Psycho trailer

Psycho Trailer.

  What I like about the Psycho trailer is that it does a very good job of giving the overall plot of the story and showing key moments from the film without actually ruining what happens. Hitchcock tells the audience that the setting (the motel) has become the scene of a murder. It never shows the murder in the trailer, but from short clips of the presumed heroine (Marion Crane, played by Janet Leigh) in the shower, followed by a clip of a shadow behind a shower curtain and a further scene of a female body (undisclosed) being dragged from a bathroom. It doesn’t tell you who has been murdered or how the murder was carried out, but it does let you connect the pieces of the event in your head without, while making you hunger for more and see if it really was Marion or another character, and whether she was truly dead.

  Other clips also add to this sense of mystery, including eerie shots of Norman Bate’s (played by Anthony Perkins) motel and his mother’s house, with other shots of the swamp where Norman hides the evidence of his killings, showing the victim’s car sinking into the sludgy waters. It tells the viewer the general setting of the movie, and an act that seems rather sinister or strange, but never tells the viewer what’s significant about these places and the scenes being shown. It gives the viewer enough information to feel the need to continue their pursuit of unravelling the mystery, but doesn’t give away so much they know how the film plays out.

  I also like how the Trailer shows the supposed roles of characters, when the roles given to characters in the trailer are not the same as in the film. Using Vladimir Propp’s theory of Narrative structure on the 8 roles of characters in a fairy story, we can see that Marion is depicted as being the Heroine of the film (despite the fact that she’s the first murder victim), by giving her the most camera time in the trailer. This is firstly to show who we are meant to side with when we go and see the film, but could also be interpreted as being a red herring. We see she has the most camera time and automatically assume she will be the heroine who brings the killer to justice, so when she does get killed, it becomes an even bigger shock to those who’ve seen the trailer, as they assumed she will be the one to solve the case. In the actual film, it is more appropriate to label Marion as the princess, due to the fact that the Detective, her boyfriend and her sister go off looking for her. 

  During this trailer we also see a lot of Norman Bates, the false hero. We see many shots of him not only helping the heroes of the film, but also a lot of shots of him acting suspicious and creepy. We see him accompanying the detective, Milton Arbogast (played by Martin Balsam), but then more scenes of him looking out of windows and hilting his head over an unseen object. We can assume he is hiding something in these scenes but also that he’s trying to help, even if he’s unsure if he should or not. 

  The Villain, Norman’s mother (or, to be precise, the personality of his mother), is not shown in the trailer, partly because it would spoil the entire plot twist ending to find out who she really is, but mostly because it adds an aura of mystery to the supposed killer. We know that she is the most likely suspect, as Norman often talks about her in the trailer, and quotes “It’s not as if she were a maniac, she just does a little mad sometimes.” But with only glancing snippets of footage from the film showing the back of his mother in a chair, attacking Marion in the shower and her body being carried downstairs by her son, we never get to see the true face of his mom. The trailer allows us to make up our own images of what she may look like, which in most cases are likely to be evil or sinister looking, as well as never giving away her true identity and spoiling the ending.

  We also see a few shots of other characters, such as Det. Arbogast (the “Helper” role) as he is sent out to find Marion, Lila Crane (the “donor” role, played by Vera Miles) as she offers herself to help the investigation, and Sam Loomis (played by John Gavin). Sam can either be described as being the father figure, as he (and Lila) hired the detective to look for Marion, or the hero, as he is the overall saviour of Lila and discovers the fate of the Detective and Marion. However, in the trailer, he is simply depicted as Marion’s love interest.

  As you can see, the trailer shows off the roles of all the characters in the film so you can understand who we are to direct our attention to, however it tries to trick the viewer into believing that Marion is the hero, making it an even bigger shock to viewers when they find out she is the murder victim. To people who still haven’t seen the film, this will end up adding a twist of events that will throw them off course with how they predicted the story will turn out, making them even more scared and keeping the tension heavy.