Alfred Hitchcock and Psycho (1960): Behind the Character of Norman Bates and an Analysis of Hitchcock’s Masterpiece Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is perhaps one of the most controversial and important films in the history of Hollywood. Considered monstrous at the me of its release, it is today hailed as “the best horror film of all me”, as according to Editor Mark Kermode on The Guardian. As Hitchcock me and again managed to achieve, with Psycho, Hitchcock introduced an enrely new and revoluonary flavour to the screen, which is oſten recognised as the foundaons of any thriller today. To analyse Psycho, and the themes Hitchcock uses and re-constructs enrely, one must take an enrely new approach. For, as established, Hitchcock, as a remarkable connoisseur of the arts, uerly ignored tradional styles and also contemporary styles of screenwring and playwring in general. This does reflect the modus operandi of America at the me, and not only in arts. For the post-war era leſt America leading the world into the future, without any compeon. This resulted in an aggressive period of self-discovery and radical change, where every aspect of life was re-defined and Americanized, shiſting from the Eurocentric norm. Wring was no excepon. This is parcularly prominent in screenwring, which, aſter World War Two, was sll a largely untapped resource. This meant that the American greats: Michael Curz, John Huston, Orson Welles, Arthur Miller, and, most of all: Hitchcock himself, had the opportunity to build enrely anew from the ground-up. This definion and radical sub-culture is sll seen as internaonally capvang; the journey to fame in Hollywood is oſten described as the yellow-brick road. The lead of America into the world-film industry created a culture so strong, it is sll being redefined to this day. One can see the redefinion occur over the ages; the 1950s with the drive-in and cheap horror-flick culture lead to an ‘indie film’ movement, which proved hugely contagious across the world, especially in Japan, where ‘Godzilla’ became a staple of Japanese film culture; the 1970s saw the creaon of the ‘blockbuster’ film, with the first being Steven Spielberg’s ‘Jaws’; and the 1990s saw the first successful rejecon of ‘me’ in movies, first seen in marn Scorsese’s controversial 1990 film ‘ Goodfellas’. Alfred Hitchcock was at the centre of the film movement from the 1950s and well into the 1960s, breaking through me-and- again the barriers of tradional ways of wring and tragedy. Whilst he did experiment with many sub-genres, such as his 1959 film ‘North by Northwest’, which was the first successful entry into “acon-thriller”, also shot in full-colour, his other most-famous works: ‘Strangers on a Train’ (1951), ‘Vergo’ (1958), ‘Psycho’ (1960), and ‘The Birds’ (1963), can be categorised into one sub-genre: film noir thriller. This does lead to one query which has to be addressed early on: how can ‘Psycho’ be argued to be the first true thriller if Hitchcock himself made three, hugely successful thrillers before the creaon of ‘Psycho’? Not to menon two of the greatest horror-thrillers of all me: Tod Browning’s ‘Dracula’ (1931) and James Whale’s ‘Frankenstein’ (1931), were both made in the pre- code era, where their eerie and disjointed sound magnified the effect of ‘horror’ exponenally. However, what makes Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho so different, and so new in the film-industry is so controversial and adept, that it led to an enrely new sub-genre within itself: film noir, psychological thriller. For, Hitchcock displayed that what makes the most memorable and drasc thrillers are those which leave an element open for the imaginaon, open for interpretaon and speculaon, leaving a long-lasng effect. And it is this factor which makes Psycho the highest-acclaimed thriller of all me, also apparent in Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’, where no death by the birds occurs on-screen, making the deadly-silent eye-pecking scene exceponally more frightening. With this understood, it is because of the psychological element in Psycho which allows for the movie to be analysed on an internal level; by the meaning of Norman Bates’ character to the individual, American viewer, and the film as