The Camera as the Spectator’s ‘Psychological Guide’ in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960)
Whether people found themselves looking up after The Birds (1963), watching their neighbors after Rear Window (1954), or fearing showers after Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock’s movies have long demonstrated a profound ability to affect a viewer’s emotions and thoughts even decades after they were produced. This is due in part to the success of ‘Hitchcockian’ suspense, known to hold viewers “on the edge of their seats”. What is exposed and what is concealed are all ingredients for Hitchcock’s recipe for audience manipulation, earning him the title of “Master of Suspense’. This can be traced back through his body of work. His initial experimentation with non-verbal tension was a key feature of his silent films which he sustained alongside cinema’s evolution into the ‘talkie’. In fact, it appears that Hitchcock’s mastery of established techniques, such as a point of view shot (POV), close ups and camera angles, is the framework of his signature twist on suspense, playing off of ideas articulated by key film theorists such as Balázs, Epstein and analyzed by Wood. Yet, this begs the question: to what effect in regards to spectatorship? This thesis reveals how, by using the camera in a ‘psychological-guided’ manner, Hitchcock creates an immersive viewer experience, simultaneously evoking spectator identification and complicity through the art of suspense. This will be explored using examples from Psycho, featuring styles of contrasting and symbolic montage, camera angles and POV shots, in order to come to a greater understanding of the thesis but also how the argument relates more broadly to Hitchcock’s body of work and highlights his signature features as an auteur.
Upon arriving to the Bates Motel, Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) accepts a seemingly innocent invitation to dinner in the parlor with Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins). With what starts out as a routine chat, the topic of Norman’s mother spurs a shift in mood and atmosphere, evoking signs of distress in Norman and a reciprocal air of unease in Marion, who becomes the subject of his ‘interrogation’. The conversation is constructed through alternating POV shots and various camera techniques that reveal Norman’s growing unstable nature, not only to Marion but the spectator. However, Hitchcock’s use of the camera functions beyond a plot device. This scene is the first major scene our protagonist, Marion, has shared with another secondary character. This opens spectator alignment with the psychologically disturbed Norman, which ultimately becomes too close for comfort.
This spectator alignment can be first examined through the effects of the editing process that constructs the scene. The two initial POV shots establish Norman as the timid and more threaten character; he is hunched inwards, fidgeting with his hands and sitting on a small chair pushed up into a corner of the parlor. This is in comparison to Marion who occupies the sofa and holds her head up to the light. As explored by Robin Wood, the spectator has a tendency to identify with the “threatened or victimized” character, which Hitchcock described to be the viewer’s “natural” reaction1. This supports the idea that the spectator’s initial sympathies lie with Norman, inducing pity. However, as Norman’s abnormal tendencies begin to leak, Marion becomes increasing identified as the threaten character. This leaves the viewer partially trapped in Norman’s subjectivity, still exposed to his alignment due to his initial characterization which results in tension through the spectator’s conflict of sympathy.
Yet more strikingly, this conflicting spectator alignment is created through contrasting montage. During the majority of the POV shots it seems that the spectator occupies a middle ground between Norman and Marion, almost as if they were sitting on a third seat in the parlor. On the topic of private islands, Norman leans into the frame, taking a dominant role in the relationship and imposing himself upon not only Marion, but the spectator. However, this relationship continues to fluctuate throughout the scene as Hitchcock transitions from a medium shot to a medium close up of Marion – reassessing her initial position in the scene. Yet, this relationship shifts again as Norman coils back into his chair upon the topic of his mother, only to later reinstate his threatening nature as Hitchcock employs the first close up of the scene. Additionally, Norman is shot at a low angle, physically positioning him above the viewer. This sequence of various POV shots traps the spectator in a ‘push-pull’ effect, feeling the brunt of the tension generated in the conversation. Furthermore, the ‘pushing’ aspect, figuratively pushes the viewer into alignment with the other character’s subjectivity. As dominance, enforced by the push-pull effect, is being continuously transferred between Marion and Norman, the spectator’s alignment is constantly being reassigned. Hitchcock is therefore preventing the viewer from finding comfort and trapping them in a state of continuous suspense between the two characters.
As touched upon earlier, Hitchcock’s use of the close up in the parlor scene helps alter the spectator’s alignment. Beyond generating a menacing ‘push’, the use of a close up intensifies the viewer’s ability to identify with the character. As explored by Béla Balázs, the facial close up has an enhanced ability to provoke “identification”, allowing the spectator to distinguish more detailed “microphysiognomy”. This is due to the ‘closing’ of the space between the camera’s eye and the character’s eye, reducing room for error and increased perception of “the multiplicity of the human soul”. Norman, who is the subject of the scene’s most intense close up on the subject of madness and his mother, has his true nature exposed through his individual twitches and smirks brought to the viewer’s attention through the shot. According to Balázs, this opens a “mute dialogue” between the spectator and the character, and in Norman’s case, reinforces the spectator’s conflictual alignment with his exposed psychopathic nature2.
