One hundred years ago to this very day - the twenty nine of June - Bernard Herrmann was born in New York's Lying In Hospital, New York City. It was thanks to a generous donation from financier J.P.Morgan that construction on the facility had got under way at the end of the nineteenth century, and by 1902 the new maternity hospital was open for business, serving the neighbourhoods of the lower east side. Today the building, which is at Stuyvesant Square between 17th and 18th Streets, is the site of Rutherford Place, home to 122 wealthy New Yorkers.
Among the American films of 1911 were two shorts by D.W.Griffith (The Voice of the Child and Her Awakening), literary adaptations by Theodore Marston (David Copperfield and The Last of the Mohicans) and a romance called Sweet Memories starring Mary Pickford by Thomas Ince. Cinema - like the infant Herrmann - could still not yet speak, and the music that accompanied the images was limited to crude piano accompaniment.
That tiny bundle swaddled in cotton - born prematurely, two months before his mother's natural term - was to revolutionise the sound of cinema. Abrasive and belligerent, he forged his own way through life, and his toxic anger would corrode many of the personal and professional alliances that he formed over his turbulent career. John Green, the head of MGM's music department in the 1950s summed it up: "I think Benny Herrmann committed suicide. Unwittingly, not with drugs, not with a pistol, but with a four-letter word called hate."
Was Herrmann a difficult man? Undoubtedly, yes. Was he a genius? Again, undoubtedly, yes. Do the two often go hand in hand? Probably.
I've spent the last seven days on a journey through Herrmann's music, beginning with Citizen Kane and ending with Taxi Driver. I've written about each score, and I offer this blog as a small tribute to the composer on the one hundredth anniversary of his birth.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Taxi Driver
Martin Scorsese had a hard time convincing Herrmann to write the score for Taxi Driver. He first pitched the idea to him over the phone from Amsterdam, but the composer wasn't interested. "Oh no," he said, "I don't do things about cab drivers. No, no, no." The director wasn't about to give up: American cinema was part of his DNA, and within that DNA there were strands of Herrmann, spiralling from the great Hitchcock scores of the Fifties right back to the ominous brooding opening of Citizen Kane. Scorsese wanted his film to be "New York gothic" and he knew that Herrmann's "poetic morbidities" would be a perfect fit for the images that he had in his head. The director suggested a meeting, but the composer rebuffed him. Their dialogue went back and forth, each time ending with another refusal. When the two men finally met in London, Herrmann had read the script that had been sent to him. At last when he agreed to do the picture, Scorsese was curious as to what had finally convinced him. "I liked when he poured peach brandy on the cornflakes," Herrmann replied. "I'll do it."
His ideas for the score quickly coalesced and he had the music mapped out in the mind even before he had seen a frame of the film. Like the film's main character Travis Bickle, the score has a schizophrenic quality (as, indeed, would the original soundtrack Arista album). There was the lush jazz motif, suggesting the beauty of the blurred neon reflected in the rain-washed streets, a rich saxophone refrain that provided a deceptive romanticism of urban life. It's the kind of music you expect to accompany a private detective as he walks down the mean streets of the city - in fact, like the theme David Shire wrote for Farewell, My Lovely in the same year. In contrast, there were the strident chords of brass, the ticking bass and the relentless percussion that suggested the coiled anger of the main character just waiting to explode. Those who criticise the Taxi Diver score for being uneven are missing the point - its fractured beauty, the cracks and faultlines that scar its glassy surface, these are an integral part of the composer's concept.
The music serves the film well, but perhaps is less satisfying to listen to on disc. The original soundtrack release (Arista 258774) contained little of Herrmann's original score. One side of the vinyl was dedicated to "interpretations" of the music arranged and conducted by Dave Blume. These were beautifully played jazz numbers, but - with the exception of the instantly recognisable "Theme from Taxi Driver" - they seemed to have little to do with the movie. Side Two of the record opened with one of Travis Bickle's monologue (cleverly edited to erase the profanity) with Herrmann's score providing a quietly menacing backdrop. There were then just four tracks of Herrmann's original score to round out the disc. A remastered complete soundtrack (07822-19005-2) came out in 1998.
His ideas for the score quickly coalesced and he had the music mapped out in the mind even before he had seen a frame of the film. Like the film's main character Travis Bickle, the score has a schizophrenic quality (as, indeed, would the original soundtrack Arista album). There was the lush jazz motif, suggesting the beauty of the blurred neon reflected in the rain-washed streets, a rich saxophone refrain that provided a deceptive romanticism of urban life. It's the kind of music you expect to accompany a private detective as he walks down the mean streets of the city - in fact, like the theme David Shire wrote for Farewell, My Lovely in the same year. In contrast, there were the strident chords of brass, the ticking bass and the relentless percussion that suggested the coiled anger of the main character just waiting to explode. Those who criticise the Taxi Diver score for being uneven are missing the point - its fractured beauty, the cracks and faultlines that scar its glassy surface, these are an integral part of the composer's concept.
The music serves the film well, but perhaps is less satisfying to listen to on disc. The original soundtrack release (Arista 258774) contained little of Herrmann's original score. One side of the vinyl was dedicated to "interpretations" of the music arranged and conducted by Dave Blume. These were beautifully played jazz numbers, but - with the exception of the instantly recognisable "Theme from Taxi Driver" - they seemed to have little to do with the movie. Side Two of the record opened with one of Travis Bickle's monologue (cleverly edited to erase the profanity) with Herrmann's score providing a quietly menacing backdrop. There were then just four tracks of Herrmann's original score to round out the disc. A remastered complete soundtrack (07822-19005-2) came out in 1998.
Obsession
Obsession was another Brian De Palma exercise in Hitchockian ventriloquism. With Vertigo withdrawn from circulation and not to resurface until the mid Eighties, De Palma could make a carbon copy of its dead-woman-replaced-by-lookalike-by-obsessed-grieving-lover storyline with impunity. De Palma couldn't resist putting a further twist to the tale by adding an Oedipus Complex to an already preposterously complex plot.
When Michael Courtland's (Cliff Robertson) wife and young daughter are abducted, he involves the police against the kidnapper's instructions and, in a bungled ransom drop, his family are killed. Years pass and, still a grieving widower, Courtland visits Florence on a business trip. Here he meets Sandra (Genevive Bujold), a young woman who bears an uncanny resemblance to his dead wife. As Courtland begins to court her, he tries to turn her into a replica of his late wife. The two eventually marry but on their wedding night Sandra is kidnapped. In a dramatic re-enactment of the original ransom drop - with Herrmann's music driving the action and providing the emotion - Courtland learns that his business partner is behind the whole thing, and that Sandra is his long lost daughter. The final shot of the movie - a dizzying 360 degree camera movement that increases speed with each revolution - shows father and daughter locked in an incestuous embrace.
For this overripe melodrama Herrmann composed a score of ravishing beauty with a sonorous church organ providing its emotional core. The composer had suggested using just such an instrument to William Friedkin when he was asked to write the score for The Exorcist, and, at the time of his death, he was sketching out an organ symphony. Herrmann contributed more than just the music. He devised the title sequence, outlining it frame by frame to the director so that it would dovetail perfectly with his haunting "Main Title". The writing of this most spiritual of his scores seemed to have had a cathartic effect on the composer and he gave way to his emotions, breaking down in tears when the actress Genevieve Bujold thanked him for his contribution. Or maybe, he was simply tired. Just five months away from death in a Hollywood hotel, he found the recording sessions in St Giles Church in Cripplegate in London an exhausting experience, and, just as he had with his Psycho re-recording, asked his friend Laurie Johnson to take over the conducting for the final long cue.
Herrmann did not live to see the release of the movie. It came out in the summer of 1976 to appreciative reviews and a respectable box office take. Along with Taxi Driver, it was nominated for an Academy Award. It didn't win, but it didn't matter. For Herrmann the composition of the work had been its own reward. the soundtrack was released at the same time as the movie (B003QMZ3JM). I have the incomplete version on the Welles Raises Kane Unicorn disc (UKCD2065), which I'm listening to right now. It suffers from some savage editing and sudden transitions, but it's still a sublime piece of work.
When Michael Courtland's (Cliff Robertson) wife and young daughter are abducted, he involves the police against the kidnapper's instructions and, in a bungled ransom drop, his family are killed. Years pass and, still a grieving widower, Courtland visits Florence on a business trip. Here he meets Sandra (Genevive Bujold), a young woman who bears an uncanny resemblance to his dead wife. As Courtland begins to court her, he tries to turn her into a replica of his late wife. The two eventually marry but on their wedding night Sandra is kidnapped. In a dramatic re-enactment of the original ransom drop - with Herrmann's music driving the action and providing the emotion - Courtland learns that his business partner is behind the whole thing, and that Sandra is his long lost daughter. The final shot of the movie - a dizzying 360 degree camera movement that increases speed with each revolution - shows father and daughter locked in an incestuous embrace.
For this overripe melodrama Herrmann composed a score of ravishing beauty with a sonorous church organ providing its emotional core. The composer had suggested using just such an instrument to William Friedkin when he was asked to write the score for The Exorcist, and, at the time of his death, he was sketching out an organ symphony. Herrmann contributed more than just the music. He devised the title sequence, outlining it frame by frame to the director so that it would dovetail perfectly with his haunting "Main Title". The writing of this most spiritual of his scores seemed to have had a cathartic effect on the composer and he gave way to his emotions, breaking down in tears when the actress Genevieve Bujold thanked him for his contribution. Or maybe, he was simply tired. Just five months away from death in a Hollywood hotel, he found the recording sessions in St Giles Church in Cripplegate in London an exhausting experience, and, just as he had with his Psycho re-recording, asked his friend Laurie Johnson to take over the conducting for the final long cue.
Herrmann did not live to see the release of the movie. It came out in the summer of 1976 to appreciative reviews and a respectable box office take. Along with Taxi Driver, it was nominated for an Academy Award. It didn't win, but it didn't matter. For Herrmann the composition of the work had been its own reward. the soundtrack was released at the same time as the movie (B003QMZ3JM). I have the incomplete version on the Welles Raises Kane Unicorn disc (UKCD2065), which I'm listening to right now. It suffers from some savage editing and sudden transitions, but it's still a sublime piece of work.
It's Alive
It's Alive was the story of a killer baby that goes on a murderous rampage in the delivery room, terrorises Los Angeles, and ends up - like the ants in Them! - cornered by the military in the city's storm drains. The film no doubt spoke to the same anxieties of parenthood that Polanski had drawn upon for Rosemary's Baby and which were to inform the cycle of demon-child movies that began with The Exorcist and The Omen. Exploitation director Larry Cohen's movie had none of the style or sophistication of those big-budget studio pictures. Yet for all its schlock-horror schtick, it has one thing going for it that lifts it above its Z-movie origins: the scorching performance of John P. Ryan as the bewildered father of the monstrous baby.
Unfortunately, Herrmann's score is a mess: overcooked, over-the-top and all over the place. What a tragedy it would have been if this had been the score that had closed his career. And who could have guessed, based on the evidence of It's Alive, that he would go on to produce two of his greatest works within a year? For completists, a version of It's Alive is available on It's Alive 2 on the Silva Screen label (B000003QQ8). The music for the sequel is basically a rehash of the original themes, cobbled together by the composer's friend Laurie Johnson.
Unfortunately, Herrmann's score is a mess: overcooked, over-the-top and all over the place. What a tragedy it would have been if this had been the score that had closed his career. And who could have guessed, based on the evidence of It's Alive, that he would go on to produce two of his greatest works within a year? For completists, a version of It's Alive is available on It's Alive 2 on the Silva Screen label (B000003QQ8). The music for the sequel is basically a rehash of the original themes, cobbled together by the composer's friend Laurie Johnson.
Sisters
The Seventies saw the rise of a new breed of film makers - once dubbed the Movie Brats, or, as Billy Wilder called them, "the kids with the beards" - a cine-literate generation who had grown up on movies and TV. They formed the vanguard of a new Hollywood, and, although they initially rejected the old studio system in favour of independent guerrilla-style film making, they were respectful of those that had gone before them. Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, John Milius, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola and Brian De Palma were starting to make names for themselves, and for a few brief years - before corporate merchandising tempted many of them over to the dark side - Hollywood was an exciting place to be a movie maker.
If George Lucas took his inspiration from the Hollywood serials, Spielberg couldn't decide whether he wanted to be John Ford or Frank Capra. John Milius was either the new Howard Hawks or Sam Fuller. Scorsese - with his encyclopedic knowledge of American cinema - was happy to reference just about everybody from D.W.Griffith to Douglas Sirk. Out of them all, perhaps only Francis Ford Coppola was his own man, in thrall to no discernible influence (with the exception of Antonioni for The Conversation). Brian De Palma, of course, wanted only one thing: to be the new Hitchcock. He would, in fact, make a small career out of an almost obsessive imitation of some of the director's great works: Obsession for Vertigo, Dressed To Kill for Psycho, Body Double for Rear Window. The film that set him on this path was Sisters, and what better way to pay homage to Hitchcock than use Hitchcock's composer?
Actually, it was the editor Paul Hirsch, who had used the music from Psycho as a temp track while cutting the film, who convinced De Palma that Herrmann was their man. The initial meeting when they screened their rough cut for the composer was not auspicious. They had left some of the temp scoring on the soundtrack and, when the Marnie theme filled the screening room, Herrmann flew into a rage. He finally calmed down only to blow his top again when De Palma and Hirsch explained that there was to be no title music. "I will write you one title cue," Herrmann told them. "One minute and twenty seconds long. It will keep [the audience] in their seats until your murder scene. I got an idea using two Moog synthesizers." Herrmann was on board.
The music he wrote to accompany the main title images of a pair of demonic looking foetuses delivered on his promise - nothing else in the entire movie lives up to its raw savagery. The score oscillates between a swirling cacophony of wailing Moog, blaring horns and shrieking strings and quieter - but no less chilling - interludes of childlike melodies on the glockenspiel.
