Psycho!

 

“The Shower Scene '' from the film Psycho premiered in 1960 starring Janet Leigh as Marion Crane and Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates. This particular scene is one of the most famous scenes in cinema history.

Filled with jump cuts, this black and white film has the most intense point of view, and pretty bad acting but is curated super artistically. To start, the shot opens up with the toilet flushing and Marion has her back to the door while the camera moves with her to close it. She takes off her robe and walks into the shower as this is the first jump cut. She closes the shower curtain with just her silhouette showing as a foreshadowing for later in the scene. The next shot is a connecting jump cut that starts on one end and ends with her standing up to turn the shower head on. Continuing the rest of the scene is a long montage of different angles with the music intensive for when she gets stabbed.

The rhythmic flow of the video has a light feeling without any suspicion until the musical slowly crescendos. Without seeing the film before, I did not know what to expect, but the jump cuts made it clear that there would be a climax. Coloring would be a telling sign, and it is interesting that because it is black and white that the jump cuts are the signs of what is coming next. This rhythm was telling on how chaotic the stabbing is in the shower.

For my project in the future, I would like to incorporate more jump cuts that connect with the different angles and multiple cameras to get the story moving faster. The most interesting part is looking at the film versus the gore and real murdering and horror that is seen in the movies today. This scene wasn't so much “horror” now, but back then, since this was the first of its kind I am sure it was terrifying to see in theaters. The only thing that could be done differently would be to make it look more real, but overall not much can be changed because this scene was the start of it all.