Psycho

The film Psycho featured a variety of interesting camerawork, from both the fluidity of the camera simulating the involvement of the audience in the film, and the interaction of characters with the audience (In Psycho most notably the final look Norman Bates gives the audience in the asylum).

Alfred Hitchcock used the camera to direct the course of the film, especially in Psycho the camera moved like a human eye, sometimes watching on (often in surprise, suspense, or horror) and other times following frantically as the story went on. The moments of pause and focus were largely on facial expressions, the eyes especially. Both Norman's insanity (first in the parlor scene) and Marion's death (The drain fading to her empty eyes) are displayed beautifully through the camera's focus on their eyes.

The moments where the camera was moving around however were often to force the audience to remember something, or to put them in a moment of suspense. One of my favorite moments where this happened concerned the death of Arborgast, the private detective. Though yes, a murder had already taken place and it was an eerily quiet scene as he climbed the stairwell (all foreshadowing something), I was still surprised when I first saw it. Simply because though there was music that was just before the murder, it was very sudden much like when Marion was murdered. That combined with the sudden cut to an overhead shot that left us seeing a perfectly unaware detective suddenly getting stabbed to death, needless to say it was surprising.