Film Opening 4: Psycho

WHAT I ENDED UP APPLYING

• We also zoom into my protagonist's room in my film opening, I had that in mind along with films such as Wild Child and Pretty In Pink when doing that

POSSIBLE POINTS OF INFLUENCE

• The cross-fading is a good creative use of editing
• A standalone title sequence is too long for the limited length of my coursework
• The hand of fate approach

Psycho

   Alfred Hitchcock (1960)

BBFC 15 (originally X),  MPAA R (originally M)

Running time of the opening sequence: 

6:22 mins 

Lead actors: Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, 

                           John  Gavin, Janet Leigh

Genre: Psychological thriller 

              (subgenre of horror)

Budget: $807k

UK/US/World Box Office: not available, $32m, $50m.

  
Production company:  Shamley Productions
Theatrical distributors: Paramount

LINKS: IMDB; RottenTomatoes; BoxOfficeMojo; 

                The-Numbers; Wiki

SOME REVIEWS (more here)

"More miserable than the most miserable peep show I have ever seen." – Jympson Harmon, Evening Standard (London), 1960
"Psycho is sicko." –- Picturegoer (UK), 1960
"Producer-director Hitchcock is up to his clavicle in whimsicality and apparently had the time of his life in putting together Psycho. He's gotten in gore, in the form of a couple of graphically-depicted knife murders, a story that's far out in Freudian motivations, and now and then injects little amusing plot items that suggest the whole thing is not to be taken seriously. ... Perkins gives a remarkably effective in-a-dream kind of performance as the possessed young man." – - Variety, 1960
"That's the way it is with Mr. Hitchcock's picture-slow buildups to sudden shocks that are old-fashioned melodramatics, however effective and sure, until a couple of people have been gruesomely punctured and the mystery of the haunted house has been revealed. Then it may be a matter of question whether Mr. Hitchcock's points of psychology, the sort highly favored by Krafft-Ebing, are as reliable as his melodramatic stunts. Frankly, we feel his explanations are a bit of leg-pulling by a man who has been known to resort to such tactics in his former films." – - Bosley Crowther, New York Times, June 17, 1960
"[Hitchcock] has very shrewdly interwoven crime, sex and suspense, blended the real and the unreal in fascinating proportions and punctuated his film with several quick, grisly and unnerving surprises." – - Paine Knickerbocker, San Francisco Chronicle, August 11, 1960
"Psycho continues to work as a frightening, insinuating thriller. That's largely because of Hitchcock's artistry in two areas that are not as obvious: The setup of the Marion Crane story, and the relationship between Marion and Norman. Both of these elements work because Hitchcock devotes his full attention and skill to treating them as if they will be developed for the entire picture." – - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times, December 6, 1998
"This film is really a meditation on the tyranny of past over present. It's an indictment of the viewer's capacity for voyeurism and his own potential for depravity. It's also a statement on the American dream turned nightmare, and there's a running concern for the truth that physical vision is always only partial and that our perceptions tend to play us false.... Psycho is also...a ruthless exposition of American Puritanism and exaggerated Mom-ism. ... In method and content, in the sheer economy of its style and its brave, uncompromising moralism, it's one of the great works of modern American art." -– Donald Spoto, The Art of Alfred Hitchcock (Anchor, 1991)

TRAILER 

You can find a low-quality upload of the full film here and the the film divided into parts here. (below is the first part)

IDENTS:

One ident, the Paramount ident, lasting five seconds after a black fade-in, and the fades out. 

.

TITLES:

We have a stand-alone sequence before the live action starts, just like I observed in This Is England. There is a soundtrack accompanying the whole sequence, however unlike other films incidental music is used, signifying the horror, threat and mystery with high-strung music.

ESTABLISHING SHOT

We fade in to multiple landscape extreme long shots of the city, and then zoom into the main characters.

NARRATIVE, GENRE, EXPOSITION

We expect these two to be central throughout the whole narrative, and the female character is anchored as the more important one by the fact that we are following her.

REPRESENTATION:

The blonde female conforming to beauty standards, however doesn't have long hair.

This beauty standard still seen today in the media, like for example in the TV series House of Cards, which is viewed by many as quite progressive.

SOUNDTRACK

Only incidental music is used, all long-drawn and haunting to evoke fear and alert the audience.

TRANSITION TO MAIN FILM:

We get the cameo of Hitchcock, now used by the Marvel illumaniti Stan Lee.

Let me google that for you.

...