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9 ott 2016 · Symbolism can be found in almost every film, but one of the most talked about and studied symbols in cinema has been the appearance of birds in Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 psychological horror Psycho.
- 3 min
The Birds—something ominous is usually about to happen. And it’s no different in Psycho , as Norman and Marion discuss Norman’s taxidermied birds the night he kills her. Norman knows all about stuffing birds, but very little about live birds.
- Introduction
- Synopsis
- Background
- Robert Bloch
- Pre-Production
- Production
- Analysis
- Understanding Hitchcock
- The Secrets of Psycho
- More Secrets…
In many ways, Psycho (1960) is the perfect film school movie. In addition to containing what is perhaps the most studied sequence in all of cinema history, the film is replete with hidden clues, layered meaning, and an elaborately orchestrated structure. Simply put, delving into some of these “Secrets of Psycho” helps illustrate why the study of fi...
Just on the off chance you’ve never seen it, Psychotells the tale of a young woman named Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) who impulsively steals $40,000 from her employer after being given the money to deposit in a bank. She drives overnight and takes a room at a second-rate motel run by a very nice young man named Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins). During ...
Psycho, of course, was directed by the great Alfred Hitchcock. Back in 1959, the auteur was just coming off his greatest commercial hit, North By Northwest. The film had made gobs of money for Paramount Pictures and was praised to the high heavens by film critics and audiences alike. In the process, it solidified Hitchcock’s reputation as one of th...
A month later, they brought him a copy of Psycho, written by Robert Bloch. The novel had received a favorable review in the New York Times and Hitchcock was enthralled by the idea of the main character getting killed off so early in the story. He asked his production company to secure the rights. At the time, Robert Bloch was a struggling writer li...
Hitchcock, however, had his own set of problems with the property. The suits at Paramount had balked at the unusual subject matter. Also, although Hitchcock was contractually obligated to make one more film for the studio, they were looking more for another prestige picture like North By Northwest. Not a twisted tale of murder and madness in a rund...
Psycho only cost $800,000 to make. Even in 1959, this was a small budget for a film. Psycho‘s final cost actually turned out to be $2.8 million. The extra $2 million ended up being Hitchcock’s percentage fee after all the theatrical receipts rolled in. The film only took a little over two months to film. That’s a short span of time for a Hollywood ...
Psychois a film full of “firsts.” The first film to show a toilet (with a close-up of it being flushed to boot). It was the first film to show a major star (Janet Leigh) wearing a brassiere. It was the first film to show two people half-clothed lying on the same bed. Also, it was the first film to have an orchestral score done entirely in strings. ...
To further understand Hitchcock’s perverted sensibilities, also consider the scene where Arbogast is murdered on the stairs. When that sequence was originally shot, the assistant director had closeups of the detective’s hand grasping the rail as he climbed the stairwell. There was also an additional close-up shot of his feet going up the steps. Whe...
Hitchcock was always mentally placing himself in the seat of a theater. One shot in the movie nearly rivals the shower sequence in terms of technical virtuosity. However, the scene is not nearly as famous. This is when Norman goes upstairs to pick up “Mother” and move her down into the fruit cellar. First, watch Norman’s hips as he climbs the stair...
The answer is that Hitchcock had already used up his bag of tricks to hide the fact that Mrs. Bates was already dead. The silhouette in the shower, the shadow at the window, the closeup of her feet when she attacks the detective. He knew that a similar “ruse” would ultimately tip the audience off to the reveal. As a result, Hitchcock devised this e...
At least at one point when they were on the set, both Hunter and Stefano... Scripting Hitchcock explores the collaborative process between Alfred Hitchcock and the screenwriters he hired to write the scripts for three of his greatest films: Psycho, The Birds, and Marnie.
Psycho is a 1960 American horror film produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The screenplay, written by Joseph Stefano, was based on the 1959 novel of the same name by Robert Bloch. The film stars Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, John Gavin, and Martin Balsam.
1 mar 2023 · Separated by just three years — with Psycho ensuring no one will ever feel safe in the shower again beginning in 1960, and The Birds flying into theaters in 1963 — here's how these two classics stack up against each other in other areas.
The Birds, in contrast to Psycho, provides the clearest example of how insufficient communication between Hitchcock and his writer could affect the outcome of a film, especially when the director was not satisfied with the story or characters.
