Intertexuality

What is intertexuality? 

Intertextuality is a term to describe the visual referencing between films. Quite literally, films 'borrow' from each other, and we as the audience may recognise certain camera angles, aspects of mise en scene, snippets of sound or methods of editing in some films that we have seen in others. Indeed, it is argued that our understanding of a film is formed by other films that we have seen. 

Analysis of Psycho (1960)
& Stepfather (2009

I think that Stepfather had mainly used the most similar scenes to Psycho. For example both the scenes consists of the victim being attacked brutally by a stranger with a knife and ending up falling back into the shower taking hold of the shower curtain along with them.

Stepfather                                                                                     Pyscho 

 

In both screenshots the characters have a knife in their hand as they are forcefully wanting to stab someone.

 




In these two pictures we can see shower curtains been pulled down harshly with strength, suggesting the character is in pain.

 




The last two screen shots show both the characters, the man and on the other one a woman, sliding down the shower tiles with facial expressions of pain and relief .

After watching similar 'shower scenes' in several clips from different films, I've realised that after realeasing such a horriffic film, Psycho, many directors have used the similar scene and interpreted it into their films.