Psycho begins with office worker Marion Crane, who gets fed up with her life. She has to meet her lover Sam in lunch breaks and they cannot get married because Sam has to give most of his money away in alimony. One Friday Marion is trusted to bank $40,000 by her employer. Seeing the opportunity to take the money and start a new life, Marion leaves town and heads towards Sam's California store. Tired after the long drive and caught in a storm, she gets off the main highway and pulls into The Bates Motel. The motel is managed by a quiet young man called Norman who seems to be dominated by his mother. The central theme, as displayed by Norman Bates’ schizoid personality switching, is the concept of multiple identity or role play throughout the film.
Hitchcock’s release of his black and white version of Psycho in 1960’s, changed the way films were viewed in cinemas. People were only allowed to watch Psycho from start to finish. Prior to this, audiences were free to pay their way into cinemas in the middle of a film, watch it from half way through and then catch the film over again from the start. Aside from changing the way cinemas functioned, this act also shows how carefully Hitchcock had constructed his shocker masterpiece. Everything in the film was meticulously organised to his trademark standards and the impact of its most powerful scenes were deeply dependent upon the audience being emotionally conditioned by earlier events in the film.
The real inspiration of Hitchcock’s “Psycho” began in 1957, due to farmer Ed Gein, who kept himself to himself and was dominated by his mother. When, one day the police happened to stop by his place, working a missing-persons case, and found a