Psycho

Psycho directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1960 was a surprisingly good movie. I was kind of not looking forward to yet another black and white film because they are so plain, but after watching this movie and doing the scene review today I realized one very important part of black and white film. Making films without color is actually a really good thing because it forces the viewer to pay more attention to the little things like the hints that the director adds into the film and the characters expressions. The colors of movies now a days can really detract from the main theme of the movie which is something I hadn’t noticed before watching so many black and white films, because you aren’t able to see the shadows and lighting as effectively.
This film was actually very surprising for me because I had no idea what the movie was about and I didn’t expect anything that happened to actually happen, which made it more surprising and effective when something actually did happen. One example of this is when the private detective is walking up the stairs of the house to find the mother, I obviously knew something was about to happen due to the change in music and the lead up but the way the scene was framed as if the killer came around the corner and the camera angle was above him gave it a more dramatic effect that actually made me jump. The shower scene on the other hand was not as effective for me, mostly because we were joking around so much about Marion’s expressions that when the mother was shown with the knife it wasn’t so much of a shock.
After doing some of the scene review today I found that I also really enjoy the way they tied in such subtle hints into the dialogue which gave you an idea of what was going to happen if you really paid attention yet if you hadn’t watched the movie previously you would have no idea that such an obvious hint had been made.