Clayton George Wickham - final thesis

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shot. This use of perspective is also used by Hitchcock in drunken driving sequences
in both Notorious (1946) and North by Northwest (1959). In both of these films, the
experience of driving after drinking heavily is shown through eye/camera shots,
filmed from the driver’s seat of a car. The movement of the composition reflects the
movement within a car. The shutter speed of the camera is slowed down to create a
more disjointed and shaky image, and the image is not clearly focused.
The Development of the Eye/Camera in the Slasher Film
These examples of Hitchcock’s approach to the eye/camera lead to his work
in Psycho. Psycho is a significant predecessor to the modern slasher film with
regards to both theme and aesthetics. In this film, Hitchock very clearly associates
the eye/camera with voyeurism in the sequence prior to the killing of Marion Crane.
After eating with Norman Bates in the Bates Motel parlour, she retires to her room.
Norman removes a picture from the wall, to reveal a hole that provides visual access
to Marion’s room. We see an extreme close up of his eye as it looks through the
hole in the wall, which is followed by an eye/camera shot. This shot captures the
action from the same perspective of the character we know we inhabit, including
height and direction. Additionally, this shot is framed by black to reflect the hole in
the wall that we have already witnessed. Although Hitchcock does not use the shaky
handheld camera, the framing of the hole along with the awareness of the character
perspective identifies this clearly as an eye/camera shot, similar to those of René
Clair’s keyhole spying sequence in And Then There Were None (1945), or As Seen
Through a Telescope. This shot and its close tie to voyeurism has, among other
examples, guided critical analysis of the eye/camera within the modern horror film.