was to frighten them with the music to what they are watching. Very loud violin screeching sounds are used when the director wants the audience to be alert and to pay close attention to what is about to happen. It also uses tremolo. Tremolo is a wavering effect in a musical tone, typically produced by rapid reiteration of a note, or sometimes by rapid repeated variation in the pitch of a note or by sounding two notes of slightly different pitches to produce prominent overtones. This is used to express an emotion. For example, in the movie when the detective is coming up the stairs and he gets stabbed and falls down the stairs. The music in this scene goes from a very loud violin sounds to tremolo. Throughout the movie, Hitchcock continue to this so the audience can pay close attention. In this film, I also notice the camera angles that Hitchcock uses. For example, in the scene where the detective was entering the main door, Hitchcock raised the camera very high and then violin gets sounds loud too. Also, when Marion got stabbed in the shower, the camera got a close shot of her face and then the camera started to move to the night stand where the money was and the violin music got loud again.

            Hitchcock did a good job in trying to make the audience feel the suspense and the thriller of the film. The way he decided to incorporate the sound of the music with a scene and also the angles of the camera made this movie successful. For example, when the movie began the camera was zooming in closer and closer to the window. This shows how the audience is about to enter this dramatic story. Twelve minutes into the movie, the music starts to have an ominous tone when Marion Bates is about to make a criminal decision with $40,000 that she was supposed to give to her boss and instead she did something that lead her to demise. This a position that anyone could be in and that is what Hitchcock wants the audience to see. He wants to raise the question to the audience of, what would you do in this situation? It shows what people are capable of doing and about good and evil. Right or wrong perspective. The character also did a good job in portraying the theme of this film. Especially. Marion she was the main character in this film and she was the one who showed the audience a lot of the dramatic scenes because she was the one who started this whole story. After watching this film now I see why this film was the start of horror films.

           





 Works Cited

Andrade, Joseph. "Psycho 1960 ( Full Movies )." YouTube. YouTube, 14 Dec. 2016. Web. 23 Apr. 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPxAhv76H9s.

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