Dramatic vs. Lighthearted

Both Pyscho and The Birds are films created by Alfred Hitchcock, yet they differ in terms of theme, plot, and even color. Pyscho is in black and white, while The Birds is in color, although the colors are very subdued.

In a nutshell, Psycho is about a woman who attempts to steal $40,000, but ends up in the deadly Bates Motel, in which Norman Bates killed her. He vainly tried to hide the evidence from this murder, but this did not work out well. It was revealed that Norman acted as two different people: himself and his mother. But it was beyond just playing dress-up, he actually was both of these people. However, his mother's personality trumped his own, especially towards the end of the film. To be completely honest, this final part of the film freaked me out. It was just plain weird, there was definitely something wrong with him. I was confused because I thought that him and his mother were two separate characters, but they were not. He even hid his mother's corpse in her fruit cellar (basement), complete with clothing and a wig. It was absolutely terrifying, regardless of the fact that it was only a movie. In addition, there was another frightening scene: when Norman stabbed Marion in the shower. Dramatic irony was used here - the viewers could see that a dark figure was ominously standing in front of the shower curtain, yet Marion was unable to see it at this point. With no escape, she was stabbed by Norman's mother. He stuffed her body in a car trunk, and drove the car into a swamp. What an awful way to die. 

The Birds, however, is much less gruesome. While I have not seen the entire film yet, it is very easy to tell that it is not a scary film, and even if it ends up being one, it will be nothing like Psycho. It starts out with a woman, named Melanie, at a pet shop. A mysterious guy comes in and tells her that he "saw her in court", and she proceeded to track him down. She went all the way to Bodega Bay, an island off the coast of San Francisco, just to find him. I'm still curious as to why she was so determined to find him. Was she really that disturbed by the fact that he recalled seeing her before? I missed the viewing last class, so I'm not really sure.

Clearly, there are plenty of key differences between the two films, but on the other hand, there are also plenty of similarities. The style of both films, from the lengthy introduction to the unrealistic graphical effects of the 1960s, is very similar. It is easy to tell that they are made by the same director. He seems to have had a liking for unusual characters: in Psycho, Norman, and in The Birds, Melanie. They both were extreme in one way or another.