Essay - Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho Patrick Mcgilligan Writes in His Book, Alfred...

Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho

***** McGilligan writes in his book, Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light, that "Psycho may well be the most overly familiar motion picture ***** *****tory" (McGilligan 578). There are innumerable essays, books, college courses, academic symposia, fan clubs, ***** Web sites devoted to extolling and analyzing this film, yet when Hitchcock first presented it to his agent ***** staff, he descri*****d it as a simple, low-budget American shocker (McGilligan *****).

***** to McGilligan, ***** loved to brag about playing the emotions of audiences as thought they were "notes of a organ," however when he read Psycho he must have recognized his own inner music flowing through him (***** 579). McGilligan *****:

It was The Lodger as the Landlord ***** a motel; it was phantasmagoria with a scary mansion, stairwell, and dark basement; it was a Peeping Tom *****nd a scre*****ming

Jane; ***** was ***** world's worst bathroom nightmare, mingling nudity and blood; it was a plunging knifein the muscled grip of a man dressed, bizarrely, as ***** own mother. It is no exaggeration to say ***** H*****chcock had been waiting for Psycho - working up to it- all h***** life

McGilligan 579).

Psyc*****o, ***** its nudity, violence, transvestism, and bathroom scenes became ***** most direct challenge to Code (McGilligan 580).

***** Cavanagh was replaced by Joseph Ste*****o as screenwriter for Robert Bloch's novel in the summer of 1959, and Hitchcock immediately liked his ideas ***** how to enhance Marion's role and capture the audience, which ***** somewhat a problem since Hitchcock had planned to cast the name on the marquee, ***** Marion dies considerably early on in ***** film (***** 583). Hitchcock always told his writers to write bravely and let ***** be the one ***** worry about the censors, and this proved true with Stefano as well (McGilligan 583). When Stefano described how he wanted Marion to tear up a piece of paper ***** flush it down the toi*****, H*****chcock replied, "I'm going to ***** to fight them on it," because as Stefano recalled, "A *****ilet had never been seen on-screen before, let alone flushing *****" (McGilligan 583). By November the final draft was finished and photography began on ***** 30, 1959. In the end, ***** Production Code voted ***** approval, ***** the Legion of Decency issued a B - "Morally objectionable in part for all," but had stopped short of condemning it (McGilligan 597).

Bernard Herrmann's score, ***** its frenetic*****y paced all-strings orchestration, its "screaming violins," has set the all-time standard in ***** music (***** 597). Film music scholar, Royal S. Brown, notes, the main Psycho theme is "repeated so often and at such musically strong points that it seems to be not only a point of dep*****rture but a point of return as well," and went beyond any previous Hitchcock theme "in its array of jarr*****gly dissonant chords, the bi*****nality of which reflects on the film's ultimate narrative theme" (McGilligan 597). Originally, Hitchcock wanted the shower scene to be silent, ***** after