![]() ![]() The officer stares at Marion, his face showing no emotion. By this point, we are so aligned with Marion’s perspective that we feel the same apprehension that she feels during the interrogation. When Marion is awoken by a police officer the following day, Hitchcock films the officer looking directly into the camera as he questions Marion. Hermann’s score, and Marion’s guilt-laden tension, finally subside when Marion pulls off the road and falls asleep. We are made to hear what Marion hears, see what she sees, and feel what she feels. Hitchcock then employs Bernard Hermann’s jarring score as a means to communicate the tension that Marion feels as she drives further away from the scene of her crime. When Marion spots, and is spotted by, her boss while waiting at a traffic light, we are so entrenched with her subjectivity that we feel the same shock, panic, and anxiety that she feels. She squirms in her seat and bites her finger out of nervousness even as she imagines Sam’s surprise and joy in response to her unannounced arrival. Hitchcock furthers this transformation by adding dialog to the scene that represent the thoughts running through Marion’s head. Hitchcock’s camera cuts back and forth between shots of Marion driving and her point-of-view through the car’s windshield, creating a diegesis that is formed by Marion’s senses. She pauses briefly on a photograph of her parents hanging on the wall then sits, giving her crime one last thought before finally committing to it.Īs Marion drives out of Phoenix, the film’s diegetic mode makes a dramatic shift from the objective to the subjective. Marion nervously packs then looks around the room. The rest of Marion’s new outfit is just as bland, helping to further cloak the sexuality that had been so readily on display. Refusing to be defined by her sexuality, Marion conceals her body in a gray blouse that buttons up to a tight-fitting collar that eliminates her neckline. ![]() But then a remarkable thing happens: Marion takes over the narrative and changes the way we see the film, beginning with the way we look at her. In just over ten minutes, Marion has appeared half-naked twice and been associated with a phallic symbol once. The camera then pans over to a suitcase filled with Marion’s clothing, revealing Marion’s intention: she’s stealing the money as a means to solve the problems that threaten her relationship with Sam. The camera tilts down from the half-dressed Marion to an envelope of money-Tom’s $40,000-lying on Marion’s bed. The film cuts to Marion at home, objectified for the audience once again when she is seen half-naked while changing her clothes. Tom’s inappropriate advances-and downright sleazy demeanor-only further establish our identification with Marion. Marion may be having sex out of wedlock, but she’s no tramp. He flirts with her, and then waves $40,000 cash in her face in what amounts to the film’s funniest phallic symbol. 1 Any remaining apprehensions about Marion’s morality are quickly washed away in the next scene when Tom Cassidy, a rich Texan and client of the firm where she works, attempts to buy his way into her bed. These melodramatic exchanges allow the audience to disregard any issues of morality and instead come to identify with the floundering couple’s suffering. Marion desires a "respectable" relationship, and her lover, Sam, is paying down his father’s debts and alimony to his ex-wife he can’t afford to provide for Marion if she were to leave her job to be with him. This titillating view of a secret affair quickly turns to melodrama: the couple can’t be together because they live in different cities they must steal away work hours to be with each other. What would seem to be a romantic dalliance is revealed to be a workday interruption. Marion Crane is introduced as a semi-naked body laying on a bed, a delectable object for the camera’s eye. The camera drifts inside, an explicit act of voyeurism that exposes what would otherwise be a private moment: two lovers discuss the lunchtime affair they have been conducting during the free hours of the workday. The shots cut progressively closer until the camera finally settles on one specific building, then one specific window. Psycho opens with a series of pans that overlook the city of Phoenix, Arizona.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |