With reference to Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’ (1960) and at least two other thrillers you have studied, as well as your wider research, discuss the thriller genre and it’s forms and conventions.
Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Psycho’ is one of the most celebrated films ever made. It’s forms and conventions used throughout the film present an insight into a masterfully crafted thriller, using an extraordinary chain of events to depict the protagonist’s change of lifestyle due to course of actions from secondary characters. This is portrayed through the use of suspense, tension, strong narrative and a representation of the central character of whom the audience may empathise.
For instance, the character of Norman Bates is set up initially as a figure in which the audience may have initial suspicions of him as the reprobate of the plot, as he is a queer individual when first encountered, stimulated through the uses of minor details incorporated into his speech and the certain camera angles he is pictured in. An example of this being his unorthodox hobby of taxidermy, depicted in his office when he dines with Marion. The POV camera angle captures his stuffed birds looming above his head, which could symobolise death, whilst at the same time reiterating the fact of his idiosyncratic hobby. This use of camera angle to induce suspicion, or an air of uncertainty is reflected in ‘Taking Lives’. During an intimate scene between the 2 protagonists, a POV shot is shown from the male character, picturing Angelina Jolie in the mid/bottom half of the shot, with pictures of dead victims, brutally murdered, scattered across the ceiling above her bed, looming above her, initiating the thought of an eldritch nature of character. As an intimate scene occurs right underneath these horrifying pictures, it could be deduced that the female character maybe has an eccentric fetish in which she doesn’t know herself, but her study of morbid crimes could suggest this in her temperament.
However, the audience’s suspicions of Norman probably dissipate during the course of Marion’s death. In spite of that, Norman is probably still seen as a sort of enigma character in the plot, especially when the characters of Sam and Marion’s sister are introduced, which lead to the discovery of Norman’s mother (who, in the audience’s mind’ has undoubtedly committed the murder) having been dead for quite a while. This provides the plot with an air of mystery, relating back to Norman, but then again getting discarded due to the deceptive evidence that his mother committed the murder, resulting in a circle of doubt.
Another convention used by Hitchcock is the use of real time within the film. This is when the length of time taken by events on screen corresponds almost exactly to the length of time they would take in real life. For example, the shower scene in which the actual murder occurs goes on for a long period of time in comparison to most other scenes. Here, sound is used to portray suspense and tension, and a shroud of mystery still hangs over what has just happened. This real-life time scaling may be constructed to allow audiences to recover from the shock of killing, as the main star of the film in which most people probably expected her to be the heroine of the film. This undermines the very first twist of the plot when Marion steals the $40,000 dollars. However, this long period of filming is not boring. Hitchcock uses various camera effects to occupy the viewer’s minds whilst the short anticlimax of Norman cleaning up his mother’s mess is occurring.
A notable effect used during this time length is a Graphic match. This is the use of two successive shots joined together so as to create a strong similarity of compositional elements. This is used when the water is swirling down the plughole, which superimposes into Marion’s eye. This swirling motion could represent an air of mystery and the unexpected, as the one person who saw the killer, (the use of the eye coming in to play) was now lying dead in the bathtub.
Again, this scene swings suspicion away from Norman. If the audience suspected too early on that he was the killer, it would spoil some of the ‘finding out’ pleasures of this thriller movie. Todorov mentions this ‘finding out’ pleasure in his generalisation of most films. He suggests the pleasure of solution with the final equilibrium or closure. If the audience knew this early on that Norman was in fact the killer, then Todorov’s equilibrium of state of affairs would not have come into play. This style of forced misconception is partially mirrored in the movie ‘Saw’. The two men who are chained and captured in a bathroom, and after the realisation that they are in a room which is simply screaming death, they both notice a man, (face-down) who is most clearly dead, with a pool of blood next to a horrific wound to the back of his head, which no normal human would have been able to live from. This seemingly harmless character is in fact the protagonist of the film, and actually the man who had put the two prisoners into the bathroom. This uses conventions of a thriller, which plays with the audience’s minds, giving them a glazed approach on ‘what could be’. This innocent aspect to viewing a thriller utilizes the director with a way of surprising the audience and enabling him to throw a twist into the plot, deviating from the status quo mystery/thriller film.
As the course of events continue, the thriller genre is manifested heavily when Marion’s sister is attempting to contact Normans mother in search of her sister. Norman is seen to run into the house, looking for Marion’s sister, seeming understandably angry. Again, the use of sound is present to initiate suspense and tension into the scene. A basement door is seen from the corner of the characters eye, and from a viewer’s perspective, their natural instincts are screaming to not go through the door. But, to add to the suspense and the unknown, the story moves with the character inside the basement. This is a use of non-comedic irony, because we as an audience know from earlier on in the film that Norman moved his Mother into the basement for ‘safe-keeping’.
This scene climaxes until Marion’s sister finds Normans mother, but in the form of a corpse which had obviously been dead a long time. However, the figure of the mother is again seen straight afterwards in an attempt to kill Marion’s sister, throwing a new doubt into the viewers minds as to who exactly is this killer. It seems like she is going to suffer the same fate as her sister, thus wiping all knowledge of the killer from existence. However, the killer is stopped, and is revealed to be Norman, in a severe state of schizophrenia.
This revelation follows Todorov’s idea of the final equilibrium of Norman being incarcerated, bringing into play the massively unexpected, showing a fantastic use of thriller conventions to suspend the audience in a state of un-knowing and disbelief.
