For this review, I will have to analyze the style of the filmmaker, Alfred Hitchcock by citing an example from his film, Psycho (1960).

Alfred Hitchcock is a remarkable film maker who has directed a huge number of films that left a mark in film history like Dial M for Murder, North by Northwest and the famous film Psycho. Psycho is the most popular film among his creations, and it is known by the girl who got stabbed in the shower scene. As my research from the internet, Hitchcock is often defined by his subjective camera, he wants the viewers to get into the point of view of the characters, placing their sympathy into the characters. Psycho is the first film he used to experiment with the style he has to develop, and it created a great example for future filmmakers to follow.

Starting with the opening scene where he uses this technique. The shot pan through the city of Pheonix and fade to the window of an apartment, even if there are few edits, but it looks like a continuous shot. It reflects the view of the audience, entering the movie scene, looking for the subject to observe on. There appear to be two characters, and as the scene progresses, the camera starts to focus on Marion, the main character. In the next shot, we see the camera panning from the money to the suitcase, showing that she is choosing between running away or deposit it for her boss, the music does a great job to increase the tension of the situation. When she got to the office, the owner of the money is shown as a show off for his wealth, this makes the audience easier to agree on Marion's criminal act.

The coming scenes are where Marion runs away with the money, and the audience only sympathizes her if they are in her shoes. When she reaches her hotel, another secondary character enters the scene, giving us a sense of the character is another important character in the movie. When Marion is having a conversation with Norman Bates the motel's owner, the scene is longer than usual, giving us time to get used to his role and existence. Their conversation gets more intense as time goes by, and this has made Marion the prey for Norman, even if we don't know what is going to happen. The scene where he peeps on Marion when she is getting ready to bath told us something bad is going to happen.


After Marion got stabbed when she was bathing, the camera shifted from her dead body to the newspaper wrapped money, and to the window when we could see Norman running to the scene. We were tricked into believing that the killer was Norman's mother when he is shocked after seeing her laying down on the ground. At this moment, we sympathize Norman for what is happening and were put into his point of view. Even if he was cleaning the mess we assumed was made by her mother, we do not suspect that Marion was killed by him. After that, Lila and Sam which is Marion's sister and her boyfriend came into the scene, following by the investigator Milton Arbogast, the scene started to change focus on each character.

With Hitchcock's style, we were brought into the villain's perspective of seeing the world, but there are no points to support the main character as the good guy. This also reflects what would happen in real life, anyone could be the villain, there is no pure good. But with Hitchcock's way of directing, each murder is greater than another murder, making it difficult to know who is the good guy, and this brings fear to the audience.