Psycho

The film Psycho is a psychological horror thriller from the 1960's directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The main character is a woman named Marion Crane played by Janet Leigh. Films main plot revolves around Marion stealing $40,000 from the place she works at so that she could then afford to pay for a wedding she planned with her boyfriend. Marion was told to deposit the money into the bank by her boss but she decided to run away with the money. She ends up at the "Bates Motel". The place where the famous "Shower Scene" takes place and Marion is murdered.

Psycho is seen as Hitchcock's best work. This is due to the fact that he used a variety of different camera tricks to make the stabbing look more realistic and unsettling to the audience. He challenged the use of "black and white" (bad vs good) binary opposites by presenting the audience with the character of Norman Bates played by Anthony Perkins. Norman is a character clouded by mystery, on one hand he seems like he is a positive character since the beginning when he helped Marion by letting her stay at his motel and tried his best to be friendly and engage in a conversation with her. However, there is also something about the way he acts that makes the audience feel uneasy and alert despite how nice he seems. Towards the end we discover that he has a split personality and due to the events that occur he becomes permanently trapped in the persona of his mother. We find out that he has killed his mother and her lover ten years prior, which affected his mental state.

As I mentioned at the beginning, the shower scene is the most popular scene out of the movie and possibly one of the most iconic in history of film. It was considered gruesome and violent by the production company and originally they were unsure if they wanted to take on the film. However after some alterations and negotiation between Hitchcock and the production company, they agreed to use it in the final version of the movie. The sound effects and the sharp music also contributed to the popularity of this scene and that soundtrack has been used in many other films after that.