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 n

ever 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.

The scene as a whole was the most brutal of the whole movie. It also had an added surprise element to it, which was the leading lady being killed of fairly early in the movie which was a big twist to the story because the audience had just gotten wrapped up in the story of this Character Marion Crane stealing forty thousand dollars only to be shocked when she dies a horrific death. This I believe contributes to the film as a whole because it has sets the initial fear factor and made people watch and listen more intently to try and figure out the story, where it is leading and who’s next to die. It grabs people’s attention, which is what Hitchcock wanted, to have something out of the ordinary.

The infamous scene begins peacefully enough. She turns on the overhead shower water, from a prominent shower head nozzle which is dia

Some topics in this essay:
Janet Leigh, Janet Leigh’s, George Tomasini-, Marion Crane, Robert Block, Bernard Herrmann's, Alfred Hitchcock, , Bernard Herrmann’s, shower curtain, brutal shower scene, shower scene, key importance, leading lady, camera positioned, shower water, brutal shower, marion crane, stabbed death, close-up marion's,