The soundtrack is available on the Southern Cross label (B000056WOD). One of the cues is also available on the Ghosts of Bernard Herrmann (ILL 313002), a compilation of the composer's greatest hits arranged for solo piano - a curio of an album, but highly recommended.
If George Lucas took his inspiration from the Hollywood serials, Spielberg couldn't decide whether he wanted to be John Ford or Frank Capra. John Milius was either the new Howard Hawks or Sam Fuller. Scorsese - with his encyclopedic knowledge of American cinema - was happy to reference just about everybody from D.W.Griffith to Douglas Sirk. Out of them all, perhaps only Francis Ford Coppola was his own man, in thrall to no discernible influence (with the exception of Antonioni for The Conversation). Brian De Palma, of course, wanted only one thing: to be the new Hitchcock. He would, in fact, make a small career out of an almost obsessive imitation of some of the director's great works: Obsession for Vertigo, Dressed To Kill for Psycho, Body Double for Rear Window. The film that set him on this path was Sisters, and what better way to pay homage to Hitchcock than use Hitchcock's composer?
Actually, it was the editor Paul Hirsch, who had used the music from Psycho as a temp track while cutting the film, who convinced De Palma that Herrmann was their man. The initial meeting when they screened their rough cut for the composer was not auspicious. They had left some of the temp scoring on the soundtrack and, when the Marnie theme filled the screening room, Herrmann flew into a rage. He finally calmed down only to blow his top again when De Palma and Hirsch explained that there was to be no title music. "I will write you one title cue," Herrmann told them. "One minute and twenty seconds long. It will keep [the audience] in their seats until your murder scene. I got an idea using two Moog synthesizers." Herrmann was on board.
The music he wrote to accompany the main title images of a pair of demonic looking foetuses delivered on his promise - nothing else in the entire movie lives up to its raw savagery. The score oscillates between a swirling cacophony of wailing Moog, blaring horns and shrieking strings and quieter - but no less chilling - interludes of childlike melodies on the glockenspiel.
The soundtrack is available on the Southern Cross label (B000056WOD). One of the cues is also available on the Ghosts of Bernard Herrmann (ILL 313002), a compilation of the composer's greatest hits arranged for solo piano - a curio of an album, but highly recommended.
Endless Night
Endless Night was a British movie based on an Agatha Christie whodunit set in an isolated house on a stretch of remote English coastline. The film was given a theatrical release in the UK in 1972, but its poor reception led it to being sold directly to American TV. Murder on the Orient Express was still two years away, and producers had not yet twigged to the fact that Agatha Christie adaptations always worked better as period pieces. The Grand Dame of crime fiction did not care for the modern tone of the film and was shocked by the inclusion of nudity.
Herrmann was full of enthusiasm when he started work on the picture. Still experimenting with unusual orchestrations, he hit on the idea of using a Moog synthesizer to give the score an eerie quality. In 1968 Walter Carlos had released Switched On Bach, an album of classical music reinterpreted with the Moog, which quickly became one of the highest-selling classical discs of all time. Carlos would go on to work with Stanley Kubrick on A Clockwork Orange and The Shining (he would also become a she - Wendy, like Jack Torrance's wife - after sex reassignment surgery in 1972). The Moog was an established part of rock recordings and The Beatles had experimented with it on some of the tracks for Abbey Road in 1969. The first film soundtrack to be credited with its use is John Barry's adrenalin-pumping score for the James Bond movie On Her Majesty's Secret Service in the same year. Herrmann became so enamoured with the instrument's possibilities that he used it in his next two scores.
Endless Night, however, proved to be a disappointing experience for Herrmann, and, embarrassed by the final product, he turned down an invitation to attend a screening with the author's husband. Had the film been a success, Herrmann's score might not have become the rarity it is today. Unreleased on disc, it can only be heard as it was meant to be, as background to the film on DVD.
Herrmann was full of enthusiasm when he started work on the picture. Still experimenting with unusual orchestrations, he hit on the idea of using a Moog synthesizer to give the score an eerie quality. In 1968 Walter Carlos had released Switched On Bach, an album of classical music reinterpreted with the Moog, which quickly became one of the highest-selling classical discs of all time. Carlos would go on to work with Stanley Kubrick on A Clockwork Orange and The Shining (he would also become a she - Wendy, like Jack Torrance's wife - after sex reassignment surgery in 1972). The Moog was an established part of rock recordings and The Beatles had experimented with it on some of the tracks for Abbey Road in 1969. The first film soundtrack to be credited with its use is John Barry's adrenalin-pumping score for the James Bond movie On Her Majesty's Secret Service in the same year. Herrmann became so enamoured with the instrument's possibilities that he used it in his next two scores.
Endless Night, however, proved to be a disappointing experience for Herrmann, and, embarrassed by the final product, he turned down an invitation to attend a screening with the author's husband. Had the film been a success, Herrmann's score might not have become the rarity it is today. Unreleased on disc, it can only be heard as it was meant to be, as background to the film on DVD.
The Battle of Neretva
The Battle of Neretva was one of those big war movies - like The Longest Day and A Bridge Too Far - that ended up being as big a logistical nightmare as the campaign it was portraying. Shot in 1969 on a state-sponsored budget in what was then Yugoslavia, it included Yul Brynner and Orson Welles among its mostly indigenous Serbo-Croat-speaking cast. Dubbed into English for an international release in 1971, it provided Herrmann with a vast canvas to work on, even though its original three hour running time had been whittled down to 102 minutes. Herrmann, in fact, compared the film to "a great big roast beef", overdone in parts and undercooked in others. If his music was to be the gravy, then he poured it on thick.
He assembled an army of musicians to play the most bombastic score of his career, a huge fortress of sound that towered over the film. Among the themes he included was the unused murder music from Torn Curtain (it's not recorded whether Hitchcock ever saw the picture) and a delicate melody from Souvenirs de Voyage, a clarinet quintet he had written for his wife in 1967. It's unlikely that anybody but Herrmann was aware of these self-borrowings at the time. One of the stand-out tracks is "The Retreat", which captures the futility of war with a slow deliberate march set against a long yearning melody for strings. I'm listening to that cue right now on the Bernard Herrmann At The Movies disc (Label X ATM CD 2003). The Tribute Film Classics label is bringing out a re-recording of the score in the summer of this year.
He assembled an army of musicians to play the most bombastic score of his career, a huge fortress of sound that towered over the film. Among the themes he included was the unused murder music from Torn Curtain (it's not recorded whether Hitchcock ever saw the picture) and a delicate melody from Souvenirs de Voyage, a clarinet quintet he had written for his wife in 1967. It's unlikely that anybody but Herrmann was aware of these self-borrowings at the time. One of the stand-out tracks is "The Retreat", which captures the futility of war with a slow deliberate march set against a long yearning melody for strings. I'm listening to that cue right now on the Bernard Herrmann At The Movies disc (Label X ATM CD 2003). The Tribute Film Classics label is bringing out a re-recording of the score in the summer of this year.
The Night Digger
The Night Digger (which was known by the more prosaic title of The Road Builder in the UK) was another small British film about a psychotic killer, a genre into which Herrmann seemed to have been strait-jacketed. Based on a novel called Nest in a Falling Tree, it boasted a script by Roald Dahl, the writer of delightfully bizarre stories for children, and Saki-like tales of revenge with a macabre twist for adults. Hitchcock had made one of these (Lamb to the Slaughter) into one of his most celebrated TV shows. In The Night Digger a middle-aged woman (Patricia Neal - Dahl's wife in real life) becomes infatuated with Billy Jarvis (Nicholas Clay), a young handyman who hides a dark secret.
Just as he made an unconventional choice in scoring his previous film with an eerie human whistle, the composer elected to depict the unstable mind of Billy Jarvis through the wheezing sound of a harmonica. Two years earlier John Barry had chosen the same instrument for his plaintive theme for Midnight Cowboy, and John Williams would shortly use it for his first Spielberg picture The Sugarland Express. Rejecting any such folky Mr Bojangles associations, Herrmann made it the sound of another twisted bundle of nerves, and produced one his late great scores.
With its stabbing, churning strings, the music invites comparison with Psycho, but Herrmann also adds a warmer lyrical tone in solo passages for the viola d'amore, the instrument he spotlighted in On Dangerous Ground. Available in the form of a "Scenario Macabre for String Orchestra" on Label X (LXCD1002) and on Bernard Herrmann At The Movies (ATM CD 2003), it's one of the composers great underrated works.
Just as he made an unconventional choice in scoring his previous film with an eerie human whistle, the composer elected to depict the unstable mind of Billy Jarvis through the wheezing sound of a harmonica. Two years earlier John Barry had chosen the same instrument for his plaintive theme for Midnight Cowboy, and John Williams would shortly use it for his first Spielberg picture The Sugarland Express. Rejecting any such folky Mr Bojangles associations, Herrmann made it the sound of another twisted bundle of nerves, and produced one his late great scores.
With its stabbing, churning strings, the music invites comparison with Psycho, but Herrmann also adds a warmer lyrical tone in solo passages for the viola d'amore, the instrument he spotlighted in On Dangerous Ground. Available in the form of a "Scenario Macabre for String Orchestra" on Label X (LXCD1002) and on Bernard Herrmann At The Movies (ATM CD 2003), it's one of the composers great underrated works.
Twisted Nerve
Unlike his contemporary Miklós Rózsa, who in the latter part of his career selected the projects he worked on with great care, Herrmann became less and less particular in his final years. Just as his famous first collaborator Orson Welles was prostituting his talent during the late Sixties in movies like Casino Royale and I'll Never Forget What's Isname, so Herrmann seemed to be slumming it. Had it not been for the last hurrah of Obsession and Taxi Driver, his career might have ended in a depressing muddle of low-rent horror films. The first of these was Twisted Nerve, a grubby English thriller about a disturbed young man (Hywel Bennett) with a disturbing infatuation for a young girl (Hayley Mills). The film's suspect use of mental illness to explain away criminal actions provoked outrage and the film makers were forced to add a narrated disclaimer at the start of the film:
"Ladies and gentlemen, because of the controversy already aroused, the producers of this film wish to re-emphasize what is already stated in the film, that there is no established scientific connection between Mongolism and psychotic or criminal behavior."
Defenders of the movie will tell you that it is in the grand British tradition of that other misunderstood masterpiece Peeping Tom when, in reality, it's simply a precursor to the brutish nasty Seventies exploitation films of Pete Walker such as Frightmare and Schizo.
Herrmann struck on the novel idea of orchestrating the main theme for solo whistler accompanied by a queasy vibraphone and a brutal climax of horns. This whistling theme had a second life in Taranatino's Kill Bill Volume 1 (Track 4 on the soundtrack, which I'm playing a loop right now), and on the back of that became a hip ringtone. A limited release of the score - coupled with The Bride Wore Black - was brought out by Kritzerland, but all 1,200 copies have been sold.
"Ladies and gentlemen, because of the controversy already aroused, the producers of this film wish to re-emphasize what is already stated in the film, that there is no established scientific connection between Mongolism and psychotic or criminal behavior."
Defenders of the movie will tell you that it is in the grand British tradition of that other misunderstood masterpiece Peeping Tom when, in reality, it's simply a precursor to the brutish nasty Seventies exploitation films of Pete Walker such as Frightmare and Schizo.
Herrmann struck on the novel idea of orchestrating the main theme for solo whistler accompanied by a queasy vibraphone and a brutal climax of horns. This whistling theme had a second life in Taranatino's Kill Bill Volume 1 (Track 4 on the soundtrack, which I'm playing a loop right now), and on the back of that became a hip ringtone. A limited release of the score - coupled with The Bride Wore Black - was brought out by Kritzerland, but all 1,200 copies have been sold.
The Bride Wore Black
Despite the language barrier (or, perhaps, because of it) Herrmann and Truffaut got on well enough during the making of Fahrenheit 451 to agree to collaborate on a second project in 1967. The Bride Wore Black, or La Mariée était en noir in the language in which the film was made, was Trauffaut's failed attempt to emulate the Master of Suspense. Based on a short story by Cornell Woolrich (author of the source material for Rear Window), it told the story of a young bride who takes revenge on the men who made her a widow on her wedding day. (A similar plot, coincidentally, to Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill Volume 1 and 2, which appropriated Herrmann's psychotic whistling theme from Twisted Nerve.) The film did not live up to the promise of its premise. In the hands of Claude Chabrol it might have bloomed into a macabre oddity, but under Truffaut's fussy care it withered on the vine. The critics hated it and even the director would later disown it.
Herrmann build his score around a mordant version of Mendelssohn's "Wedding March", interpolating it into his own jagged sequences of horns and percussion. There were echoes of the music from On Dangerous Ground and - appropriately for a Gallic setting - a reworking of the "Memory Waltz" from The Snows of Kilimanjaro. Herrmann's experience on the film was not a happy one. The score was recorded in Paris with a French orchestra with whom Herrmann struggled to communicate. Truffaut outwardly expressed delight at the finished result, but chopped and changed some of the cues in the editing without consulting the composer. He was, at least, gracious enough to send the composer a thank you note in bad English ("Francois Truffaut is very happy man ... and he say thank you very very much for you and Norma your inspiratrice."). Norma - Herrmann's inspiration - was Norma Shepherd, Herrmann's young bride, almost thirty years his junior.
There are eleven minutes and twenty seven seconds of the score in the form of "A Musical Scenario" on the Elmer Bernstein The Bernard Herrmann Film Score Tribute disc (Milan 71000-2), which I've been playing on a loop while writing the above.
Herrmann build his score around a mordant version of Mendelssohn's "Wedding March", interpolating it into his own jagged sequences of horns and percussion. There were echoes of the music from On Dangerous Ground and - appropriately for a Gallic setting - a reworking of the "Memory Waltz" from The Snows of Kilimanjaro. Herrmann's experience on the film was not a happy one. The score was recorded in Paris with a French orchestra with whom Herrmann struggled to communicate. Truffaut outwardly expressed delight at the finished result, but chopped and changed some of the cues in the editing without consulting the composer. He was, at least, gracious enough to send the composer a thank you note in bad English ("Francois Truffaut is very happy man ... and he say thank you very very much for you and Norma your inspiratrice."). Norma - Herrmann's inspiration - was Norma Shepherd, Herrmann's young bride, almost thirty years his junior.
