Psycho (1960) Image Analysis

 This scene from Psycho is our first viewing of Norman Bates’ mother. The skewed angle and quick montage editing work together to give the audience a very unnerving feeling, and helps hide the identity of the murderer. The high expressionist angle makes Arbogast seem very weak and defenceless and then the close up to his face helps us as the audience identify with the male hero. When Norman’s mother first slashes at the detective’s face we see some slight body horror and explicit violence, then the camera follows Arbogast as he falls down the stairs with a handheld effect helping us both identify with the victim and get closer to the action.

 

This scene from Psycho (1960) is the first time we actually see Norman Bates as his mother. The low key lighting and the enclosed location both make the image very unsettling to the audience. A man dressed as a woman was also very different to most generic horror films made before Psycho and would definitely drag the audience out of their comfort zone.  The historical context link to Ed Gein, the infamous psycho killer from 3 years before the film was released, is very strong in this still image. Gein was obsessed with his mother also, and dressed in women’s skin. The whole of the film has a heavy contextual link to the Gein murders, as the disturbing event shocked the world having a psycho killer based on Ed Gein would definitely help to make the audience shudder. Psycho was one of the first movies to make horror “realistic,” taking it out of the realm of fantasy monsters like Frankenstein and Dracula.

In this scene from Psycho (1960) Norman is peeping into Marion’s room while she is changing for the shower. This is an example of “male gaze” (as written about by Laura Mulvey in her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”) and shows us how the ideology of sexism to women is expressed in this film. We see the attractive, blonde Marion Crane getting undressed, which is relatively new in films in the 1960’s as the ‘Hays Code’ was just coming to an end. We also have a point of view shot from Norman’s viewpoint, almost as if we are committing voyeurism too, which makes us feel uncomfortable and forced into identifying with a sexist objectification of women. The picture in which Norman’s peephole is hidden behind is that of which 2 monsters are raping a woman, implying the idea of sexual violence.