Abstract
Alfred Hitchcock's ?Psycho' is known for being emblematic of the suspense genre inasmuch as a crime is at the core of the scenario. However it is perfectly arguable that the movie is about women and maybe about two women that embody Hitchcock's view about the opposite gender. It is also possible to draw a parallel between Psycho's heroine, Marion, and Mary Rogers death in popular culture (or E.A. Poe?s Marie Roget). Psycho does not only deal with suspense but expresses the very personal conception of women of Alfred Hitchcock. Like many of Hitchcock's other movies Psycho deals with lots of symbols that actually portray the director's fears that are located in a historical context. It is remarkable that the heroine, Marion, disappears during the first half of the movie, just as in Antonioni's L'Avventura, that was released the same year (1960). Yet Marion is the center of the whole movie and though the character disappears from the screen it is not totally replaced by the other woman of the film that is embodied in Norman's "dark side". As Norman's schizophrenia is caused by his mother, Hitchcock actually portrays the two women he knows, i.e. the mother and the lover, to which we can add the sister who is a neutral character. In ?The Birds' for instance, the whole movie can be interpreted as an expression of Hitchcock's fear of women. The birds in Psycho can be seen as an anticipation of The Birds, always prone to jeopardize an apparently comfortable situation.
