Socio-Cultural Influences

Psycho was born into an era strict on racy themes, and, when approached, these themes were usually subtexted and heavily covered. The horror/ thriller genre was usually ostracized from film society.The master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock's psychological horror-thriller film Psycho terrified audiences. It opened in theaters amidst great secrecy, and instructions that no patrons would be admitted once the film started. It served as the "mother" of all modern horror suspense films, featuring Bernard Herrmann's famous and memorable score with shrieking, harpie-like piercing violins, and the notorious shower scene. It was the first American film ever to show a toilet flushing on screen. Hitchcock described  himself as "an American-trained  cinematic  artist, brought up on the style and production  methods  of American filmmaking."

Hitchcock, before moving into the glamorous Hollywood, grew up around German expressionism. The first Expressionist films made up for a lack of lavish budgets by using set designs with wildly unrealistic, geometrically absurd sets, along with designs painted on walls and floors to represent lights, shadows, and objects. The plots and stories of the Expressionist films often dealt with madness, insanity,betrayal, and other "intellectual" topics (as opposed to standard action-adventure and romantic films). The influence of German Expressionism is strong in Psycho, in the low budget Hitchcock worked with, the psychoanalytical thriller genre, and use of audience perception (what they can and cannot see).

The film addressed many areas of film that hadn't been touched before. The sexual guilt element is especially strong. The stolen money that Marion carries about with her represents her dirty little secrets. Hitchcock goes so far as to symbolically link this pile of money to a pile of feces. After scribbling a few calculations of how much money she has spent Marion tears up the scrap of paper and flushes it in the toilet before taking a shower. After her death, Bates sinks her car into the swamp. Marion and the dirty money are symbolically flushed away into the cesspool. In an almost joke-like fashion, Hitchcock spells the money-feces symbolism out through Marion’s licence plate. It reads: “ANL 709”, which phonetically reads as ANAL.

In the evolution of genre,Psycho is a classic film. It has the techniques and aspects that are respectful to the genre. It has incorporated both old and new ideas and the entire work is done so well and truly is a masterpiece. The film incorporates an incredible amount of detail and perfection.