Psycho: Narrative and the Film Extract

Psycho has a unique narrative structure that can be broken down into three main acts. Those three acts can be further broken down but there are so many individual ways of doing so that we wont go over that part. However like I said earlier. Psycho can be broken down into three main parts
1. Introduction of Marion - Death of Marion


2. Realization of Marion's disappearance - Death of Arbogast



3. Sister and boyfriend's visit - End of film (Norman's arrest)


This film follows a unique structure however due to the way these acts play out. Psycho does something new by introducing Marion. Typically when a movie starts by introducing a character, we tend to assume that that character is the protagonist, and we are usually right. But psycho changes up the whole game by introducing Marion to us, only then to kill her off. The structure of this whole movie seems sort of jumbled up and all over the place, yet its done in a way that fits together perfectly. The amount of time put into plotting out the narrative structure is evident and it turned out successfully in Hitchcock's case. In the film we are not following one character but watching a series of events play out. This form is not widely used which adds to the uniqueness of the film. One challenge of this style is allowing the audience to emotionally connect to a character yet in Psycho we are able to connect with both Marion and Norman easily. This truly is a gem to the style. The film doesn't portray a character's story, through a singular lens, but rather a whole story with characters held separate from the plot. The characters compliment the plot structure by expressing their emotions through their actions, expressions and words. They do it enough to give out uniquness and shape but not enough to form complete bias, which is key to a successful plot.