Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho Patrick Mcgilligan Term Paper

According to Francois Truffaut, "Hitchcock is universally acknowledged to be the world's foremost technician, even his detractors willingly concede him this title," and other critics state, "Hitchcock is one of the greatest inventors of form in the entire cinema," while still others assert that "his films remain central to questions of cinematic practice and critical theory" (Kirshner). Psycho was one Hitchcock's favorite films, because he derived his main satisfaction from the fact that "the film had an effect on audiences" (Kirshner). He once told Truffaut, "I take pride in the fact that Psycho, more than any of my other pictures, is a film that belongs to film-makers, to you and me" (Kirshner). In a good film, every shot counts, and the basic element of a film is not the scene, but the shot, one continuous exposure of film (Kirshner). A typical movie has hundreds of shots, and the shower scene in Psycho, for example, was 45 seconds of film but involved 70 camera set-ups (Kirshner). According to Kirshner, the crucial thing is not the length of the shot, but ensuring that every shot in the film is absolutely necessary. Hitchcock once wrote, "Sequences must never peter out, but must carry the action forwa4rd, much as the car of a ratchet railway is carried forward, cog by cog" (Kirshner). A good film has suspense, not surprise, and Hitchcock avoided the simple mystery films, where the main point of the movie is to find out who the killer is (Kirshner). Hitchcock did not believe that puzzling the audience is the essence of suspense, "Surprises last only a few seconds, but suspense can be sustained indefinitely...The essential fact is, to get real suspense, you must let the audience have information" (Kirshner).According to John Belton, of Rutgers University, Hitchcock has endured as a subject for popular biographies and scholarly monographs because of his status as a cultural icon and because college film course are regularly devoted to his work (Belton).

Peter Conrad's assault on the Hitchcock Industry is essentially an attack on the academicization of film studies, which is certainly a factor that has contributed to the growth of scholarship on Hitchcock (Belton). Ray Durgnat's book, A Long Hard Look at Psycho, also expresses skepticism toward certain forms of contemporary academic criticism, especially psychoanalysis, feminism, and structuralism (Belton). Durgnat's grounds his essay in thematic concerns, particularly, on the optical motifs, such as the eyes, looks, POV shots, and mirrors, that run through the film from the voyeuristic "eye" of the camera during the credits and the opening hotel room sequence to Norman's "stare" at the end of the film, which for Durgnat signifies the operations of the film itself (Belton). He writes the following portrait of Marion, "orbiting" the stolen money on the bed at home: "the scene is a soliloquy without words, it's thought spoken by restless movements, body language and business with objects...It's also a dialog between Marion's silent looks and the blank envelope" (Belton).

Hitchcock Studies will continue to grow, however as Belton notes, "as it grows, we must guard against its potential, unwanted consequences, against the commodification, and fetishization of the object of its study, the film of Alfred Hitchcock" (Belton).

Works Cited

Belton, John. "Can Hitchcock be saved from Hitchcock studies?" Cineaste. September 22, 2003. Retrieved December 17, 2006 from HighBeam Research Library.

Kirshner, Jonathan. "Alfred Hitchcock and the art of research." PS: Political Science & Politics.….....