Threshold in Psycho + Rear Window

The threshold acknowledges the different programs or atmosphere in the two spaces, and tries to mediate between the two. Thus, we could say that a well-designed threshold allows the occupants to experience the change between the two spaces, and even introduce them its own characteristic. that the theme of the home-as-trap can formally be navigated in very different ways: through material structures, with implications for how Hitch uses architecture and mise-en-scene, and through atmosphere and play with signification(s), with implications for how Hitch manipulates mood and/via aesthetics. You complicate your argument as it unfolds, taking into its purview minor characters, varying spaces, strangers to the family and romantic triangle, and your reading of Blackmail connects space to power and shifting power relations in a persuasive way. Your reading of Shadow of a Doubt continues these excellent connections, and I'm persuaded that although it uses threshold in a different, less material and concrete way, that it employs similar forms; this concept of "projection" you develop is well-taken: "this abstract threshold is projected onto certain architectural elements or symbolism in the Newton house, and as these morphed thresholds are crossed, we see the uncanny home is activated and then becomes the entrapment of the inhabitants."

In Psycho (1960), we see one of the most common reoccurring ways of generating an atmosphere of suspense in Hitchcock's work: voyeurism or "to see without being seen." The image of Norman Bates watching Marion Crane through the wall separating his office from her room is seared into our minds. Dominating with a glance, without the other subject being aware, the dual personality of Norman, just like his affinity for taxidermy, makes us think of the potential of blinds as an element of architecture, representing this ambiguity between one mental state and another, between the union of skin with bone (taxidermy). The concept of voyeurism is also expressed architecturally in the movie by the symbolic prevalence that the Victorian house exerts over the deliberate functionality of the Bates Motel building. Blinds are an in-between place. A place of suspense, they're always situated on the border between two halves: interior-exterior. Like Norman Bate's dissected animals, they are a living skin In Rear Window (1954), a tension is produced between who is looking and what is being seen -- all across a courtyard of a block of apartments. Hitchcock, in order to give special attention to optical objects, presents us with the theme of looking. Architecture as just a look may reach its greatest expression in a set of sections. It is precisely in the section where what is happening with a design is discovered, just like how they discover the murderer in Rear Window. Alfred Hitchcock was a great editor of subjectivity. The ability to influence sight in future spaces, manipulating users without being seen, is also had by the architect when he is seen submerged in the process of project or pre-project design. In Rear Window, we also find a typically metropolitan view. Only in a metropolitan space could crime be considered a work of art. In ordinary city life anything is possible. The section in a metropolitan environment also explains the contradiction between the impossibility of being alone and the obligatory loneliness of anonymity.

In the world of Psycho, whenever one picture of the self cracks or is denied recognition, another, more dangerous image must form in it place. Inside the crack, so to speak. Marion refuses to look at herself so Norman will look for her. He will reflect her life by making it int a likeness of his own, although he doesn't understand (any more that she does) what this will entail. Once this life mirroring has commenced, it proceeds on a number of levels.

References

• Main Street to Miracle Mile: American Roadside Architecture
• Truffaut, 264
• Truffaut, 214 - 223
• Wrong House, 278
• Wrong House, 118

Technical Notes

Aspect Ratio: 1.37 / 1.66 / 1.85

See Also

• ThresholdManifesto — The 14-point manifesto these analyses build on