Historic and Institutinal Influences - Psycho and Hitchcock

PSYCHO'S HISTORICAL INFLUENCE


During the mid 1900's, sound was becoming a huge success in the film industry. Many studios were doing as much as they could to bring new experiences and innovations to the world of film. This was a golden era for new concepts and ideas. Although many producers were interested in what they could do with sound in general, a few produces were interested in how sound could morph a whole new genre. Directors like Hitchcock focused how dialogue can shift a movie. Now audiences can analyze movies not just from what the see but what they hear as well. Different Directors were using dialogue to tell more vivid stories. Movies such as Tenderloin, Glorious Betsy, and The Lion and The Mouse by Warner Bros began shifting to dialogue to tell stories. This inspired directors like Hitchcock to experiment with sound and use it to tell a story.

The Movie Psycho has a great historical influence in the world of film. It was the first of its kind and coined the "psychological thriller" genre. Hitchcock urged viewers to think and analyze the film as it was happening. One reviewer said, "Psycho has been attributed as being Hitchcock's ultimate achievement in the technique of viewer participation."
 

Psycho, itself has an immense amount of historical significance for a single film. It was the first of many. In fact, Psycho, "Has been hailed as everything from the first modern slasher film (although “Peeping Tom” came out the year before) to the first Hollywood movie to feature a shot of a toilet. Its then-unusual method of financing (Hitchcock paid for, and owned, the film himself, using the studio strictly for distribution) would become the standard business model for George Lucas decades later." Pschyo took the first steps for its genre and layed the framework out for many other films to follow. Psycho was fresh. It was new. It was never before seen. That's what made it such a commercial success. Psycho urged its contendors to push against new boundaries and, in a way, revolutuonized the industry. Psycho was influential to film history because it broke all the rules of the industry. One rewier makes the point that, "For audiences, though, “Psycho” marked an even larger turning point. For here was a Hollywood movie which, quite flagrantly, refused to follow any of the Hollywood rules." At the time, Hollywood rules appeared to be set in stone., but by who? Since there was no "Movie Police", these so called rules could be broken without consequence. And as the saying goes: "Rules were meant to be broken".

Psycho can be seen almost as a laugh toward the Studio scene. Since studios refused to finance a movie that included such violence and vugarity, Hitchcock took the product under his wing and made it on his own. Between the studios and Hitchcock, we can see that Hitchcock ended up with the last laugh. Pyscho proved that a commercial success could be accomplished without the use of professional studios. This sprouted ideas into the mind of other solo directors looking to venture away from the mainstream cinema of the time.