There are eleven minutes and twenty seven seconds of the score in the form of "A Musical Scenario" on the Elmer Bernstein The Bernard Herrmann Film Score Tribute disc (Milan 71000-2), which I've been playing on a loop while writing the above.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Fahrenheit 451
In November 1965 Herrmann signed off a letter to Hitchcock's longtime assistant Peggy Robertson with news of a new project: "I have been asked to do Truffaut's new film next May or June. I am certain that this is because of Hitch and I thank him for it." The film was Fahrenheit 451, an adaptation of Ray Bradbury's dystopian view of a world where the printed word is outlawed. Truffaut asked Herrmann to "give [him] music of the twenty first century", but what he got was something timeless. The composer wrote for strings only and augmented the sound with harp, xylophone, vibraphone, marimba and glockenspiel. The lush strings are overlaid with trembling tender percussion, and some of the cues remind me of the seventh movement of Saint Saens' "The Carnival of the Animals".
The film tells the story of Montag (Oskar Werner), a 'fireman' employed by the state in the task of book-burning. When he falls in love with bibliophile Clarissa (Julie Christie) he begins to question his role as an oppressor and seeks out a new way of life. The film's visuals (flying jetpacks and monorails) have dated badly and Truffaut was never really confortable working in a genre idiom. The picture's message seems forced and the sharp satire of Ray Bradbury's original work is blunted by an over-literal interpretation. Nevertheless, there are two sublime moments, both of which are enhanced by Herrmann's lustrous score. The first is the burning of Montag's books cruelly documented to the sound of the shimmering "Flowers of Fire" cue. [Herrmann might have got a malicious thrill of pleasure seeing Robin Wood's Hitchcock's Films among the books consumed by flames.] The second is the final shot of the Book People walking in the snow while reciting the texts they have learnt by heart - this scene, which was filmed outdoors at Pinewood Studios, was a happy accident with Truffaut taking advantage of a real snowstorm.
Herrmann's full score is available in a lush re-recording by Morgan and Stromberg on the Tribute Film Classics label (TFC-002). Herrmann arranged and recorded a Suite for Strings, Harp and Percussion from the film for one of his Decca albums, and this same suite has also been re-recorded by Joel MacNeely and Esa-Pekka Salonen.
The film tells the story of Montag (Oskar Werner), a 'fireman' employed by the state in the task of book-burning. When he falls in love with bibliophile Clarissa (Julie Christie) he begins to question his role as an oppressor and seeks out a new way of life. The film's visuals (flying jetpacks and monorails) have dated badly and Truffaut was never really confortable working in a genre idiom. The picture's message seems forced and the sharp satire of Ray Bradbury's original work is blunted by an over-literal interpretation. Nevertheless, there are two sublime moments, both of which are enhanced by Herrmann's lustrous score. The first is the burning of Montag's books cruelly documented to the sound of the shimmering "Flowers of Fire" cue. [Herrmann might have got a malicious thrill of pleasure seeing Robin Wood's Hitchcock's Films among the books consumed by flames.] The second is the final shot of the Book People walking in the snow while reciting the texts they have learnt by heart - this scene, which was filmed outdoors at Pinewood Studios, was a happy accident with Truffaut taking advantage of a real snowstorm.
Herrmann's full score is available in a lush re-recording by Morgan and Stromberg on the Tribute Film Classics label (TFC-002). Herrmann arranged and recorded a Suite for Strings, Harp and Percussion from the film for one of his Decca albums, and this same suite has also been re-recorded by Joel MacNeely and Esa-Pekka Salonen.
Torn Curtain
The spy thriller was a type of picture that Hitchcock could rightly claim as his own by the end of the Fifties - after all, wasn't North by Northwest (with its beautiful women, famous landmarks, and hair-raising stunts) the prototype of a genre that would dominate the Sixties? Throughout that decade James Bond, Derek Flint, Matt Helm, Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin were regularly dispatched on missions to rid the world of evil megalomaniacs bent on world domination. In Torn Curtain Hitchcock wanted to debunk the glamorous myth of espionage that he had helped to create - he had made the mould, and, now with his fiftieth film, he wanted to break it.
The film told the story of an American scientist (Paul Newman) who defects to East Germany as a cover in order to learn a secret formula from his old professor. He is pursued by his fiancee (Julie Andrews), who is torn between her love for him and her love for her country. On release the film was met with almost universal derision: "awful", "preposterous" and "irritatingly slack" were some of the choice adjectives in The New Yorker review. Life magazine's film critic Richard Schickel spoke for many when he said, "Hitchcock is tired to the point where what once seemed highly personal style is now merely repetition of past triumphs." In fact, Hitchcock had levelled this very same criticism at Herrmann in a telegram date November 4, 1965. He accused the composer of "conforming to the old pattern" and asked for something new, something with "a beat and a rhythm" that would satisfy the demands of the "young, vigorous and demanding" young audiences. He went on:
...I AM ASKING YOU TO APPROACH THIS PROBLEM WITH A RECEPTIVE AND IF POSSIBLE ENTHUSIASTIC MIND. IF YOU CANNOT DO THIS THEN I AM THE LOSER. I HAVE MADE UP MY MIND THAT THIS APPROACH TO THE MUSIC IS EXTREMELY ESSENTIAL, I ALSO HAVE VERY DEFINITE IDEAS AS TO WHERE MUSIC SHOULD GO IN THE PICTURE AND THERE IS NOT TOO MUCH.
Herrmann replied the very next day with what looked like an acceptance of Hitchcock's terms. With hindsight, however, it's difficult not to detect an element of irony in the composer's tone:
DELIGHTED COMPOSE VIGOROUS BEAT SCORE FOR TORN CURTAIN ALWAYS PLEASED HAVE YOUR VIEWS REGARDING MUSIC FOR YOUR FILM
In referring to rhythm and beat it's quite possible that Hitchcock had in mind the scores of John Barry, who was providing propulsive music for the James Bond series and managing to knock out hit songs for each movie as well. There hadn't been a hit song for a Hitchcock picture since The Man Who Knew Too Much. To Herrmann a "vigorous beat score" would mean a thundering timpani section. Had the two men sat down face to face, they might have worked out the misunderstandings between them, but, with Herrmann writing in London and Hitchcock holed up in his wood-panelled office at Universal, there was no chance of an early agreement.
Herrmann arrived in Los Angeles just after Christmas and played some early sketches (not yet orchestrated) for the director, who immediately pronounced them to be too "heavy". Hitchcock also took the opportunity to remind Herrmann that he wanted no music under the lengthy killing of the secret policeman Gromek. The director rightly saw this as the movie's set piece - the moment that, like the Psycho shower scene, would grab the audience's attention, and be talked about and analysed for its virtuoso technique. Herrmann had heard all this before on Psycho. In going against the director's express wishes on that occasion, he had proved himself to be right, and had been handsomely rewarded in the process.
Again, the opportunity for the two men to iron out their differences was lost. Herrmann finished the score within a couple of months. When he stood before the bizarre orchestra of brass and woodwinds at the Goldwyn Studios in March 1966 and raised his baton to conduct the "Prelude", he had no idea that his professional career was about to implode. Hitchcock came by the recording studio to listen to the day's work. "I heard the first segment," he said, "and I said, 'Finished, no other way, finished; goodbye, here's your money, sorry.' " Not being a man who enjoyed confrontation, Hitchcock then walked out of the studio. Years later, when Herrmann came by his office to attempt a kind of reconciliation, the director hid behind his door and instructed his secretary to say that he was out.
John Addison, who had won an Oscar for his score to Tom Jones, came on board as a replacement for Herrmann. Under the difficult circumstances of a tight deadline, he produced a serviceable score, but it had none of the beat or rhythm that Hitchcock had originally called for. Herrmann ended up cannibalising parts of his unused score for The Battle of Neretva five years later.
The unused score finally emerged on CD in 1998 when Joel McNeely recorded it for Varese Sarabande (VSD-5817). It's quite a grim affair, in keeping with the desaturated look of Hitchcock's visuals. It opens with the thundering "Prelude" with its screaming flutes and blaring trombones, but consists mostly of low-key mood music. The stand-out moment in the score is the one piece of music Hitchcock did not ask for ("The Killing"). On the Torn Curtain DVD there is an extra feature that shows the sequence with Herrmann's music. I agree with Hitchcock, though. The scene works better without music.The need for the killing to be done silently is an important plot point and a blaring orchestra accompaniment undermines the tension.
The film told the story of an American scientist (Paul Newman) who defects to East Germany as a cover in order to learn a secret formula from his old professor. He is pursued by his fiancee (Julie Andrews), who is torn between her love for him and her love for her country. On release the film was met with almost universal derision: "awful", "preposterous" and "irritatingly slack" were some of the choice adjectives in The New Yorker review. Life magazine's film critic Richard Schickel spoke for many when he said, "Hitchcock is tired to the point where what once seemed highly personal style is now merely repetition of past triumphs." In fact, Hitchcock had levelled this very same criticism at Herrmann in a telegram date November 4, 1965. He accused the composer of "conforming to the old pattern" and asked for something new, something with "a beat and a rhythm" that would satisfy the demands of the "young, vigorous and demanding" young audiences. He went on:
...I AM ASKING YOU TO APPROACH THIS PROBLEM WITH A RECEPTIVE AND IF POSSIBLE ENTHUSIASTIC MIND. IF YOU CANNOT DO THIS THEN I AM THE LOSER. I HAVE MADE UP MY MIND THAT THIS APPROACH TO THE MUSIC IS EXTREMELY ESSENTIAL, I ALSO HAVE VERY DEFINITE IDEAS AS TO WHERE MUSIC SHOULD GO IN THE PICTURE AND THERE IS NOT TOO MUCH.
Herrmann replied the very next day with what looked like an acceptance of Hitchcock's terms. With hindsight, however, it's difficult not to detect an element of irony in the composer's tone:
DELIGHTED COMPOSE VIGOROUS BEAT SCORE FOR TORN CURTAIN ALWAYS PLEASED HAVE YOUR VIEWS REGARDING MUSIC FOR YOUR FILM
In referring to rhythm and beat it's quite possible that Hitchcock had in mind the scores of John Barry, who was providing propulsive music for the James Bond series and managing to knock out hit songs for each movie as well. There hadn't been a hit song for a Hitchcock picture since The Man Who Knew Too Much. To Herrmann a "vigorous beat score" would mean a thundering timpani section. Had the two men sat down face to face, they might have worked out the misunderstandings between them, but, with Herrmann writing in London and Hitchcock holed up in his wood-panelled office at Universal, there was no chance of an early agreement.
Herrmann arrived in Los Angeles just after Christmas and played some early sketches (not yet orchestrated) for the director, who immediately pronounced them to be too "heavy". Hitchcock also took the opportunity to remind Herrmann that he wanted no music under the lengthy killing of the secret policeman Gromek. The director rightly saw this as the movie's set piece - the moment that, like the Psycho shower scene, would grab the audience's attention, and be talked about and analysed for its virtuoso technique. Herrmann had heard all this before on Psycho. In going against the director's express wishes on that occasion, he had proved himself to be right, and had been handsomely rewarded in the process.
Again, the opportunity for the two men to iron out their differences was lost. Herrmann finished the score within a couple of months. When he stood before the bizarre orchestra of brass and woodwinds at the Goldwyn Studios in March 1966 and raised his baton to conduct the "Prelude", he had no idea that his professional career was about to implode. Hitchcock came by the recording studio to listen to the day's work. "I heard the first segment," he said, "and I said, 'Finished, no other way, finished; goodbye, here's your money, sorry.' " Not being a man who enjoyed confrontation, Hitchcock then walked out of the studio. Years later, when Herrmann came by his office to attempt a kind of reconciliation, the director hid behind his door and instructed his secretary to say that he was out.
John Addison, who had won an Oscar for his score to Tom Jones, came on board as a replacement for Herrmann. Under the difficult circumstances of a tight deadline, he produced a serviceable score, but it had none of the beat or rhythm that Hitchcock had originally called for. Herrmann ended up cannibalising parts of his unused score for The Battle of Neretva five years later.
The unused score finally emerged on CD in 1998 when Joel McNeely recorded it for Varese Sarabande (VSD-5817). It's quite a grim affair, in keeping with the desaturated look of Hitchcock's visuals. It opens with the thundering "Prelude" with its screaming flutes and blaring trombones, but consists mostly of low-key mood music. The stand-out moment in the score is the one piece of music Hitchcock did not ask for ("The Killing"). On the Torn Curtain DVD there is an extra feature that shows the sequence with Herrmann's music. I agree with Hitchcock, though. The scene works better without music.The need for the killing to be done silently is an important plot point and a blaring orchestra accompaniment undermines the tension.
Joy in the Morning
Herrmann's only score of 1965 was Joy in the Morning, a joyless adaptation of a Betty Smith novel about marriage in Brooklyn. The movie seems to have left Herrmann uninspired and the music he provided was a shameless retread of the material he had written for Hitchcock the previous year. In fact, so similar was the main theme that Hitchcock (always with an eye on the money) wondered whether he might have some claim on the music rights. On November 4th he sent a lengthy telegram to Herrmann, who had by then decamped to London. The director began by reiterating his desire for his regular composer to score his planned espionage thriller, but then launched into a long lecture on the responsibilities of the artist:
I AM VERY ANXIOUS FOR YOU TO DO THE MUSIC ON TORN CURTAIN STOP I WAS EXTREMELY DISAPPOINTED WHEN I HEARD THE SCORE OF JOY IN THE MORNING NOT ONLY DID I FIND IT CONFORMING TO THE OLD PATTERN BUT EXTREMELY REMINISCENT OF THE MARNIE MUSIC IN FACT THE THEME WAS ALMOST THE SAME STOP UNFORTUNATELY FOR WE ARTISTS WE DO NOT HAVE THE FREEDOM THAT WE WOULD LIKE TO HAVE BECAUSE WE ARE CATERING TO AN AUDIENCE AND THAT IS WHY YOU GET YOUR MONEY AND I GET MINE STOP
What Hitchcock probably didn't know was that the music for Marnie was already second-hand by the time he acquired it. Herrmann had used the string melody as the theme for the Princess in The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. So, if it had gone to court, the Master of Suspense could have ended up owing money to Ray Harryhausen.