As made evident in the parlor scene, Hitchcock’s manipulation of the camera results in his ability to make films that are intensely psychologically revealing. His use of camera angles and POV shots creates an inimitable voyeuristic experience for the spectator, setting him apart in regards to auteur theory. However, what makes Hitchcock so original in comparison to other contemporaries, also makes his own body of work surprising conventional. In line with auteurism, Hitchcock’s consistency strengthened his personal style. In another story of ‘the guilty women’, Vertigo (1958), the conversation after Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart) rescues Madeline Elster (Kim Novak) in his apartment reflect multiple similitudes with the parlor scene. Like Marion and Norman, the two characters don’t share the same shot and Hitchcock’s use of extreme camera angles and POV shots reiterates a developing hierarchical relationship between a man and a woman, once again shifting the spectator’s alignment within the conversation.
However, Hitchcock’s auteurism develops an immersive viewer experience beyond a trap of subjectivity. After Marion decides to return the money, she takes a shower, appearing to symbolically cleanse herself of her guilt; she smiles, tilts her head back and scrubs her body with her hands. The shower scene is initially shot as if the spectator were looking into the shower from the outside while additionally establishing Marion’s subjectivity with a POV shot directed into the shower head. This demarks the scene as a private moment shared by Marion and the viewer.
Jean Epstein, an early 20th century film theorist, describes the viewer as a victim of their own “egocentric prejudice according to which [the viewer] cannot understand thoughts other than consciously”3. This explains as to why, when the position of the camera switches and the viewer now ‘looks’ out of the shower, they can identify a shared, intimate space between them and Marion. Hitchcock is essentially trapping the spectator in the shower through this point of view. It is from this perspective that the spectator is the first to see what Marion does not: the door opening from behind the curtain. The camera begins a motion in a forward direction towards the door, essentially pushing Marion out of the frame and psychologically guiding the spectator towards the curtain. This leaves the viewer ‘alone’ in the shower and the sole victim of the imminent invasion.
Yet while the viewer is ‘under attack’, they are also simultaneously mimicking and mirroring the movement of the murderer, meeting them at the threshold of the shower – the curtain – and the threshold of the viewing experience – the screen. This establishes an ambiguous style of double identification as the spectator concurrently becomes Marion, the victim in the shower, and the attacker, the moving figure behind the screen. Furthermore, the push of the camera emphasizes the conflicting spectator perspective as Hitchcock positions the viewer in the middle of the attack. This not only threatens the viewer but partially charges them with culpability and complicity in the act that is about to occur.
Extending Epstein’s theory, the POV shot hence becomes a violation of privacy as film continuously declares a point of view in every shot, subconsciously demanding the spectator to readjust their psychological alignment. Hitchcock uses this effect as a tool of manipulation and is a key reason for why the POV shot is such a crucial construction of Hitchcockian cinema. For example, as the attacker tears back the curtain and raises the knife, the viewer is then subjected to an excruciating long 3-second shot of Marion’s terrified face. This POV shot generates immediate strain as when under attack it is a natural reaction to look at the threat, not at the victim. Yet, Hitchcock prevents the spectator from doing so, thrusting the viewer’s perspective into that of the attacker and ripping them away from Marion who instinctively looks up at the threat, unlike the camera. Sharing this point of view between the spectator and the murder at the start of the attack enforces the viewer’s complicity in Marion’s stabbing throughout the scene.
Hitchcock’s use of convicting POV shots is further emphasized by his use of montage. During the attack that lasts 23 seconds, there are over 35 cuts with each shot lasting on average 0.7 seconds. This is a dramatic increase from the more casual and comfortable shot lengths used prior to the attack. With the rise of musical tension, this use of montage punctuates the scenes as such that the spectators heart rate jumps. This parallels the viewer’s sensation with that of the murder and the physical excursion of stabbing, but additionally that of Marion’s terrified reaction. Moreover, the rapid cuts alternate viewpoint, creating a visual counterpoint and trapping the viewer in the middle ground between the victim and the attacker. Therefore, Hitchcock has not only used montage as a mean to impose a physical sensation upon the spectator, but psychologically guiding their position within the shot, accusing the viewer’s subjectivity of being undeniably complicit in the murder of Marion Crane.
Hitchcock’s methods of spectator complicity in this iconic shower scene exemplify his style of suspense and take on the modern horror. As seen in a number of his works such as the concert scene in The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) or the crows in the playground scene in The Birds, Hitchcock had mastered the art of suspense over ‘shock’. By giving the audience information before hand, the viewer is ‘in’ on the secret and yearns to warn the characters on screen. In Psycho, the viewer is the first to see the attacker come into the bathroom. Therefore, Hitchcock amplifies the tension felt by the spectator as they are left powerless, failing to warn Marion of the intruder and as a result, complicit in her death.
To conclude, Hitchcock’s use of his signature twist on standard camera techniques results in a psychologically impactful representation of Psycho. By modifying camera angles, POV shots and the rhythm experienced as a result of montage, the camera becomes a guide for the spectator’s alignment with a character’s subjectivity. Furthermore, the ability to influence the viewer’s perceived identification and positioning in the shot additionally allows for Hitchcock to manipulate their own sense of involvement and hence complicity in the action. These effects are respectively key elements of Hitchcockian cinema. As made evident in the two scenes discussed in Psycho, Hitchcock’s camera purposely succeeds in keeping the viewer suspended between conflicting points of view by constantly shifting from one line of subjectivity to another, never allowing the viewer to ‘settle in their seat’. This particular use of film specificity has allowed him to construct and develop a set of techniques over the decades and throughout his body of work. In turn, Hitchcock gave the viewer a collection of films that generate an inimitable immersive viewer experience, rending him as much an auteur, as the ‘Master of Suspense’.