RESEARCH: Intertextuality in Films

Intertextuality is a term to describe the visual referencing between films. Films can borrow different elements from each other and the audience may recognize certain camera angles, aspects of mise en scene, snippets of sound or methods of editing in some films that they have seen in others.

Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" is a very well-known film, particularly the shower scene when the protagonist gets murdered. Many filmmakers have used elements from this famous shower scene to create their own scenes.



A film that uses intertextuality with the "Psycho" shower scene is "Fatal Attraction". This time, the antagonist is a woman and there are two protagonists, a man and a woman. The scene happens in a white bathroom; the woman uses a knife and stabs the protagonists; there are close-ups on the transparent shower curtain as they are fighting, which are all 'borrowed' from Hitchcock's film.

"What lies beneath" is also a film that uses elements from "Psycho": the white bathroom setting, the shower head, the transparent shower curtain. The woman is the victim, she is vulnerable.