The very shocking yet surprising movie "Psycho" directed by Alfred Hitchcock, adapted from the original novel written by Robert Block, tricked the audience into believing it was telling one story, then shifted to another in a shocking yet seamless manner. This is where the brutal shower scene becomes of key importance and it also contributes to the major fear factor of the film.
The classic, brutal shower scene, which, to me is an irrational murder, where the major star of the film Marion Crane played by Janet Leigh, is shockingly stabbed to death after the first forty-seven minutes of the film's start. This led to shock in audiences" world wide as they were un-used to the leading lady of a movie being killed off a quarter of the way through. This never disappointed or lost its audience. It is the most famous murder scene ever filmed and one of the most jarring. It took a full week to complete, using fast-cut editing -by George Tomasini- of seventy eight pieces of film and seventy camera setups, in a forty five second impressionistic montage sequence, and inter-cutting slow-motion and regular speed footage. The audience's imagination fills in the illusion of complete nudity and fourteen violent stabbings. Actually, she never really appears nude although the audience is teased and there is only implied violence and at no time does the knife ever penetrate her body, this has key importance to the film as it shows Hitchcock's brilliance for audience manipulation. The editing was used in a bold and outrageous way. The quick cuts, the use of sound effects, the start music of Bernard Herrmann's all violin string score and Janet Leigh's performance all created an atmosphere that caused many viewers to take baths for months after seeing the movie even although the actual stabbing only lasted for twenty seconds. The whole scene lasts for approximately forty-five seconds but it required seven days of shots and seventy-eight separate camera positions.
