10 Genius Editing Decisions That Made Movie Scenes Great

Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho features one of the most ingeniously edited sequences in the history of cinema - the iconic scene in which apparent protagonist Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) is stabbed to death in the shower.

The stabbing itself lasts less than a minute, yet is composed of 78 camera setups and 52 cuts, in turn taking Hitchcock an entire week to film.

Even with the film's taboo-shattering depictions of sex and violence, Hitch was forced to use clever state-of-the-art editing techniques in order to imply more than he was actually able to show.

For starters, the fleeting glimpses of Marion's bare body are quick enough for audiences to think they might've seen some full-frontal nudity, when in actual fact that's hardly the case at all.

But the true masterstroke of Hitch's work with editor George Tomasini is how abrupt cuts are used to suggest violence which isn't actually visible in the single, disconnected shots themselves.

The scene features relatively minimal blood and no actual footage of open wounds created by the stabbing, but because of the intense and chaotic editing, full of intrusive close-ups and glimpses of a knife driving downwards, we feel as though we've witnessed something truly vile.

Martin Scorsese himself called Psycho's editing a "weapon" in its own right, and that the scene can still evoke such a visceral response in viewers six decades later is a grand testament to its ageless genius.