Psycho (1960)

A young woman (Janet Leigh) steals a ton of cash in hopes of starting a new life with her boyfriend (John Gavin). On her way out of town, she decides to spend a night in the Bates Motel...

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As commercial of a filmmaker as Alfred Hitchcock was, he also held a strong affinity for the avant-garde. He loved to try new things. The film Lifeboat was set entirely in the eponymous vessel, Rope was shot in a series of long takes to give the illusion of being all one shot, Dial M For Murder was in 3-D and Spellbound featured a dream sequence designed by none other than Salvador Dalí. But perhaps his most daring experiment was the narrative gamble he took with Psycho and the decision to kill off his main character 30 minutes into the film. I can't believe the studio let him do it. Who is the audience supposed to identify with and root for with Marion gone? Well as the saying goes: "Any port in a storm." And thus, we as an audience find ourselves rooting for Norman Bates! We become complicit in his cleaning up of the crime scene. We desperately want that car to sink into the marsh. We want Detective Arbogast and everyone else to just go away and leave poor Norman alone! None of this is his fault! It's that damn MOTHER of his! He wouldn't even harm a fly! But when the "big reveal" comes, we are suddenly forced to accept the fact that we have been rooting for and empathizing with a psychotic murderer all this time. And what does that say about us? Well played Mr. Hitchcock!