Mise en scene

In the suspense film, “Psycho” directed by Alfred Hitchcock presents the character named Marion Crane. She is a young woman who has steal 40,000 dollars from her employer’s client. Now she is on her way to California to meet her boyfriend but the stormy rain forces her to spend the night in a motel. In the motel room she has guiltiness of her actions and decides to return the money. In the shower scene, we can see many elements of Mise en scene to help us understand the inner thoughts of the character. The scene begins with Marion going to take a shower, allowing the audience become part of her life, to be more intimate with the character. Right away we can see foreshadowing, starting with Marion flushing the toilet; it can represent how a life is draining away. The film was made in black and white; the shower scene was well lighted, giving us a sense of a warm and what an everyday shower looks like. Also, the walls and the tiles are white. Marion enters into the shower then, she opens the water without even feeling, if the water is good or not; giving us a heads up that something unpredictable was about to happen. The camera’s point of view is directed towards the showerhead making the water seem violent and consuming. Marion closes the curtain of the shower leaving her in a small space, the lines of the tiles and the curtain brings a sense of how trap she is, exemplifying the bars of a prison. All of the sudden we can see a shadow approaching her, the closer it gets to her the bigger it gets. The lights are everywhere but not in the intruder that attacks her with a knife which makes us hard to identify the aggressor. As soon as the killer opens the curtain the suspense and frightening music is played to terrify the audience.