Leaving something to the audiences’ imagination:


Because in 1960 Hollywood censorship was much stricter than it is today, Alfred Hitchcock became a master at using the power of the audiences’ imagination to make them believe things happened that were not actually shown on screen. He was able to achieve this through clever editing and sound manipulation which we’ll


discuss next. Te best example of this is


the


famous shower scene from the movie Psycho, in which a character is stabbed while taking a shower. Censorship guidelines prohibited nudity and required that “Brutality and possibly gruesomeness had to be treated within the careful limits of good taste.” Hitchcock maneuvers around both restrictions by playing on the audiences’ imagination. In the shower scene, we only see the female character for brief moments and her body is obscured water. When she is being stabbed, we never actually see the knife stabbing her. Hitchcock uses shots of bloody water swirling down the drain and the hand holding the knife to trick us into believing we have witnessed the entire act.


Sound manipulation: Hitchcock was also a master at using sound to heighten the suspense of his films. He oſten plays with distorting or eliminating music and utilizes ambient sounds to set the scene. In Te Birds there is no musical score. Te only music is a piece played by the main character and a song sung by school children. Admbient sounds of birds help to sustain suspense by reminding the audience that these animals are always present and could attack at any moment. In addition, the shower scene from Psycho is again one of the clearest examples of how Hitchcock uses sound to create suspense. Prior to the stabbing, the only sounds we hear are of the water running. It isn’t until the shower curtain is pulled back and the knife is revealed that the music begins. Even the composition of the music is specific and intentional.


“Hitchcock had wanted the sequence to appear in silence and later on it was proposed jazz music should accompany the images. [Bernard] Herrmann [composer for the film] had the idea of just using string instruments, violins played at a very high pitch evoking the stabbing actions of the knife and Marion’s screams.”


www.filmeducation.org


Te following is a link to the shower scene from Psycho: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WtDmbr9xyY


As you watch Belleville, see if you can identify any of Hitchcock’s techniques being used in the piece.


Psycho movie poster 12


Production still from Te Birds with star Tippi Hedren


http://naturalplane.blogspot.com/2011/12/


http://www.flickr.com/photos/jdxyw/4866327644/


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