"Mentally Ill" can be described as the most iconic classic of suspense master Hitchcock. This unprecedentedly successful horror film has bold techniques and amazing pictures. Even decades later, the murder and bloody scenes still scared the audience. Frightened.
The mother of the modern horror film has a low cost and short shooting time. It is adapted from a novel by Robert Bloch, written by Joseph Stefano, and written by Hitchcock. Using proficient montage skills to manipulate the audience's emotions with ease, thus completing a pure film expression in a full sense. Hitchcock abandoned some of the familiar routines in his films before, and truly stimulated the audience through visuals rather than plots. The "Bathroom Murder" scene in the film has become a classic scene in movie history. It lasts 48 seconds and consists of 78 fast-switching shots. Although there is no bloody scene of a knife piercing the human body, its horror effect is due to montage. The comprehensive use of, scene scheduling, rhythm, lighting and sound techniques has reached an infinite state. Hitchcock’s request for this scene is: “Slashing, slashing with a knife, the knife is like tearing up the screen and rushing out of the movie.” This “realistic horror” leaves the audience with endless imagination. As Hitchcock thinks: "The most nervous thing is not the disgusting ways of death, but the atmosphere brewing before death. " The name of the
director
"Hitchcock" is synonymous with suspense and horror. It represents The spirit of a film technique; it is this world-recognized master of horror who invented the "thriller genre" (the thriller genre) film genre.
Hitchcock directed and supervised 59 movies and more than 300 serials throughout his life. Most of them use the dark side of human nature such as tension, anxiety, voyeurism, and fear as their narrative themes, and skillfully integrate sexy, suspense, and humor. . The ultimate goal of Hitchcock's film is to show the deepest horror and the most unusual thoughts of human nature. Therefore, unlike modern horror films, Hitchcock's films can be called thrillers. All the horror lies in people. There is and happens in between, there is no distorted and distorted blood flowing into rivers and other disgusting pictures, and it is completely won by the exquisite plot arrangement and the outstanding performance of the actors.
Hitchcock was born in 1889 in an ordinary family running vegetable wholesale in London. He entered the film industry in 1920. After experiencing subtitle design, art director, and editing work, he directed the first suspenseful film "The Mailman" in 1926. Established a position in the British film industry. The Assassin's House in 1934 and Thirty-Nine Steps in 1936 gave Hitchcock an international reputation. In 1940, the first Hollywood work "Butterfly Dream" won the Oscar for best work, followed by the spy drama "Overseas Commissioner", the psychological suspense film "The Cliff" and the psychoanalysis film "Doctor Edward". In 1946, Hitchcock filmed the concluding work "Beauty's Tactics" of this period.
In the 1950s, Hitchcock advanced both artistic and entertaining skills, and constantly experimented with photographic techniques. He shot "Telephone Murder", "Rear Window", "Catch a Thief", "Vertigo", "Northwest A series of outstanding works such as "Beyond North". In 1960, Hitchcock challenged the new horror. With weird themes, unexpected storylines, and low-budget black-and-white production, he shot a "Mentally Ill" that shocked the world, making the film a Hitchcock. A milestone in Kirk's film career. At that time, the directors of the French New Wave were more or less influenced by Hitchcock, and the masters of the New Wave gave him the highest evaluation: he is a movie.
Before his death, Hitchcock was recognized as one of the greatest film directors of all time. He won a special Oscar in 1968 and the Griffith Award of the Directors Guild of America in the same year. In recognition of his outstanding contributions to film art, in 1979, the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded him the Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1980, Queen Elizabeth II of England knighted him and died in Los Angeles on April 29 of the same year.
The actor
"Mentally Ill" has cultivated two global stars, one man and one woman, namely Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins.
Janet Lee was born in 1927, signed with MGM in 1947, and played some youthful girl roles. In 1951, he married Tony Curtis ("Passion Like Fire"), who was also an actor, and started acting. The role of a mature woman. Later, she became a first-line actress due to her outstanding performances in Orson Wells's "Lady in the Fall" and Hitchcock's "Mentally Ill", especially "Mentally Ill" won the Golden Globe Award that year. The actress and Oscar nominated for Best Supporting Actress. In 1999, Janet Lee received the highest honor "Commander of Arts and Literature" awarded to an artist by the French ZF. Janet Lee once said that when filming the classic scene of being killed in a shower, Hitchcock edited 70 shots from different angles to express her fear before death, and when she saw the scene in the theater, she actually Feeling horrified, she never dared to take a shower anymore. It is reported that Lee paid only US$25,000 for the film, and has since switched to bathing in the bathtub. In addition, the expression of fear in the film was rated as the most classic death scene in history by the British film magazine TotalFilm.
"Mentally Ill" also popularized actor Anthony Perkins, and made the role of Norman Bates a household name. The famous American actor Anthony Perkins (1932-1992) was born in New York. He was keen on acting as early as his college days. When he was performing on Broadway, he was spotted by the great director William Wheeler. Cooper co-starred in "Friendly Persuasion," which was nominated for six Oscars. Since then, he played a young man with a dual personality in Hitchcock's "Mentally Ill", which established his position in the film world, and has been in the film world for 30 years. On both sides of the Atlantic, he starred in films such as "The Lonely Man", "The Green Mansion", "The Trial", and "The Fire of Paris".
Soundtrack
The soundtrack of the film is also very contributory, and Bernard Herrmann (Bernard Herrmann) specially orchestrated the piercing strings for "Mentally Ill" also made an indelible contribution to the tension of the film. In the scene of the bathroom being killed, all the knives and knives seem to cut into Maria’s body, but in fact there is no one. Its excellent effect depends entirely on sharp and fast editing and multi-angle shots. In addition, the biggest hero is Bernard. Herman's soundtrack is extremely sharp and piercing, and the repeated sharp sound of the violin can almost cut people's flesh and skin apart. Hitchcock originally planned not to use additional sound effects in this segment, but immediately changed his mind after listening to Herman's performance.
Trivia: Hitchcock bought the copyright to the novel for only $9,000 using a pseudonym.
· After the high-cost color films "North by Northwest" and "Victorius", Hitchcock led his TV production team to shoot this black and white horror film at a very low cost. According to Hitchcock's own statement, he didn't want this film to be too bloody and violent (the well-known bathroom section), and wanted to see if a low-cost black and white film would sell well.
Hitchcock’s "Mentally Ill" only cost US$800,000, and soon after its first release, it made a profit of US$15 million.
·The interesting thing is that Hitchcock is also creating suspense when shooting the film. He wants all the production staff to swear to keep the plot and the ending of the story strictly confidential and never reveal any details. In addition, he hired the "mother" actor in a pretentious manner and announced the list of several candidates. In fact, there is no "mother" scene in the script.
·The climax of the bathroom murder scene was only 45 seconds, but Hitchcock took almost 7 days to shoot, and the camera shifted as many as 60 times.
·Janet Lee recalled that when filming "Mentally Ill", Hitchcock simply used Janet as a test subject in order to make the corpses in the experimental drama scary enough. Sometimes Li pushes the door into the dressing room after lunch, and finds that there is a terrible "zombie" sitting in her chair. Janet Lee said: "Hitchcock will decide which dummy to use as the corpse based on the level of fear I scream every time."
Hitchcock paid Anthony Perkins a salary of $40,000, which is exactly the huge amount of money Maria stole from the company.
·Hitchcock prefers blonde beauty. He once said: “Blonde beauty is most suitable for murder! Imagine how beautiful the bright red blood flows from her white skin and the shiny blonde hair!” This film Janet Lee, who was killed in the movie, was of course also blonde.
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