Intertextuality& Detailed Anaylsis of Thriller Clip

The term intertextuality is a word which is used to describe the visual references between films. Many famous films literally 'borrow' scenes from each other and you will recognise the most common ones. These scenes will be changed up however, will still keep the originality of camera angles, aspects of mise en scene, snippets of sound or methods of editing in some films that you have seen in others.

By looking at clips from both 'Psycho' and 'What lies beneath' i can see both differences and similarities in editing that was used. in 'psycho' the bathroom scene was original. It had typical features that showed it was a thriller. The woman was beautiful with blonde her and nice eyes. She was killed in the bathroom which had white shower curtains. This can represent the innocence of the woman.

The killer had a shiny knife that was used to stab her and this showed differences to 'What lies beneath' as the killer didn't use a knife to kill her. He drugged her so that she was paralytic and she was awake and aware of everything he was going to do. He wanted it to look like an accident and this shows me differences between the two clips. The similarities however, were very obvious. The soundtrack and mise en scene were the same as each other. You had the typical violins in the background as the soundtrack and the location was in a white bathroom. A typical technique that is used is the running of the water. This creates an opportunity for the killer to get in the bathroom without being noticed. The woman were similar looking as they were both beautiful with blonde hair and nice eyes.

I feel that these two clips were very good and 'psycho' was an original black and white 60's thriller. Whereas, 'What lies beneath' kept the originality but twisted the story the scene up a bit.