Suspense And Fear In Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho

Alfred Hitchcock is a master of suspense. Suspense and fear is shown throughout his films, especially in Psycho. In Hitchcock's suspense interview, he relays that suspense is not what creates fear. Suspense gives us the whole picture of what’s going to happen in a scene, which gives the audience anticipation and anxiety. Through the death scene of Marion, the audience will see how psychological components create suspense and fear through the non-diegetic sounds, shadow lighting, and back-and-forth camera movement.
Non-diegetic is known to further the plot by the narrator. In the case of the shower scene, we get introduced to Marion counting the money she stole. The music in the background is high-pitched and eerie. Although nothing has happened the audience gets a pit in their stomach. It leaves the audience with the question, “what’s about to happen?” This is exactly what the music is supposed to do. It makes the audience overthink and creates suspense and fear. Now moving along to Marion in the shower, all the

In this whole scene, the lighting is quite bright. This is to mislead the audience. In the actual shower scene, however, when the door opens, all the audience sees is a dark figure slowly walking toward the camera. It’s a shadowy figure surrounded by light. This portrays the true darkness of this unknown killer. Finally, as the unknown killer opens the shower curtain, all one can see is the outline of a woman’s body. In the prior 30 minutes to this scene, however, the audience is only introduced to one woman, Marion. So who could this person be? Once again this creates more unknowingness and more suspense as to who the killer is. The scene eventually ends with Marion’s dark hand dragging along the damp wall, the camera moving towards the black drain, and the dark stare of Marion’s blank eyes. This puts fear in the audience's mind. Complete