Psycho

      Hitchcock's ambition for his movies, is to tell a great story. His intelligence in all aspects of filming and directing gave the novel Psycho the adaptations it needed to be accurately translated into a movie. The themes and small elements presented in the novel for its story-telling in between the lines is evident in the film, through its use of color (or lack thereof), setting and props, and angles, along with his inspiration drawn from outside sources. 

 

      The opening scene which pans in from the cityscape, through a hotel window and into the bedroom where Mary and Sam are dressing, presumably having just had sexual intercourse. This sets the stage for the themes to come in the film: the concept of vouyerism, where we see through the closed window into someone's private life, and the sexual of the acts having just taken place in the room we are shown. Later, when Norman is peeping through into the next room's bathroom, he moves aside a framed painting of The Rape of Lucretia, an explicitly sexual painting. The concept of non-consent from the painting is mirrored with Mary's ignorance of Norman's ogling. 

​

      Hitchcock's choice to use black and white, while he had been filming color films for years already is used to portray the specific mood the plot, made with changes in lighting, shadows and contrast, and composition. The audience's reaction to a black and white movie in an age where color has become the normal and the interesting, is most likely one of boredom. How can a movie that reverts back to something inferior be anything interesting? This illicited reaction is precisely what Hitchcock tries to convey. Black and white film has gone under the radar, just as Norman Bates has in his town. His hotel is nondescript, his life is nondescript, just as the color of the film. 

​

      The setting and props of the film also relate back to this nondescript quality. The lack of interesting objects in the hotels and other places convey this boringness. The quality of boredom is the lack of meaning. The lack of meaning in a boring work world, where the office displays a framed painting of the desert, and hotels are described as "cheap". The regular work world is bleak and unforgiving. Mary is trapped in this boring real world, from her past struggles and her present work place, so she takes what is possibly her only opportunity to escape by taking the money. However, in her attempt to leave town, she is shown driving in her car and stopping at a crosswalk. There, her boss crosses right in front of her and recognizes her. Here, in this angle we get the sense of being caught in a crime, and Mary is seen as a criminal of the boring world, apprehended by a representative of this world, her boss. 

 

      A painting of Edward Hopper's known as House by the Railroad has been credited as Hitchcock's inspiration for the Bate's house. The themes of this painting are shown through an awkward, self-conscious house which makes up the entirety of the painting, besides the railroad tracks going across the front of the house. This house has been left behind by industrial progress, just as the Bate's motel has been left behind in the building of the new state highway. The awkward composition of the house is evident in Norman's psychological state, one of inadequacy for the outside world. Other works of his seem to have inspired other shots in the film, usually to portray the themes of isolation, self-consciousness or vouyerism. 

​