Psycho (1960) | The Film Index

Film Record

Psycho

Country: United States
Release: 22 JUN 1960
Runtime: 109 min
Original Language: English

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When larcenous real estate clerk Marion Crane goes on the lam with a wad of cash and hopes of starting a new life, she ends up at the notorious Bates Motel, where manager Norman Bates cares for his housebound mother.

Why It's Here

A radical subversion of audience identification and narrative structure. Alfred Hitchcock upends a core expectation of classical Hollywood storytelling by killing off the apparent protagonist near the structural midpoint, then re-centering viewer attention on Norman Bates in a way that can make the audience feel uncomfortably aligned with his attempt to avoid detection.

What to Watch For: Hitchcock’s precise manipulation of point-of-view editing. Notice how, after the murder, the film steers us into Norman’s practical problem-solving, making the audience tense during the car-sinking sequence as the vehicle briefly hesitates before disappearing. In the shower scene, study how the violence is constructed through montage and sound: it is often described as built from 78 camera setups and 52 cuts across approximately 45 seconds¹, creating the impression of graphic brutality without ever showing a knife piercing skin.

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Note on the shot/cut counts: Reported totals for the shower scene vary by source and counting method. The widely circulated “78 setups / 52 cuts” figure is commonly repeated (and popularized by the documentary 78/52), but other counts differ, and even Hitchcock’s own stated numbers have varied across interviews. ↩

Psycho

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Footnotes

Behind The Scenes

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