Joy in the Morning is, surprisingly, available on disc on an FSM release (Vol. 5 No. 3). In a way, it's testament to Herrmann's reputation that even his weakest most derivative scores are available on CD. I don't own the score and have never heard it. Still, if Hitchcock says it sounds like Marnie, who am I to argue?
I AM VERY ANXIOUS FOR YOU TO DO THE MUSIC ON TORN CURTAIN STOP I WAS EXTREMELY DISAPPOINTED WHEN I HEARD THE SCORE OF JOY IN THE MORNING NOT ONLY DID I FIND IT CONFORMING TO THE OLD PATTERN BUT EXTREMELY REMINISCENT OF THE MARNIE MUSIC IN FACT THE THEME WAS ALMOST THE SAME STOP UNFORTUNATELY FOR WE ARTISTS WE DO NOT HAVE THE FREEDOM THAT WE WOULD LIKE TO HAVE BECAUSE WE ARE CATERING TO AN AUDIENCE AND THAT IS WHY YOU GET YOUR MONEY AND I GET MINE STOP
What Hitchcock probably didn't know was that the music for Marnie was already second-hand by the time he acquired it. Herrmann had used the string melody as the theme for the Princess in The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. So, if it had gone to court, the Master of Suspense could have ended up owing money to Ray Harryhausen.
Joy in the Morning is, surprisingly, available on disc on an FSM release (Vol. 5 No. 3). In a way, it's testament to Herrmann's reputation that even his weakest most derivative scores are available on CD. I don't own the score and have never heard it. Still, if Hitchcock says it sounds like Marnie, who am I to argue?
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Marnie
Although Herrmann could not know it when he embarked on the score for Marnie in January 1964, it was to be the last he would complete for Alfred Hitchcock. Although the professional collaboration between the director and the composer was less than a decade old, it was beginning to show signs of strain. While Hitchcock was at least trying to keep up with the changing times, Herrmann seemed to be becoming more and more reactionary, and it could only be a matter of time before the two locked horns.
Hitchcock's reputation as a filmmaker was secure. The Birds had been shown out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival and had been given a gala screening at the Museum of Modern Art in New York as part of a fifty film retrospective of his work. Francois Truffant had interviewed him with the help of an interpreter over fifty hours in preparation for a book that, when it was published in 1966, would confer on Hitchcock the status of ultimate auteur. The director may have been an artist first, but he was also a businessman, and he always kept a keen eye on the money. Securing Sean Connery for the male lead of his next film would seem likely to assure its box-office success, but he was frustrated in his attempts to woo Grace Kelly (now Princess Grace of Monaco) back onto the screen.
The reason for Princess Grace's reluctance to step back into the Hollywood spotlight was the material that Hitchcock was proposing for his next feature. Marnie, based on a novel by Winston Graham, was the story of a frigid kleptomaniac who is raped by her husband. Her sexual hang-ups stem from a childhood incident when she bludgeoned a man to death with a poker in an attempt to protect her prostitute mother. And, if that were not enough, she also kills a horse. Rather than playing down the racy material, Hitchcock - desperate to appeal to the liberated Sixties audiences - wanted to lay it bare, and he ultimately fell out with scriptwriter Evan Hunter (aka Ed McBain) over the crucial rape scene.
At least the director was confident he could control his female lead ('Tippi' Hedren) - after all he had discovered her, and - just like Scottie Ferguson with Judy - had been grooming her for a very special role. But during the shooting Hitchcock and Hedren fell out. He would later claim that she had done something no one was permitted to do - refer to his weight. Her side of the story, which only came out after the director's death, was that he had sexually harrassed her. "All I can say," she told one interviewer demurely, "is demands of me were made that I couldn't acquiesce to." The rift was irrevocable. The two never worked together again and, cruelly, Hitchcock used the terms of Hedren's contract to deny her a career.
Apologists for Marnie say that Hitchcock deliberately sabotaged his own film with poor rear projection and slipshod backdrops to get back at his star, or that these suspect elements of the film were placed deliberately to highlight the artifice of his construct. Whether it was accident or design or just pure sloppiness, I don't know, but I still find Marnie a strangely affecting experience every time I watch it.
Herrmann's score conveys the picture's mood of suppressed hysteria in musical form. The love theme - for want of a better phrase - is more tortured than tender, and its constant repetition (without much variation) through the film mirrors Marnie's compulsive behaviour.
The film was not a success - not even Sean Connery could draw the crowds - and suddenly Hitchcock was in danger of becoming yesterday's man, and started looking round for people to blame. It would only be a matter of time before he found a scapegoat in Herrmann.
The Marnie score is available on Varese Sarabande (VSD-6094). A suite of the music - which includes the spirited "The Hunt" cue - has been recorded on several occasions.
Hitchcock's reputation as a filmmaker was secure. The Birds had been shown out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival and had been given a gala screening at the Museum of Modern Art in New York as part of a fifty film retrospective of his work. Francois Truffant had interviewed him with the help of an interpreter over fifty hours in preparation for a book that, when it was published in 1966, would confer on Hitchcock the status of ultimate auteur. The director may have been an artist first, but he was also a businessman, and he always kept a keen eye on the money. Securing Sean Connery for the male lead of his next film would seem likely to assure its box-office success, but he was frustrated in his attempts to woo Grace Kelly (now Princess Grace of Monaco) back onto the screen.
The reason for Princess Grace's reluctance to step back into the Hollywood spotlight was the material that Hitchcock was proposing for his next feature. Marnie, based on a novel by Winston Graham, was the story of a frigid kleptomaniac who is raped by her husband. Her sexual hang-ups stem from a childhood incident when she bludgeoned a man to death with a poker in an attempt to protect her prostitute mother. And, if that were not enough, she also kills a horse. Rather than playing down the racy material, Hitchcock - desperate to appeal to the liberated Sixties audiences - wanted to lay it bare, and he ultimately fell out with scriptwriter Evan Hunter (aka Ed McBain) over the crucial rape scene.
At least the director was confident he could control his female lead ('Tippi' Hedren) - after all he had discovered her, and - just like Scottie Ferguson with Judy - had been grooming her for a very special role. But during the shooting Hitchcock and Hedren fell out. He would later claim that she had done something no one was permitted to do - refer to his weight. Her side of the story, which only came out after the director's death, was that he had sexually harrassed her. "All I can say," she told one interviewer demurely, "is demands of me were made that I couldn't acquiesce to." The rift was irrevocable. The two never worked together again and, cruelly, Hitchcock used the terms of Hedren's contract to deny her a career.
Apologists for Marnie say that Hitchcock deliberately sabotaged his own film with poor rear projection and slipshod backdrops to get back at his star, or that these suspect elements of the film were placed deliberately to highlight the artifice of his construct. Whether it was accident or design or just pure sloppiness, I don't know, but I still find Marnie a strangely affecting experience every time I watch it.
Herrmann's score conveys the picture's mood of suppressed hysteria in musical form. The love theme - for want of a better phrase - is more tortured than tender, and its constant repetition (without much variation) through the film mirrors Marnie's compulsive behaviour.
The film was not a success - not even Sean Connery could draw the crowds - and suddenly Hitchcock was in danger of becoming yesterday's man, and started looking round for people to blame. It would only be a matter of time before he found a scapegoat in Herrmann.
The Marnie score is available on Varese Sarabande (VSD-6094). A suite of the music - which includes the spirited "The Hunt" cue - has been recorded on several occasions.
The Birds
Early on in production Hitchcock decided that The Birds would have no conventional music score, and so on the final picture Herrmann is credited as Sound Consultant. This meant working with two Germans (Oskar Sala and Remi Gassmann) who were experts on the electro-acoustic Trautonium, an instrument that Hitchcock had first heard on Berlin radio in the late Twenties. The croaks and cries of the birds that punctuate the latter part of the film were created on the machine under the supervision of Hitchcock, who, together with Herrmann, spent a month in West Berlin working on the picture's unique soundscape. Even some of the film's silences were electronic manipulations. Hitchcock knew the importance of music in cinema and, in particular, the importance of music in his own films, but for him a film score wasn't music per se but another element of the overall sound design. It's surprising, given the views Herrmann expressed in interviews, that the composer should agree with his director. "Very few films can dispense with [music] altogether," he said. The Birds was a bold aural experiment, but there's a part of me that wishes Herrmann had written music for the picture.
In the year that The Birds was released Herrmann started work on another Hitchcock project, but this time for the small screen. From 1963 to 1965 he scored seventeen episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, a total of about five hours of music. The director's cameo appearances in his own films had made his portly profile famous all over the world, but it was television that turned him into a celebrity. His lugubrious delivery of the blackly comic introductions to Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour cemented his on-screen persona in the public imagination. Like the fat boy in The Pickwick Papers he delighted in making the flesh creep.
Until now, the music that Herrmann wrote for Hitchcock's TV shows has been unavailable on disc. To coincide the the 100th anniversary of the composer's birth Varese Sarabande have released the first of a projected two volume set (VCL 0511 1119). My copy arrived in the post just six days ago, and I've put off listening to it until now. The music is playful, suspenseful, lyrical, macabre, and, above all, fresh.
In the year that The Birds was released Herrmann started work on another Hitchcock project, but this time for the small screen. From 1963 to 1965 he scored seventeen episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, a total of about five hours of music. The director's cameo appearances in his own films had made his portly profile famous all over the world, but it was television that turned him into a celebrity. His lugubrious delivery of the blackly comic introductions to Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour cemented his on-screen persona in the public imagination. Like the fat boy in The Pickwick Papers he delighted in making the flesh creep.
Until now, the music that Herrmann wrote for Hitchcock's TV shows has been unavailable on disc. To coincide the the 100th anniversary of the composer's birth Varese Sarabande have released the first of a projected two volume set (VCL 0511 1119). My copy arrived in the post just six days ago, and I've put off listening to it until now. The music is playful, suspenseful, lyrical, macabre, and, above all, fresh.
Jason and the Argonauts
Jason and the Argonauts was the the last film on which Herrmann collaborated with Charles Schneer and Ray Harryhausen. Although each production was more lavish than the last, Herrmann resented the producer's parsimonious attitude towards the music budget. In fact, with the score for Jason, he seemed to be almost testing the limits of what he would be allowed to do, writing music that required an augmented orchestra of wind and brass with no fewer than thirty six percussion players and a range of instruments that included the gockenspiel, xylophones, tambourines, woodblocks and a triangle.
Harryhausen and Schneer would go on to make more movies (including The Valley of the Gwangi and the original Clash of the Titans), but, alas, without Herrmann. At least, with Jason, their working relationship ended on a bang and not a whimper.
Essentially, the film was a men-on-a-mission story dressed up in togas and sandals. Fearless warrior Jason (Todd Armstrong) collects a band of like-minded brothers to help him find the fabled golden fleece that will somehow help him overthrow his father's murderer Pelias from the usurped throne of Thessaly. On the way he is aided by the goddess Hera (Honor Blackman) and abetted by Acastus (Gary Raymond), who is the son of Pelias and has been ordered to sabotage the voyage. None of this elaborate plotting mattered, of course, because what people really wanted to see were the latest Harryhausen creations.
The master of Dynamination did not disappoint. There was the giant bronze statue of Talos that creaked into life when two foolish Argonauts attempted to steal some treasure. There were winged harpies that tormented a blind Patrick Troughton. There was a bare chested Triton with a merman's tail, and a hissing many-headed Hydra. And, best of all, there was an army of sword-wielding skeletons. For Talos, Herrmann turned the dial all the way up to eleven with a pounding four-note figure. The cue "The Attack/Talos' Heel/Talos' Death" will not only rattle your speakers but your back teeth as well. For the fight with the skeletons there is a cue called "Scherzo Macabre" which - amidst a battery of almost every item of percussion known to man - employs the same xylophone technique that was used in The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. For the Argo itself (an impressive full scale model) Herrmann wrote a noble stately march that suggested the power of the ship under full oar.
The full score is available on a re-recording by Bruce Broughton on the Intrada label (MAF7083), and among Herrmann afficiandos it is considered to be one of the best.
Harryhausen and Schneer would go on to make more movies (including The Valley of the Gwangi and the original Clash of the Titans), but, alas, without Herrmann. At least, with Jason, their working relationship ended on a bang and not a whimper.
Essentially, the film was a men-on-a-mission story dressed up in togas and sandals. Fearless warrior Jason (Todd Armstrong) collects a band of like-minded brothers to help him find the fabled golden fleece that will somehow help him overthrow his father's murderer Pelias from the usurped throne of Thessaly. On the way he is aided by the goddess Hera (Honor Blackman) and abetted by Acastus (Gary Raymond), who is the son of Pelias and has been ordered to sabotage the voyage. None of this elaborate plotting mattered, of course, because what people really wanted to see were the latest Harryhausen creations.
The master of Dynamination did not disappoint. There was the giant bronze statue of Talos that creaked into life when two foolish Argonauts attempted to steal some treasure. There were winged harpies that tormented a blind Patrick Troughton. There was a bare chested Triton with a merman's tail, and a hissing many-headed Hydra. And, best of all, there was an army of sword-wielding skeletons. For Talos, Herrmann turned the dial all the way up to eleven with a pounding four-note figure. The cue "The Attack/Talos' Heel/Talos' Death" will not only rattle your speakers but your back teeth as well. For the fight with the skeletons there is a cue called "Scherzo Macabre" which - amidst a battery of almost every item of percussion known to man - employs the same xylophone technique that was used in The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. For the Argo itself (an impressive full scale model) Herrmann wrote a noble stately march that suggested the power of the ship under full oar.
