INTERTEXTUALITY

Intertextuality is a term to describe the visual referencing between films. It can include an author’s borrowing and transformation of a prior text or to a reader’s referencing of one text in reading another. Quite literally films 'borrow' from each other, and you, the audience, may recognize certain camera angles, aspects of mise en scene, snippets of sound or methods of editing in some films that you have seen in others.

Fatal attraction is one of the clips we analysed in class. It had many use of Intertextuality from the film Psycho. Psycho is a 1960 american thriller movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock. It's about a young women who steals money from her employers client, and subsequently encounters a young motel proprietor too long under the domination of his mother. 

In the short clip of Fatal attraction that we watched, what happened was a mad women with a knife wanted to attempt murder on another women. The setting was in a bathroom which was clinical white. Whilst they were fighting a man was downstairs boiling water so he couldn't hear what was going on. He then heard screaming from upstairs therefore ran up the stairs to find the mad women throwing the knife around at the other women. He then gets involved and eventually drowns her.


Some of the aspects that are borrowed from 'Psycho' were that both the settings were similar. They were both in a white clinical bathroom were both the murders took place. Moreover in the film fatal attraction, when she was trying to kill the other women, staggering the knife everywhere it had many jump cuts, an editing element that was borrowed from the film 'Psycho'. In addition to that when the mad women was dying there was music, to build up the tension, which is also similar to the film 'Psycho'.