Psycho – A 1960 trailer

  http://youtube.com/watch?v=EzAnE4zuYuA&feature=related

An old-fashioned trailer for the movie Psycho! For the uninitiated, Psycho is Alfred Hitchcock’s amazing classic thriller from 1960. Notorious for its sensational murder scene in the shower, this black-and-white film became an instant classic back when audiences were traumatised by the psychological horror of the movie. Some audiences were reported to have walked out of the theatres during the shower scene!

This reminds me of the Magic Bullet media theory, where audiences are seen as passive victims and unable to  defend themselves from media messages and reject what they see and consume. In this instance, the terrified audience could not withdraw themselves from the horror delivered to them through the Magic Bullet, and as a result could not subsequently differentiate between reality and make-believe. (Many reported not being able to shower after seeing this movie, lest they get murdered by psychos.) Audience of that era tend to be more susceptible to the powerful effects models of the media, being less equipped with skills to limit, reduce and /or reject its heavy influence, the way modern audience can.

Also, the film starts off with a sexy (By 1960’s standards) scene of the female lead having a post-lunch-time-quickie chat with her lover in a hotel room. (Both were scantily clad.) This was the first time a scene of its scandalous nature appeared on the then-conservative American cinema screen, hence creating waves of controversy.

The trailer that I posted above is something rather alien to audiences of today. I have no idea if that was the norm back then to have the director of the film guide the audience of the trailer through elements of the movie. Nevertheless, it is interesting to see an example of a trailer that doesn’t involve the typical format that we are so used to seeing in the cinema these days.

 Another point of interest is how the music in the background of the trailer is deceiving sweet and harmless. For a thriller, we would perhaps expect music to show off the sinister and suspenseful themes like its official main theme:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=j3QcS2iovss

However, the music in the trailer betrays the unknowing audience with its almost comical feel. This is a technique that is used in modern days – A trailer for a horror movie, for example, may start off with deceptive soothing piano music, only for this piano music to become sinister and warped at the point when the audience realises that it is actually a trailer for a horror movie.

 I’m not sure if that was the point in Psycho‘s trailer. It was probably unintentional, in my opinion. But another interesting point to note is how Hitchcock himself pretends to not want to reveal the most horrible and exciting parts of the movie, through a mixture of effective verbal and nonverbal cues. While showing the audience the scenes of the crime, he speaks in a sinister tone (Use of paralinguistics), and deliberately pauses at climatic points of his narration (Again, silence – Paralinguistics), and refuses to describe in detail the horror of the movie. His nonverbal facial expressions and oculesics reveal a lot about the horror that audience can expect from the film. Simple, suspenseful, and very effective. (Back in the days where there wasn’t Youtube or Google to provide you with sneak previews or to satisy your curiosity.)