The full score is available on a re-recording by Bruce Broughton on the Intrada label (MAF7083), and among Herrmann afficiandos it is considered to be one of the best.
Cape Fear
At the same time as he was writing music at Fox for the doomed Tender is the Night, Herrmann was working on Cape Fear for Universal (his only picture for that studio). A story of revenge and redemption it was based on a novel called The Executioners by hard-boiled crime writer John D. MacDonald. Robert Mitchum sneered menacingly in the role of Max Cady, an ex-con determined to get revenge on the lawyer who put him behind bars (Gregory Peck in his best Atticus Finch mode). Unable to protect his family through legal means, Peck's character is forced to mete out his own form of brutal justice in a climax of savage violence.
The film was directed by J.Lee Thompson, who had directed Peck in The Guns of Navarone the previous year. Thompson had been a last minute replacement on that film and, when he delivered a war movie classic that was also a box office smash, Hollywood came knocking. He had to fight a different kind of war on Cape Fear, battling against the censors over cuts. By today's standards - or, indeed, in comparison with Martin Scorcese's sadistic remake - the picture seems quite tame, but Herrmann's brutal score still packs a punch.
The score opens with a savage statement for trombones that suggests the coiled reserves of anger and violence in Max Cady. Like Cady himself, the theme appears when least expected, rising up out of threatening dissonant strings that swirl through the movie like dark forceful currents. The music was reworked by Elmer Bernstein for the Scorcese remake, but did not really work the second time around. The fault was more to do with Scorcese's lurid direction and Robert De Niro's pantomime performance than anything else.
Right now I'm listening to the churning strings of the penultimate track ("The Struggle/The Rock/The Spike") on the Tsunami release The Marvellous Film World of Bernard Herrmann (TCI 0605).
The film was directed by J.Lee Thompson, who had directed Peck in The Guns of Navarone the previous year. Thompson had been a last minute replacement on that film and, when he delivered a war movie classic that was also a box office smash, Hollywood came knocking. He had to fight a different kind of war on Cape Fear, battling against the censors over cuts. By today's standards - or, indeed, in comparison with Martin Scorcese's sadistic remake - the picture seems quite tame, but Herrmann's brutal score still packs a punch.
The score opens with a savage statement for trombones that suggests the coiled reserves of anger and violence in Max Cady. Like Cady himself, the theme appears when least expected, rising up out of threatening dissonant strings that swirl through the movie like dark forceful currents. The music was reworked by Elmer Bernstein for the Scorcese remake, but did not really work the second time around. The fault was more to do with Scorcese's lurid direction and Robert De Niro's pantomime performance than anything else.
Right now I'm listening to the churning strings of the penultimate track ("The Struggle/The Rock/The Spike") on the Tsunami release The Marvellous Film World of Bernard Herrmann (TCI 0605).
Tender is the Night
Tender is the Night is the last picture that Herrmann did at Fox, a studio with whom he had enjoyed a twenty year working relationship. When Alfred Newman retired as head of the studio's music department in 1960, Herrmann lost a champion in a man who had not only appreciated his gifts as a composer but had been willing to tolerate his abrasive character. Newman was succeeded by his brother Lionel, who took a dim view of Herrmann's compositional skills ("he couldn't write a tune to save his ass" was his considered judgement). There was also a personality clash between the two men, although, to be fair, pretty much any personality would clash with Herrmann's.
Herrmann turned down the job when he learnt that he would be required to incorporate the melodies of songwriting duo Sammy Fain and Paul Francis into his score. He soon relented, though, and snatched the commission from under the nose of his friend Lyn Murray to whom it had been reassigned. The two men never spoke to each other again, and it was a pattern that was to repeat itself in other Herrmann relationships as the composer became increasingly belligerent with age.
Herrmann's behaviour does him no credit and, ironically, his desire to be associated with a prestigious studio project backfired when the film was greeted with universal indifference. The score he produced is a dreary one and I'm listening to it right now under duress. There are seventeen tracks (including the ghastly end credits song) on Bernard Herrmann at Fox Vol.1 (VSD-6052). It has its defenders. Stephen C. Smith, Herrmann's biographer, calls it "eloquent" and claims it to be "one of the film's few virtues." I wouldn't know about that. Not seen the film. Don't want to.
Herrmann turned down the job when he learnt that he would be required to incorporate the melodies of songwriting duo Sammy Fain and Paul Francis into his score. He soon relented, though, and snatched the commission from under the nose of his friend Lyn Murray to whom it had been reassigned. The two men never spoke to each other again, and it was a pattern that was to repeat itself in other Herrmann relationships as the composer became increasingly belligerent with age.
Herrmann's behaviour does him no credit and, ironically, his desire to be associated with a prestigious studio project backfired when the film was greeted with universal indifference. The score he produced is a dreary one and I'm listening to it right now under duress. There are seventeen tracks (including the ghastly end credits song) on Bernard Herrmann at Fox Vol.1 (VSD-6052). It has its defenders. Stephen C. Smith, Herrmann's biographer, calls it "eloquent" and claims it to be "one of the film's few virtues." I wouldn't know about that. Not seen the film. Don't want to.
Mysterious Island
Mysterious Island, another Schneer/Harryhausen production, was very loosely based on Jules Verne's novel of adventure The Mysterious Island (L'Île mystérieuse in the original French). In the transition to the big screen a lot more than the definite article was lost - unsurprising, considering that the book runs to over seven hundred pages in its unexpurgated form. Being a Ray Harryhausen picture, a lot had to be added in the form of marvellous creatures: a giant bee, an outsized crab, a prehistoric chicken and a mammoth octopus - all animated through the miracle of Dynamation. Herrmann's music helped to bring these clay models to life, and his monumental piece "Escape to the Clouds", which underscored a lengthy hot air balloon flight through a storm, was so Wagnerian in scale that it easily diverted attention from some obvious model work. Another set piece was the music for "The Giant Crab", a crashing battle of horns, strings, wind and cymbals that imitated the spidery gait of the creature. A piece that manages to be terrifying and funny at the same time is "The Phorarhacos", a madcap fugue that accompanies the appearance and slaying of a giant bird. For the underwater sequences featuring Captain Nemo (this time played by Herbert Lom with his ingenious conch shell breathing apparatus) Herrmann used the same techniques that had served him well on Beneath the Twelve Mile Reef. The cue titles I've given come from the Cloud Nine release of excerpts from the original soundtrack (ACN 7017). The complete score - at just over seventy minutes - is available on Tribute Film Classics (TFC-1001), and, as the catalogue number suggests, it was the label's very first release.
The Three Worlds of Gulliver
After the dark sonorities of Psycho, it was no doubt a relief for Herrmann to be able to cleanse his palate with a lighter confection. Just four days after signing off the Hitchcock score (dated 12th February 1960), Herrmann picked up his pencil and started sketching ideas for The Three Worlds of Gulliver. The film - the second collaboration with Ray Harryhausen and Charles Schneer - was not so much an adaptation of Jonathan Swift's famous satire as a liberal reworking of its lighter themes. It gave Herrmann the opportunity to write in his beloved 18th century idiom ("Overture", Minuetto", and "A Hatful of Fish"). He also served up several delightful courses of toy marches and fanfares for the Lilliputians ("The King's March"and "Naval Battle") together with gargantuan portions of contrabass tuba for the Brobdingnags.
The score is by its very nature something of a hodge-podge of styles, but it's never anything less than delightful. Herrmann recorded sections of the score for his Decca album The Mysterious Film World of Bernard Herrmann. The full soundtrack - re-recorded by the ever-faithful Joel McNeely - is available on Varese Sarabande (VSD-6162). Right now I'm listening to the mid section of "Naval Battle", which has some self-borrowing from On Dangerous Ground.
The score is by its very nature something of a hodge-podge of styles, but it's never anything less than delightful. Herrmann recorded sections of the score for his Decca album The Mysterious Film World of Bernard Herrmann. The full soundtrack - re-recorded by the ever-faithful Joel McNeely - is available on Varese Sarabande (VSD-6162). Right now I'm listening to the mid section of "Naval Battle", which has some self-borrowing from On Dangerous Ground.
Psycho
The success of Psycho and its enduring reputation has far exceeded any expectations its makers could have had of it. Shot in five weeks, mostly on the Paramount backlot, with a television crew and a cheap but reliable cast, it could not have been more different from the lavish and expensive production that the director had delivered to MGM earlier in the same year. Based on a novel by Robert Bloch (in turn inspired by the real life cannibal crimes of Ed Gein), it married film noir with Gothic horror and, with the new decade, ushered in an increasingly graphic representation of screen violence.
Its story - a young woman steals $40,000 dollars from her employer and takes refuge in an isolated motel where she herself becomes the victim of a far worse crime - was a masterly exercise in misdirection. Screenwriter Joseph Stefano and director Hitchcock encourage the viewer to follow the money to the very end ("And the forty thousand dollars? Who got that?" "The swamp. These were crimes of passion, not profit.") whilst carefully constructing an entirely different sub-plot. The audience of 1960 who saw the movie without any prior knowledge (an almost impossible set of circumstances today) were sucker-punched by the shower scene and never really recovered.
Psycho is one of the truly great works of art of the twentieth century (read Robin Wood's original essay on the film if you need convincing) and it reveals new riches with each successive viewing. Its geometric design of conflicting horizontal and vertical lines is infinitely fascinating: the slats of the blinds in the opening hotel room scene, the telegraph pole slicing the screen next to Marion's parked car, the bungalow-like motel building squatting under the dark tower-like house on the hill, the twin columns that frame Sheriff Al Chambers (the name also suggesting the solemnity of his office) as he comes downstairs and prefigure the exterior of Fairvale's County Court House where the story ends. Hitchcock may have been shooting on a tight schedule, but it's clear that he had everything carefully mapped out in his head.
Or did he? Herrmann tells a story that suggests the director had a crisis of confidence in post production. "Hitchcock ... felt it didn't come off. He wanted to cut it down to an hour television show and get rid of it. I had an idea of what one could do with the film, so I said, 'Why don't you go away for your Christmas holidays, and when you come back we'll record the score and see what you think.' ... 'Well,' he said, 'do what you like, but only one thing I ask of you: please write nothing for the murder in the shower. That must be without music.' " This is the stuff of Hollywood legend: Herrmann did indeed do what he liked, and that included - in direct defiance of the director's specific instructions - writing his most famous few bars of music for the murder in the shower. The composer's instincts were right. Hitchcock magnanimously admitted he was wrong and showed his appreciation for Herrmann's contribution by almost doubling his salary to $34,501. Ironically, this incident was likely the seed for the rift between the two men over the score for Torn Curtain. On this occasion when Herrmann went against the director's instructions he was summarily dismissed from the picture and replaced.
For Psycho Herrmann wrote what he called "a black-and-white score". Hitchcock had originally envisioned a nervous jazz soundtrack, but he had hired Benny Herrmann not Benny Goodman. By limiting the orchestra to strings alone, the composer was also able to work within the movie's modest budget. But if his pocket book was limited, his inventiveness was not. The care with which he constructed the score is evident in the music that accompanies Lila Crane as she climbs the hill to the Bates house. Hitchcock employs his classic cross-cutting technique, alternating between Lila's point of view as the Gothic monstrosity looms closer and closer and shots of her approach, which convey both her nervousness and her determination. The architecture of the cue that Herrmann wrote for this scene ("The Hill") is best described by Kevin Mulhall in his liner notes to the re-recorded soundtrack album. "Herrmann has high-range first violins playing descending long notes with a low-range, rhythmic figure heard in counterpoint. The figure ascends from the cellos to the violas and the second violins. The strings converge on the same note when Lila reaches the front door."
The entire score neatly dovetails with the geometric complexity of the film's visual motifs introduced by the slashed horizontal lines of the opening credits. The cues "Prelude", "Flight", "Patrol Car" and "The Rainstorm" move relentlessly forward with an insistent ostinato whilst other cues ("The Madhouse") suggest a slow but irreversible descent. For the final revelation Herrmann wrote a cue ("Discovery") that spiralled into darkness (like the water draining down the dark eye of the plughole), but Hitchcock replaced it in the final edit with the shrieking violins. The director's choice here was wrong - Herrmann wrote the stabbing strings for the murder scenes, and there is no murder at the end of Psycho. Still, Hitchcock always had the last word.
In some ways, the Psycho score suffers from over-familiarity, and it must be the single-most recorded work of Herrmann's entire output. The composer arranged a suite of its main themes and this has become an obligatory inclusion on any Herrmann compilation disc. In 1975 - the year of his death - he released his own re-recording of the entire score (without the "Discovery" cue) on the Unicorn label (B000001PBG), and the slow tempo he takes it at says more about his state of health than anything else. Rumour has it that he was unable to conduct the entire score and had his friend Laurie Johnson stand in for him. Joel McNeely re-recorded the score for the Varese Sarabande label (VSD-5765) and included the "Discovery" cue and the previously unheard "Cleanup". For Gus Van Sant's wacky shot-for-shot remake of the picture, Danny Elfman (himself a big Herrmann fan) did a re-recording for the Virgin label (B00000J6ED) that pretty much duplicated the original movie's frantic tempo.
Its story - a young woman steals $40,000 dollars from her employer and takes refuge in an isolated motel where she herself becomes the victim of a far worse crime - was a masterly exercise in misdirection. Screenwriter Joseph Stefano and director Hitchcock encourage the viewer to follow the money to the very end ("And the forty thousand dollars? Who got that?" "The swamp. These were crimes of passion, not profit.") whilst carefully constructing an entirely different sub-plot. The audience of 1960 who saw the movie without any prior knowledge (an almost impossible set of circumstances today) were sucker-punched by the shower scene and never really recovered.
