Analysis of Psycho- Shower scene

In the first still shot from the bathroom scene in the film psycho we see an extreme close up of a shower head, this is shot from the victims point of view and so the camera is placed where the victim is standing in the scene for the shot. This is a motif throughout the scene which shows how enclosed she is in the shower. It also gives the ideas across that in a place where you would normally get clean, she is being murdered, this gives a sense of contrast, and a sense of something unusual. Just being the shots cuts to the shower head we see that the woman is naked which gives a sense of vulnerability, in the sense that there is nothing between her and the knife. This shot uses the rule of thirds to draw attention to the shower head, and is a low angle shot to give the shower head and water a sense of dominance a power in the scene. The shot then moves to show a close up of the victim showering, the golden mean is used in this shot. A sense of mystery and tension is added as the shot pans out to show a figure behind the curtain that we can infer is the killer. This shot is at eye level with the victim which makes us feel as though we are watching this scene unfold as if we were there.

The curtain is then drawn back to reveal a close up shot of the killer holding a knife, with his or her face hidden by the water, at this point the speed of the shots becomes much faster and are cut quickly to and from each other. From the way that knife is shown clearly and the face is not, this is where our attention is drawn too and so we can tell that this will be a prominent object in the scene. From the body language of the killer we can see that something horrible will happen. The shot then pans out and zooms into just the knife held in the killer’s hand, this is a low level shot which makes the knife seem dangerous. At this point the background music begins to play which adds drama and tension, compared to the silence and the sound of the shower that we hear before. This scene then cuts to an extreme close up of the woman screaming; this reaction shot shows the terror of the victim. The shots then show the woman being stabbed and keep cutting to show the roughness of the stabbing, we then see the victim sitting in the bath, this is a bird’s eye/ high angle shot which shows the helplessness of the victim. The shot then cuts again to a high angle close up of the victim’s legs buckling this signifies that she is losing the battle again death. A water motif is used here, and the red of the blood contrasts again the white bathroom.

The shots then cuts to a motion shots showing clouds moving, this symbolises the death and doom of the shot. We then see an extreme close us of the victim’s eye, this shows the moment of death. The shape of the eye also mirrors the shape of the plughole that we see the water and blood draining away into, which symbolises the victim’s life draining away. The blood is a special effect used in this scene.

We then see a close up of the victim’s eye which then spins slowly out to reveal her face, which shows her life finally coming to an end.

During the attack a lot of the shots fade to black and then back to another image which gives a sense of a different section of an event and time passing. This makes it more dramatic and tense as we are not shown the whole attack only sections.