This is the scene from ‘PSYCHO’ where Norman
is peeping in through a hole in the wall at Marion getting undressed. This is
the scene prior to her killing in the shower scene. In this shot you can see low key lighting with a slight part of
his face being lit by light and the rest dark in shadow. I think this connotes his schizophrenia, the light
indicates the good in him, the 'normal' Norman. However, I think the dark side connotes to the mother side of his
brain ('Norma'), the bad in him, and the side that drives him to murders. This
also gives it a very sinister edge to him being a peeping tom watching Marion
undress connoting to a lack of
masculinity and sexual frustration. This is called the Male Gaze Theory due to the fact that Norman is looking at her while
she is changing, creating a sexual feel to the shot of Marion. This also connotes to the sexual frustrations of Hitchcock, this is due to
the fact that Hitchcock had a very domineering wife leading to him having an
obsession with blonde women. This caused him to sexualise a lot of scenes where
there were blonde women, as he was trying to over compensate because of his own
sexual frustrations, he knew he would never be with one.
The beam of light from Marion’s room also
suggests that she is possibly his only way out from his mother’s side but the
overwhelming darkness of his mother side takes over.
This is again Hitchcock trying to give little
insights into Norman’s brain, and the power that his mother had over him. The
way he uses mise-en-scene with the
use of low key lighting is
especially powerful because it gives you this two-faced, unnerving feel to
Norman’s psycho killer archetype.
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