Psycho is one of the truly great works of art of the twentieth century (read Robin Wood's original essay on the film if you need convincing) and it reveals new riches with each successive viewing. Its geometric design of conflicting horizontal and vertical lines is infinitely fascinating: the slats of the blinds in the opening hotel room scene, the telegraph pole slicing the screen next to Marion's parked car, the bungalow-like motel building squatting under the dark tower-like house on the hill, the twin columns that frame Sheriff Al Chambers (the name also suggesting the solemnity of his office) as he comes downstairs and prefigure the exterior of Fairvale's County Court House where the story ends. Hitchcock may have been shooting on a tight schedule, but it's clear that he had everything carefully mapped out in his head.
Or did he? Herrmann tells a story that suggests the director had a crisis of confidence in post production. "Hitchcock ... felt it didn't come off. He wanted to cut it down to an hour television show and get rid of it. I had an idea of what one could do with the film, so I said, 'Why don't you go away for your Christmas holidays, and when you come back we'll record the score and see what you think.' ... 'Well,' he said, 'do what you like, but only one thing I ask of you: please write nothing for the murder in the shower. That must be without music.' " This is the stuff of Hollywood legend: Herrmann did indeed do what he liked, and that included - in direct defiance of the director's specific instructions - writing his most famous few bars of music for the murder in the shower. The composer's instincts were right. Hitchcock magnanimously admitted he was wrong and showed his appreciation for Herrmann's contribution by almost doubling his salary to $34,501. Ironically, this incident was likely the seed for the rift between the two men over the score for Torn Curtain. On this occasion when Herrmann went against the director's instructions he was summarily dismissed from the picture and replaced.
For Psycho Herrmann wrote what he called "a black-and-white score". Hitchcock had originally envisioned a nervous jazz soundtrack, but he had hired Benny Herrmann not Benny Goodman. By limiting the orchestra to strings alone, the composer was also able to work within the movie's modest budget. But if his pocket book was limited, his inventiveness was not. The care with which he constructed the score is evident in the music that accompanies Lila Crane as she climbs the hill to the Bates house. Hitchcock employs his classic cross-cutting technique, alternating between Lila's point of view as the Gothic monstrosity looms closer and closer and shots of her approach, which convey both her nervousness and her determination. The architecture of the cue that Herrmann wrote for this scene ("The Hill") is best described by Kevin Mulhall in his liner notes to the re-recorded soundtrack album. "Herrmann has high-range first violins playing descending long notes with a low-range, rhythmic figure heard in counterpoint. The figure ascends from the cellos to the violas and the second violins. The strings converge on the same note when Lila reaches the front door."
The entire score neatly dovetails with the geometric complexity of the film's visual motifs introduced by the slashed horizontal lines of the opening credits. The cues "Prelude", "Flight", "Patrol Car" and "The Rainstorm" move relentlessly forward with an insistent ostinato whilst other cues ("The Madhouse") suggest a slow but irreversible descent. For the final revelation Herrmann wrote a cue ("Discovery") that spiralled into darkness (like the water draining down the dark eye of the plughole), but Hitchcock replaced it in the final edit with the shrieking violins. The director's choice here was wrong - Herrmann wrote the stabbing strings for the murder scenes, and there is no murder at the end of Psycho. Still, Hitchcock always had the last word.
In some ways, the Psycho score suffers from over-familiarity, and it must be the single-most recorded work of Herrmann's entire output. The composer arranged a suite of its main themes and this has become an obligatory inclusion on any Herrmann compilation disc. In 1975 - the year of his death - he released his own re-recording of the entire score (without the "Discovery" cue) on the Unicorn label (B000001PBG), and the slow tempo he takes it at says more about his state of health than anything else. Rumour has it that he was unable to conduct the entire score and had his friend Laurie Johnson stand in for him. Joel McNeely re-recorded the score for the Varese Sarabande label (VSD-5765) and included the "Discovery" cue and the previously unheard "Cleanup". For Gus Van Sant's wacky shot-for-shot remake of the picture, Danny Elfman (himself a big Herrmann fan) did a re-recording for the Virgin label (B00000J6ED) that pretty much duplicated the original movie's frantic tempo.
Blue Denim
Blue Denim, controversial and daring at the time of its release, now seems as ridiculous and as dated as Fifties slang ( Cool it, Pops! Hey Daddy-O!). Based on a play by Midnight Cowboy author James Leo Herlihy, it dealt with the issues of teenage pregnancy and abortion. The film was directed by Philip Dunne, who was mystified as to why his friend Herrmann agreed to do the picture. The score has been described as "Baby Vertigo" for its melodic similarities to the Hitchcock movie and for its overbearing presence in the drama. I've not heard it and have never felt compelled to buy the soundtrack, which is available on an FSM release (FSM Vol. 4, No. 15).
Around the time that Herrmann was busy with this project, he started writing for the cult TV series The Twilight Zone, the first episode of which aired in October 1959. Mention the name of the show to anyone and they're likely to respond with an imitation of the famous theme (Di-di-di-di, Di-di-di-di), which has become an aural meme for anything spooky or unexplained. Herrmann, however, did not write this piece of music (it was composed for the second season by Romanian-born Marius Constant) and provided his own creepy "Main Title". Over a four year period Herrmann wrote scores for seven episodes. Working on a small television budget, the composer wrote for small pared-down orchestras - for the Living Doll episode, it was just a bass clarinet, two harps and a celeste - and effectively produced a series of other-worldly chamber pieces. The most celebrated is the gorgeous Walking Distance, written for a string ensemble and a harp, whilst the most curious is the repetitive tick-tock of 90 Years Without Slumbering. Working to tight deadlines, Herrmann could be forgiven for recycling some of his dark materials, but his inventiveness never flagged.
All the scores have been re-recorded (and, in some cases, reconstructed) and are available on a Varese Sarabande disc (VSD2-6087). Right now I'm listening to the ghostly vibraphones of Eye of the Beholder.
Around the time that Herrmann was busy with this project, he started writing for the cult TV series The Twilight Zone, the first episode of which aired in October 1959. Mention the name of the show to anyone and they're likely to respond with an imitation of the famous theme (Di-di-di-di, Di-di-di-di), which has become an aural meme for anything spooky or unexplained. Herrmann, however, did not write this piece of music (it was composed for the second season by Romanian-born Marius Constant) and provided his own creepy "Main Title". Over a four year period Herrmann wrote scores for seven episodes. Working on a small television budget, the composer wrote for small pared-down orchestras - for the Living Doll episode, it was just a bass clarinet, two harps and a celeste - and effectively produced a series of other-worldly chamber pieces. The most celebrated is the gorgeous Walking Distance, written for a string ensemble and a harp, whilst the most curious is the repetitive tick-tock of 90 Years Without Slumbering. Working to tight deadlines, Herrmann could be forgiven for recycling some of his dark materials, but his inventiveness never flagged.
All the scores have been re-recorded (and, in some cases, reconstructed) and are available on a Varese Sarabande disc (VSD2-6087). Right now I'm listening to the ghostly vibraphones of Eye of the Beholder.
Journey to the Centre of the Earth
Journey to the Centre of the Earth was based on a novel by the prolific "Father of Science Fiction" Jules Verne. Disney had had a hit with 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (after White Christmas it was the highest grossing film of 1954), and Twentieth Century Fox hoped to replicate the success with an adaptation of Verne's subterranean adventure. James Mason, who had played Captain Nemo in the Disney picture, was cast as Professor Oliver Lindenbrook, and was given cheery support by Pat Boone and Arlene Dahl. Together with the tight-lipped Hans (played by Icelandic born Olympic athlete Pétur Rögnvaldsson) and his duck Gertrude, they journey to the centre of the earth (the clue is in the title) where they find giant lizards and the lost city of Atlantis.
Although there was some location shooting at the Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico, most of the film was made on sound stages, and to a modern audience the rock does look a bit too much like cardboard at times. The film was a hit with the audience of its day and in the Sixties was a staple of TV schedules, thrilling a generation of children long before the advent of CGI.
In the liner notes to his 1974 album The Fantasy Film World of Bernard Herrmann, the composer elaborated on his approach. "I decided to evoke the mood and feeling of inner Earth by using only instruments played in low registers. Eliminating all strings, I utilized an orchestra of woodwinds and brass, with a large percussion section and many harps. But the truly unique feature of this score is the inclusion of five organs, one large cathedral and four electronic. These organs were used in many adroit ways to suggest ascent and descent, as well as the mystery of Atlantis." Herrmann omits to say that he also included the serpent - the instrument he had used in White Witch Doctor - to portray the attack of a giant chameleon.
Just as Beneath the Twelve Mile Reef can be seen as a tone poem to the sea, so Journey is a hymn to the underworld. Malevolent and brooding ("Explosions/The Message"), epic and inspiring ("Mountain Top/Sunrise"), violent and terrifying ("The Dimetroden's Attack"), ethereal and moving ("The Lost City/Atlantis") - Herrmann's score is all these things. There are even moments of light relief provided by Pat Boone, whose contract no doubt included a clause about his singing a couple of songs, which he does ("Twice as Tall" "The Faithful Heart"). These were written by songwriting duo James Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn and were filmed and recorded, but edited out of the final cut of the film.
Herrmann arranged a suite of the music for his 1974 album, but if you really want to immerse yourself in the depths of the score you need to listen to the original soundtrack on Varese Sarabande (VSD-5849). It has just come to a crashing end on my stereo.
Although there was some location shooting at the Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico, most of the film was made on sound stages, and to a modern audience the rock does look a bit too much like cardboard at times. The film was a hit with the audience of its day and in the Sixties was a staple of TV schedules, thrilling a generation of children long before the advent of CGI.
In the liner notes to his 1974 album The Fantasy Film World of Bernard Herrmann, the composer elaborated on his approach. "I decided to evoke the mood and feeling of inner Earth by using only instruments played in low registers. Eliminating all strings, I utilized an orchestra of woodwinds and brass, with a large percussion section and many harps. But the truly unique feature of this score is the inclusion of five organs, one large cathedral and four electronic. These organs were used in many adroit ways to suggest ascent and descent, as well as the mystery of Atlantis." Herrmann omits to say that he also included the serpent - the instrument he had used in White Witch Doctor - to portray the attack of a giant chameleon.
Just as Beneath the Twelve Mile Reef can be seen as a tone poem to the sea, so Journey is a hymn to the underworld. Malevolent and brooding ("Explosions/The Message"), epic and inspiring ("Mountain Top/Sunrise"), violent and terrifying ("The Dimetroden's Attack"), ethereal and moving ("The Lost City/Atlantis") - Herrmann's score is all these things. There are even moments of light relief provided by Pat Boone, whose contract no doubt included a clause about his singing a couple of songs, which he does ("Twice as Tall" "The Faithful Heart"). These were written by songwriting duo James Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn and were filmed and recorded, but edited out of the final cut of the film.
Herrmann arranged a suite of the music for his 1974 album, but if you really want to immerse yourself in the depths of the score you need to listen to the original soundtrack on Varese Sarabande (VSD-5849). It has just come to a crashing end on my stereo.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
North By Northwest
In North By Northwest Mad man Roger Thornhill (played with suave elegance by Cary Grant) is "mistaken for a much shorter man" and pursued across America by a group of fifth columnists. The plot, which involved planes and trains and automobiles, was as preposterous as it was inspired, and screenwriter Ernest Lehman mixed the elements of intrigue, romance, suspense and comedy into a perfect cocktail with a wit as dry as a Gibson. It was, in fact, Herrmann who had introduced the writer to Hitchcock ("I've got to get you and Hitch together," the composer said. "I think you would hit it off very well."). Lehman was not the originator of the story for North By Northwest (the idea of a man assuming the identity of a fake masterspy had been gifted to Hitchcock by journalist Otis Guernsey, who had himself based his underdeveloped treatment of it on a real incident that happened in the Middle East in World War Two). During long story conferences with the director, Lehman shaped and polished the script until it purred and gleamed.
North By Northwest was made at MGM - a studio known for its class and sophistication - and Herrmann's propulsive score began before the familiar lion mascot had finished its roar. Over an image of intersecting green lines (designed by Saul Bass, and anticipating the Psycho credits) the orchestra plays the "Overture", a dizzying fandango that the composer wrote for "the crazy dance about to take place between Cary Grant and the world." There is, indeed, something almost balletic in the way in which Grant moves. Watch how nimble and graceful he is when he escapes his hospital prison by climbing out onto the ledge and sneaking out through a neighbour's room. This scene, incidentally, contains one of my favourite moments in the movie when the startled female patient cries out for the intruder Thornhill to "Stop!", puts on her glasses and then repeats the word in a more inviting tone.
The script crackles with good dialogue ("Something wrong with your eyes?" "Yes, they're sensitive to questions." / "How does a girl like you get to be a girl like you?" "Lucky, I guess."), the editing is razor sharp, the photography has a bright sheen that brings out the richness of the Technicolor, and the actors are tailored to within an inch of perfection (Grant is The Man in the Grey Kilgour Suit). Eva Marie Saint is the epitome of the icy Hitchcock blonde (a million miles away from her kitchen-sink performances of A Hatful of Rain and On the Waterfront). James Mason, as the diabolically named Vandamm, is the urbane villain whose velvety voice commands his lovesick second in command Leonard to commit unspeakable acts. Nobody involved in this movie - from the director down to the key grip - puts a foot wrong.
Herrmann was on form, too. His score may be a little monothematic - tellingly, he chose only to include an extended version of the overture for his Great Hitchcock Movie Thrillers disc and resisted arranging a suite of music from the film. That's not to say that it's all about the fandago. There's a nervous suspense theme woven throughout the score that sounds like a spy's Morse code message, some dark growling brass ("Car Crash"), and a lilting love theme ("Conversation Piece") which gently rocks to the rhythms of the Twentieth Century sleeper car.
As significant as the music Herrmann provides are the moments that he chooses to leave unscored. In the film's most celebrated scene Roger Thornhill waits to meet the mysterious Kaplan at an isolated bus stop and is menaced by a crop dusting bi-plane. The sequence has a slow burn build-up and a dynamite finish, and it plays out without a note of music. Herrmann, in fact, wrote a cue ("The Highway") for the start of the sequence, but it did not make it to the final cut. In its use of muffled timpani it recalls "The Coat" cue from The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit.
