Throughout Hitchcock’s Psycho, there are a number of instances with either visible or understood cuts. Some of these are cuts made with a knife, like the infamous scene of Marion’s death, and some are cinematic, like the differentiation between the first and second halves of the film: the half where Marion is our identifying character and the half where Norman is that character. The shower scene not only features a real knife but the editing is done in such a way that it is choppy and segmented. The camera often switches back between shots of Marion and shots of Norman (or Norma) equalling over 30 cinematic cuts happening along with the literal knife cuts into Marion’s body. By splicing Marion and Norman together, Hitchcock once again demonstrates similarities between the two and associates them with each other. There is only a quick moment in this scene in which they can both be seen at the same time, and even then it is only individual limbs. They cannot be seen at the same time because to some degree they are the same. In addition, this scene takes place against the gridded background of the tile shower. Square tiles are already cut out because of the grid-like style, so this mirrors the physical cutting happening in front of it.

The way our point-of-contact character switches from Marion to Norman also follows this similarity between the two characters. The fact that one is capable of replacing the other in the view of the audience directly connects them. While the physical cutting leading to Marion’s death is clearly a symbol of the destruction of the connection between Marion and Norman, the visually understood, less apparent cuts of the film are what allow the audience to understand how they relate to each other as lead characters: a shared smile, a shared role, and a shared goal to be loved.