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People today expect something when they go to the movies. They expect to be shocked, surprised, or amazed by today’s visually stunning special effects. American people’s shock response is reaching a plateau. It is taking more and more gore, explosions, and death to scare someone out of their minds. Take for example, the Alfred Hitchcock classic, Psycho. There is hardly any gore or anything vulgar in it, by today’s standards, but during the time period it came out in, it scared the socks off of people. Children of today, however, would not likely be so phased by this film, because they grew up with video games of people cutting each other’s heads off and films with mass murdering men with chainsaws.

It seems that the aspect of thought in movies to catch a person off guard isan’t so common anymore. Back in the cinema’s infancy, all they had were frame by frame pictures, with no special effects or sounds. But still, as noted, images of a train coming full speed at someone would definitely freak a person out back then. Whereas people of today could easily get that feeling at an amusement park. In fact, cinema can be considered to be like the amusement park in the way that most of it is created to get a rise/feeling out of someone in the process of entertaining them. As years and years go by, the more complex, dangerous, and startling the rides become. Much can be said of American cinema.

It can be said then, that these feelings are all unnatural, they are produced by someone else. Back in the days of early cinema, movies were personal expressions of the person who created the film, now a days its done to make money and have a lot of publicity. So it is safe to assume that a story is better told through the old method of cinema. In old cinema, a story is not covered up by the special effects and explosions of today’s pictures. Its just raw emotions and people putting themselves out there the best they can to convey feeling without sound, color, or fancy effects.