The North By Northwest "Overture" is one of the usual suspects that is rounded up for any Herrmann compilation. The original sountrack was released on the Turner Classic Movies label (8 36025 2) and, for medium-level completists, includes source music and outtakes. Full blown completists also need to own the Varese Sarabande re-recording by Joel McNeely (VCL 1107 1067) as it contains the "previously unreleased" cue "The Highway" and an alternate version of "The Station" cue. This is obviously more information than you will ever need to know. I am not a Herrmann completist, but I have both discs, which I have just listened to back to back, and I now feel a sudden urge to go and watch my DVD of the film (which, incidentally, has an isolated film score track).
North By Northwest was made at MGM - a studio known for its class and sophistication - and Herrmann's propulsive score began before the familiar lion mascot had finished its roar. Over an image of intersecting green lines (designed by Saul Bass, and anticipating the Psycho credits) the orchestra plays the "Overture", a dizzying fandango that the composer wrote for "the crazy dance about to take place between Cary Grant and the world." There is, indeed, something almost balletic in the way in which Grant moves. Watch how nimble and graceful he is when he escapes his hospital prison by climbing out onto the ledge and sneaking out through a neighbour's room. This scene, incidentally, contains one of my favourite moments in the movie when the startled female patient cries out for the intruder Thornhill to "Stop!", puts on her glasses and then repeats the word in a more inviting tone.
The script crackles with good dialogue ("Something wrong with your eyes?" "Yes, they're sensitive to questions." / "How does a girl like you get to be a girl like you?" "Lucky, I guess."), the editing is razor sharp, the photography has a bright sheen that brings out the richness of the Technicolor, and the actors are tailored to within an inch of perfection (Grant is The Man in the Grey Kilgour Suit). Eva Marie Saint is the epitome of the icy Hitchcock blonde (a million miles away from her kitchen-sink performances of A Hatful of Rain and On the Waterfront). James Mason, as the diabolically named Vandamm, is the urbane villain whose velvety voice commands his lovesick second in command Leonard to commit unspeakable acts. Nobody involved in this movie - from the director down to the key grip - puts a foot wrong.
Herrmann was on form, too. His score may be a little monothematic - tellingly, he chose only to include an extended version of the overture for his Great Hitchcock Movie Thrillers disc and resisted arranging a suite of music from the film. That's not to say that it's all about the fandago. There's a nervous suspense theme woven throughout the score that sounds like a spy's Morse code message, some dark growling brass ("Car Crash"), and a lilting love theme ("Conversation Piece") which gently rocks to the rhythms of the Twentieth Century sleeper car.
As significant as the music Herrmann provides are the moments that he chooses to leave unscored. In the film's most celebrated scene Roger Thornhill waits to meet the mysterious Kaplan at an isolated bus stop and is menaced by a crop dusting bi-plane. The sequence has a slow burn build-up and a dynamite finish, and it plays out without a note of music. Herrmann, in fact, wrote a cue ("The Highway") for the start of the sequence, but it did not make it to the final cut. In its use of muffled timpani it recalls "The Coat" cue from The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit.
The North By Northwest "Overture" is one of the usual suspects that is rounded up for any Herrmann compilation. The original sountrack was released on the Turner Classic Movies label (8 36025 2) and, for medium-level completists, includes source music and outtakes. Full blown completists also need to own the Varese Sarabande re-recording by Joel McNeely (VCL 1107 1067) as it contains the "previously unreleased" cue "The Highway" and an alternate version of "The Station" cue. This is obviously more information than you will ever need to know. I am not a Herrmann completist, but I have both discs, which I have just listened to back to back, and I now feel a sudden urge to go and watch my DVD of the film (which, incidentally, has an isolated film score track).
The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad
The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad was the first of four films that Herrmann would score for producer Charles Schneer - the other three were The Three Worlds of Gulliver, Mysterious Island, and Jason and the Argonauts. Nobody calls these movies Charles Schneer pictures - they call them after the name of their special effects supervisor, Ray Harryhausen.
The wizard of Dynamation became fascinated by the possibilities of fantasy cinema when, as a young boy, he saw the original King Kong. Like Steven Spielberg and Perter Jackson (both of whom cite his influence on their own work), Harryhausen spent his boyhood experimenting with film, making animated shorts in his father's garage. He honed his skills in the Army Motion Picture Unit during the war under the command of film director turned colonel Frank Capra. His first major Hollywood project was Mighty Joe Young, the story of a giant ape, and he followed this with The Beast from Twenty Thousand Fathoms, which was about a beast from twenty thousand fathoms.
Both these pictures were shot in black and white, but by the end of the Fifties Harryhausen had graduated to colour, a decision which would present him with all new kinds of technical challenges. Rather than continue making movies about monsters in the real world, Harryhausen looked to ancient legend for his first colour feature. The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad was the first of three Sinbad movies that Harryhausen would make over a period of almost twenty years, but, sadly, it was the only one that would be scored by Herrmann (the other two went to Miklos Rosza and Roy Budd).
Herrmann explained his approach to the project in the liner notes for The Fantasy Film World of Bernard Herrmann (B000000IUQ). "The music I composed had to reflect a purity and simplicity that could be easily assimilated to the nature of the fantasy being viewed. By characterizing the various creatures with unusual instrument combinations ... and by composing motifs for all the major characters and actions, I feel I was able to envelop the entire movie in a shroud of mystical innocence."
The film's main title sequence - a tapestry of marvellous images and fabulous creatures - is scored with an Oriental-style overture, which contains the kernel of the love theme that Herrmann would later develop for Hitchcock's Marnie. This segues into a moody dirge ("The Fog") - reminiscent of the opening of Rachmaninoff's The Isle of the Dead - as Sinbad's ship appears out of the night. I sometimes put this cue on repeat and listen to it over and over again. The score is like a treasure chest, overflowing with soft pearls ("The Princess") and glittering diamonds ("The Egg"). It also has its fair share of sturm und drang in the music for the Cyclops, the Roc, and the Dragon. A duel between Sinbad and a grinning skeleton is given a frantic xylophone scherzo, which - on the original soundtrack, at least - is played at a breakneck speed.
I have two versions of the score: the original soundtrack on the Soundtrack Library (CD 62), which I think is a bootleg; and the Varese Sarabande re-recording by John Debney (VSD-5961), which came in for a lot of stick from Herrmann purists for taking some of the cues at too slow a tempo. There's no pleasing the Herrmann purists. In the interests of fairness, I've just played the two discs back to back, and I have to say that I prefer the Debney.
The wizard of Dynamation became fascinated by the possibilities of fantasy cinema when, as a young boy, he saw the original King Kong. Like Steven Spielberg and Perter Jackson (both of whom cite his influence on their own work), Harryhausen spent his boyhood experimenting with film, making animated shorts in his father's garage. He honed his skills in the Army Motion Picture Unit during the war under the command of film director turned colonel Frank Capra. His first major Hollywood project was Mighty Joe Young, the story of a giant ape, and he followed this with The Beast from Twenty Thousand Fathoms, which was about a beast from twenty thousand fathoms.
Both these pictures were shot in black and white, but by the end of the Fifties Harryhausen had graduated to colour, a decision which would present him with all new kinds of technical challenges. Rather than continue making movies about monsters in the real world, Harryhausen looked to ancient legend for his first colour feature. The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad was the first of three Sinbad movies that Harryhausen would make over a period of almost twenty years, but, sadly, it was the only one that would be scored by Herrmann (the other two went to Miklos Rosza and Roy Budd).
Herrmann explained his approach to the project in the liner notes for The Fantasy Film World of Bernard Herrmann (B000000IUQ). "The music I composed had to reflect a purity and simplicity that could be easily assimilated to the nature of the fantasy being viewed. By characterizing the various creatures with unusual instrument combinations ... and by composing motifs for all the major characters and actions, I feel I was able to envelop the entire movie in a shroud of mystical innocence."
The film's main title sequence - a tapestry of marvellous images and fabulous creatures - is scored with an Oriental-style overture, which contains the kernel of the love theme that Herrmann would later develop for Hitchcock's Marnie. This segues into a moody dirge ("The Fog") - reminiscent of the opening of Rachmaninoff's The Isle of the Dead - as Sinbad's ship appears out of the night. I sometimes put this cue on repeat and listen to it over and over again. The score is like a treasure chest, overflowing with soft pearls ("The Princess") and glittering diamonds ("The Egg"). It also has its fair share of sturm und drang in the music for the Cyclops, the Roc, and the Dragon. A duel between Sinbad and a grinning skeleton is given a frantic xylophone scherzo, which - on the original soundtrack, at least - is played at a breakneck speed.
I have two versions of the score: the original soundtrack on the Soundtrack Library (CD 62), which I think is a bootleg; and the Varese Sarabande re-recording by John Debney (VSD-5961), which came in for a lot of stick from Herrmann purists for taking some of the cues at too slow a tempo. There's no pleasing the Herrmann purists. In the interests of fairness, I've just played the two discs back to back, and I have to say that I prefer the Debney.
The Naked and The Dead
The Naked and the Dead was a war movie based on Norman Mailer's uncompromising autobiographical first novel published in 1948. The writer's own experience of combat in the Pacific was much more limited than his book suggested, but the novel was well received and established Mailer's reputation as a hard-hitting realist. The film version was originally to have been directed by Charles Laughton, but when his first (and only) feature as director Night of the Hunter bombed at the box office, the megaphone was passed on to Raoul Walsh. Walsh had directed James Cagney in some of his greatest gangster roles. He wore a black patch to hide a car crash injury which had cost him his right eye.
Mailer's book was too strong for the screen so it was watered down by the screenwriters, and not even Herrmann's suitably militaristic score could beef it back up again. As of writing there are plans for a new recording of the score. The "Prelude", which I'm listening to right now, is at the beginning of disc two of Silva Screen's compilation The Essential Bernard Herrmann Film Music Collection (FILMXCD 308). To my ears, it sounds a lot like some of the battle cues in Jason and the Argonauts.
Mailer's book was too strong for the screen so it was watered down by the screenwriters, and not even Herrmann's suitably militaristic score could beef it back up again. As of writing there are plans for a new recording of the score. The "Prelude", which I'm listening to right now, is at the beginning of disc two of Silva Screen's compilation The Essential Bernard Herrmann Film Music Collection (FILMXCD 308). To my ears, it sounds a lot like some of the battle cues in Jason and the Argonauts.
Vertigo
Although now rightly recognised as one of cinema's true masterpieces (along with Citizen Kane it's guaranteed to make all but the most contrary of filmgoers' top ten), Vertigo was not always held in such high regard. On its release in 1958, critical reception was cool. There was praise for the film from some quarters, but it was muted. The reviewer of Time magazine famously dismissed it as "another Hitchcock and bull story", showing that a critic is always ready to make a lame pun at the expense of insight. The New Yorker called it "far-fetched nonsense" whilst the Los Angeles Times complained that the plot was "hard to grasp at best". Many reviewers of the time faulted the movie for its pacing, calling it too slow and "not a little confusing". It's true that its story was unconventional. Retired police detective Scottie Fergueson (James Stewart) is given the job of following the glacially beautiful Madeliene, who is suspected by her husband of harbouring suicidal tendencies. When Scottie's intervention leads to Madeleine's death, he is consumed with grief and can only find solace by trying to recreate her image in another woman he meets seemingly by chance.
Vertigo performed respectfully at the box office, coming in at twenty first place when Hollywood totalled its ticket sales for the year, but it wasn't the hit that Hitchcock had hoped for. Paramount re-released it in 1963 to cash in on the anticipation surrounding The Birds, and then in the late Sixties, under the terms of his Paramount contract, the director gained control of the rights. By 1974 Vertigo had been withdrawn completely from circulation and for a decade it was like a unicorn, much talked about but never seen. It could be glimpsed in stills that illustrated the growing library of books that were being written about the Master of Suspense, who was now approaching the end of his career and his life. Serious critics such as Robin Wood and Raymond Durgnat championed the film, even though they had to rely on an unreliable memory to do so.
By the time Vertigo was re-released in 1984 (along with other 'lost' Hitchcocks, Rear Window, The Trouble with Harry, Rope and The Man Who Knew Too Much) it trailed behind it a fabled reputation. I was living in Japan at the time and I took a bullet train to Hiroshima to watch it on a double bill with The Man Who Knew Too Much. I still have the snapshot I took of the cinema where it was playing. Sitting in the darkened theatre listening to the swirling strings and dark brass chords of the opening "Prelude" made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and the moment at the end when the nun steps out of the shadow like a ghost to the accompanient of an spooky organ literally made me jump.
I was familiar with the score long before I saw the movie. The five minute "Scene D'Amour" was a standard on Herrmann compilations. In the film the music accompanies the scene where Judy completes her transformation into Madeleine in the Empire Hotel. She emerges from the bathroom in her grey tailored suit with her hair pinned up and is bathed in the eerie green light of the hotel's neon sign. As Scottie takes her in his arms, the camera circles the couple and Herrmann's music swells into a grand romantic statement. I listened to Herrmann long before I listened to Wagner and so for a long time wasn't aware of the borrowing (or, indeed, the significance) of the theme from the opera Tristan and Isolde.
Hitchcock provided his composer with notes on music suggestions and the sound mix, but on the whole gave him a free hand. The notes the director made for his sound editor for the scene reveal the confidence he had in Herrmann's ability to carry the moment:
"When Judy is in the bathroom changing - we just hear faint traffic noises, and when she emerges and we go into the love scene we should let all traffic noise fade, because Mr Hermann [sic] may have something to say here. For the rest of the sequence we will hear faint traffic noises, except when we go away to the portrait (when Mr Herrman [sic] will be the one to take over.)"
Herrmann went his own way with the music. His use of habanera rhythms to portray the sad and mysterious Carlotta was inspired not by the Spanish mission setting but by his belief that the film should have been filmed in a different locale and with a different lead actor. "They should never have made it in San Francisco, and not with Jimmy Stewart," he said. "It should have been an actor like Charles Boyer. It should have been left in New Orleans, or in a hot, sultry climate. When I wrote the picture, I thought of that."
