Intertextuality

Intertextuality is a term that describes visual referencing between films. Films that borrow from each other using aspects of camera, sound, mise en scene and editing are intertextual. Audiences are able to recognize these aspects from films they have previously seen.

This is a clip from the film Psycho (1960) it is of a woman in a shower that gets killed with a kitchen knife and suffers a slow and painful death.

Aspects of this film have been borrowed in the following:

What Lies Beneath (2000) 

 

What happens? 

He has drugged his wife so that she becomes paralyzed. He then places her in a white bath tub leaving the water running so that she can watch her slow and painful death.

Aspects borrowed from 'Psycho'  

The same iconic shower head is used.Through the mise en scene the audience is able to see that there is a blonde female victim in the bathtub with a white bathrobe. The same translucent shower curtain from psycho is used and the white tiles. The diegetic sound of the shower being used takes us back to the bathroom scene in psycho.

Fatal Attraction (1987)

 

 

What Happens? 

There is psychotic blonde woman who is trying to kill her lovers wife in the bathroom.  The man then  runs to save his wife and drowns his ex lover in the bath tub.She regains consciousness and as she stands up his wife shoots her with a gun and she dies.  

Aspects borrowed from 'Psycho'

The kinife that had been used was the same. The psychotic woman clenched onto the prop of knife while her hand fell this is like the scene in psycho when the blonde womans hand dropped down.  Both women were blonde.The ex lover was sliding down the white tiles reflecting the way in which the woman from the film 'Psycho' slid down the tiles. She lay in the bath with her eyes open this is used in both 'psycho' and 'what lies beneath' The white bath, the white tiles and the same white translucent curtain which was ripped off are elements of mise en scene taken from psycho. Quick cuts were used and the same diegetic noises of a woman screaming is similar to the psycho bathroom scene.

Succubus

 

 What happens?

There is a boy in the shower. A blonde psychotic female enters the bathroom with a knife and stabs him to death. 

 Aspects borrowed from psycho 

The knife stabbing point of view was taken from the psycho clip. The knife used was the same. To make their scene intertextual  they should have used the same shower head, white bathtub with the white shower curtain.  If those props weren't available to them they should have done a shot of the boy sliding down the tiles. To make  his death more effective and dramatic he should have fell forward. Also a close-up of his face squashed on the floor would have created more drama.