For the celebrated zoom in/track back shot that Hitchcock employed to convey Scottie's acrophobia, Herrmann wrote a disorientating chord overlaid with frenzied harp glissandi. It may not be as famous a musical moment as the stabbing strings of Pyscho, but it has a similarly jolting effect.
The version of the score I'm listening to right now is the Joel McNeely re-recording on the Varese Sarabande label (VSD-5600). The original soundtrack conducted by Muir Mathieson is also available on a Varese Sarabande CD (B000024Q93) and has the added bonus of the cool Saul Bass poster design on its cover.
Vertigo performed respectfully at the box office, coming in at twenty first place when Hollywood totalled its ticket sales for the year, but it wasn't the hit that Hitchcock had hoped for. Paramount re-released it in 1963 to cash in on the anticipation surrounding The Birds, and then in the late Sixties, under the terms of his Paramount contract, the director gained control of the rights. By 1974 Vertigo had been withdrawn completely from circulation and for a decade it was like a unicorn, much talked about but never seen. It could be glimpsed in stills that illustrated the growing library of books that were being written about the Master of Suspense, who was now approaching the end of his career and his life. Serious critics such as Robin Wood and Raymond Durgnat championed the film, even though they had to rely on an unreliable memory to do so.
By the time Vertigo was re-released in 1984 (along with other 'lost' Hitchcocks, Rear Window, The Trouble with Harry, Rope and The Man Who Knew Too Much) it trailed behind it a fabled reputation. I was living in Japan at the time and I took a bullet train to Hiroshima to watch it on a double bill with The Man Who Knew Too Much. I still have the snapshot I took of the cinema where it was playing. Sitting in the darkened theatre listening to the swirling strings and dark brass chords of the opening "Prelude" made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and the moment at the end when the nun steps out of the shadow like a ghost to the accompanient of an spooky organ literally made me jump.
I was familiar with the score long before I saw the movie. The five minute "Scene D'Amour" was a standard on Herrmann compilations. In the film the music accompanies the scene where Judy completes her transformation into Madeleine in the Empire Hotel. She emerges from the bathroom in her grey tailored suit with her hair pinned up and is bathed in the eerie green light of the hotel's neon sign. As Scottie takes her in his arms, the camera circles the couple and Herrmann's music swells into a grand romantic statement. I listened to Herrmann long before I listened to Wagner and so for a long time wasn't aware of the borrowing (or, indeed, the significance) of the theme from the opera Tristan and Isolde.
Hitchcock provided his composer with notes on music suggestions and the sound mix, but on the whole gave him a free hand. The notes the director made for his sound editor for the scene reveal the confidence he had in Herrmann's ability to carry the moment:
"When Judy is in the bathroom changing - we just hear faint traffic noises, and when she emerges and we go into the love scene we should let all traffic noise fade, because Mr Hermann [sic] may have something to say here. For the rest of the sequence we will hear faint traffic noises, except when we go away to the portrait (when Mr Herrman [sic] will be the one to take over.)"
Herrmann went his own way with the music. His use of habanera rhythms to portray the sad and mysterious Carlotta was inspired not by the Spanish mission setting but by his belief that the film should have been filmed in a different locale and with a different lead actor. "They should never have made it in San Francisco, and not with Jimmy Stewart," he said. "It should have been an actor like Charles Boyer. It should have been left in New Orleans, or in a hot, sultry climate. When I wrote the picture, I thought of that."
For the celebrated zoom in/track back shot that Hitchcock employed to convey Scottie's acrophobia, Herrmann wrote a disorientating chord overlaid with frenzied harp glissandi. It may not be as famous a musical moment as the stabbing strings of Pyscho, but it has a similarly jolting effect.
The version of the score I'm listening to right now is the Joel McNeely re-recording on the Varese Sarabande label (VSD-5600). The original soundtrack conducted by Muir Mathieson is also available on a Varese Sarabande CD (B000024Q93) and has the added bonus of the cool Saul Bass poster design on its cover.
A Hatful of Rain
By the mid Fifties Herrmann was writing regularly for television. He provided stock cues for the CBS music library in the form of a "Western Suite", "The Outer Space Suite" (channeling his own groundbreaking SF score for The Day the Earth Stood Still) and more "musical scenery" in the form of "The Desert Suite". He wrote for episodes of Gunsmoke, The Virginian and Have Gun Will Travel, and miscellaneous scores for the Kraft Suspense Theater. All this kept him busy and in 1957 he had time for only one film score, A Hatful of Rain.
Based on a Broadway play, it was - for its time - a frank examination of morphine addiction. Two years earlier had seen the release of The Man with the Golden Arm, which had dealt with the same topic (but a different drug), and which is now remembered mostly for its striking Saul Bass title design and Elmer Bernstein's jazz-influenced score. Herrmann chose to take another route in depicting the horror of addiction, writing a see-sawing string figure overlaid with screaming horns and nervous flutterings for wind that suggests the vicious spiral in which the film's main character is caught. Legend has it that the first version of the movie's main title music was thought to be too frightening and had to be toned down.
Twenty six minutes of the score is available in the form of a suite on Bernard Herrmann at Fox Vol 1 (VSD-6052).
Based on a Broadway play, it was - for its time - a frank examination of morphine addiction. Two years earlier had seen the release of The Man with the Golden Arm, which had dealt with the same topic (but a different drug), and which is now remembered mostly for its striking Saul Bass title design and Elmer Bernstein's jazz-influenced score. Herrmann chose to take another route in depicting the horror of addiction, writing a see-sawing string figure overlaid with screaming horns and nervous flutterings for wind that suggests the vicious spiral in which the film's main character is caught. Legend has it that the first version of the movie's main title music was thought to be too frightening and had to be toned down.
Twenty six minutes of the score is available in the form of a suite on Bernard Herrmann at Fox Vol 1 (VSD-6052).
Williamsburg: The Story of a Patriot
Williamsburg: The Story of a Patriot was made not for the cinemas but for a museum. The thirty-five minute film tells a fictional story to explain the state of Virginia's role in the fight for American Independence, and is still shown regularly at the Colonial Williamsburg Visitor Centre. The film was produced by Paramount (Hitchcock's studio for much of the Fifties) and Herrmann took on the project eagerly. The story of a Virginian planter (played by Hawaii Five O's Jack Lord) allowed Herrmann to indulge in his love of eighteenth century music. He wrote sprightly hornpipes ("Overture") and delightful minuets ("Gown and Court") that look forward to the English music of The Three Worlds of Gulliver, and - with the spirit of Charles Ives no doubt looking over his shoulder - employed variations of "Yankee Doodle" ("The Drummer") to signal the approach of war. So enjoyable was the experience of scoring the short film that Herrmann declined to take a fee for the work.
The full score (which is almost as long as the entire film's running time) is available on a Tribute Film Classics disc as a companion to The Kentuckian (TFC 1004).
The full score (which is almost as long as the entire film's running time) is available on a Tribute Film Classics disc as a companion to The Kentuckian (TFC 1004).
The Wrong Man
The third 'man' Herrmann wrote music for in 1956 was The Wrong Man. Based on a true story of mistaken identity and wrongful arrest, the film (shot in bleak monochrome with a documentary-like sense of realism) was an anomaly in the Fifties Hitchcock canon of glossy colourful suspense pictures. Although the director was dealing with familiar themes, his approach was quite radical. Even his normally playful cameo appearance (like an artist's signature in the corner of a canvas) was expanded into a direct-to-camera address to the audience before the main credits and shot in Expressionist silhouette.
Henry Fonda played the role of Manny Balestrero, a bass player in New York's Stork Club band, who is arrested on suspicion of robbery when he is falsely identified by a witness. The film charts his ordeal to clear his name and the disintegration of his marriage that resulted from the stress of the experience. Apart from a jaunty rhumba that opens and closes the film in a deliberate counterpoint to the unrelenting bleakness of the story, Herrmann scored the picture with a spare orchestration that is often reduced to a gnawing plucked double bass. Some of the cues ("The Cell II") scream with a tension that threatens to snap under the strain. Following Samuel Fuller's dictum ("Life's in colour, but black and white is more realistic."), Herrmann drained his orchestral palate and produced a work of musical monochrome.
Even though the full score runs to a modest thirty eight minutes, it can be a tough listen. Elmer Bernstein recorded the sassy prelude on his tribute disc to Herrmann, but for those with stout hearts you can get the original soundtrack on the FSM label (FSM Vol.9 No.7). Just make sure you don't leave any cut-throat razors lying about when you listen to it.
Henry Fonda played the role of Manny Balestrero, a bass player in New York's Stork Club band, who is arrested on suspicion of robbery when he is falsely identified by a witness. The film charts his ordeal to clear his name and the disintegration of his marriage that resulted from the stress of the experience. Apart from a jaunty rhumba that opens and closes the film in a deliberate counterpoint to the unrelenting bleakness of the story, Herrmann scored the picture with a spare orchestration that is often reduced to a gnawing plucked double bass. Some of the cues ("The Cell II") scream with a tension that threatens to snap under the strain. Following Samuel Fuller's dictum ("Life's in colour, but black and white is more realistic."), Herrmann drained his orchestral palate and produced a work of musical monochrome.
Even though the full score runs to a modest thirty eight minutes, it can be a tough listen. Elmer Bernstein recorded the sassy prelude on his tribute disc to Herrmann, but for those with stout hearts you can get the original soundtrack on the FSM label (FSM Vol.9 No.7). Just make sure you don't leave any cut-throat razors lying about when you listen to it.
The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
Although the title of Herrmann's second film of 1956 had an echo of the Hitchcock thriller he had just completed, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit could not have been more different. A wordy adaptation of a bestselling novel about the life of a business executive (referenced in season two of Mad Men), it starred Gregory Peck as a man struggling with the pressures of working for a New York television network whilst haunted by memories of the men he killed in combat. Even though its running time was 156 minutes, the film did not require a great deal of music. Herrmann provided a score dominated by strings. The standout moment (innocuously titled "The Coat") is a four and a half minute sequence that uses muffled timpani to ratchet up the tension for a flashback in which Peck's character kills a young German sentry. This is one of the eight tracks that can be heard on Bernard Herrmann At Fox Volume 1 (VSD-6052)
The Man Who Knew Too Much
The Man Who Knew Too Much, the second Hitchcock film to have a Herrmann score, found the director on familiar ground. Very familiar, in fact - he had made the picture once before in the Thirties. Hitchcock had been toying with the idea of an American remake for some time (he had pitched the idea to his first Hollywood producer David O. Selznick in 1940), and now, supremely confident in what would be his best decade, he returned to the concept. The basic story - a family become unwittingly embroiled in an international assassination plot - remained the same, as did the picture's climactic scene that takes place during a concert at London's Royal Albert Hall.
With a much bigger budget the second time around Hitchcock elected to shoot on location (in Morocco and England) and brought Herrmann along. The composer's duties on the picture were not limited to writing the score: he played himself - spiffly turned out in white tie and tails - in the Albert Hall sequence, and Hitchcock gave him an extra credit by including a brief shot of his name on a poster as Doris Day runs into the building. The music Herrmann conducted for the big scene was not his own, but a somberly serious piece called "The Storm Clouds Cantata" by Australian composer Arthur Benjamin. It had been composed specifically for the original movie and, although Herrmann was given the opportunity to write a new cantata of his own, he chose to reorchestrate Benjamin's piece. During breaks in the filming at the Albert Hall Herrmann regaled the orchestra with Hollywood gossip and impressed them with his encyclopaedic knowledge of music. As a parting gift the musicians gave the composer a book inscribed "To Bernard Herrmann, the Man Who Knows So Much".
In fact, there is very little original Herrmann music in the film. He wrote a striking prelude for the opening titles, a thrilling percussion sequence for the chase through the market place in Marrakech, some standard moody bass clarinet for suspense, and a brief comedic piece for the struggle in a London taxidermist's shop. All together it was the least amount of music he had written for any film. This explains why the full score has never surfaced on disc. The Prelude was recorded by the Los Angeles Philharmonic for the Sony Film Scores CD (SK 62700) and the Benjamin Cantata is a curious inclusion on Elmer Bernstein's Bernard Herrmann Film Score Tribute (Milan 71000-2).
In fact, the most recorded piece of music from the film was not by Herrmann, but by the songwriting duo Jay Livingston and Ray Evans. Although it was not written to order for the film, "Whatever Will be, Will Be (Que Sera Sera)" won the Oscar for Best Song in 1956 and quickly became a popular standard. Surprisingly, given his later antipathy to the practice of shoe-horning songs into movies to sell records, Herrmann defended its inclusion in the picture. "It was not a predmeditated attempt at song-plugging," he said. "All pop hits are accidental. Like gold, it's where you find it."
With a much bigger budget the second time around Hitchcock elected to shoot on location (in Morocco and England) and brought Herrmann along. The composer's duties on the picture were not limited to writing the score: he played himself - spiffly turned out in white tie and tails - in the Albert Hall sequence, and Hitchcock gave him an extra credit by including a brief shot of his name on a poster as Doris Day runs into the building. The music Herrmann conducted for the big scene was not his own, but a somberly serious piece called "The Storm Clouds Cantata" by Australian composer Arthur Benjamin. It had been composed specifically for the original movie and, although Herrmann was given the opportunity to write a new cantata of his own, he chose to reorchestrate Benjamin's piece. During breaks in the filming at the Albert Hall Herrmann regaled the orchestra with Hollywood gossip and impressed them with his encyclopaedic knowledge of music. As a parting gift the musicians gave the composer a book inscribed "To Bernard Herrmann, the Man Who Knows So Much".
In fact, there is very little original Herrmann music in the film. He wrote a striking prelude for the opening titles, a thrilling percussion sequence for the chase through the market place in Marrakech, some standard moody bass clarinet for suspense, and a brief comedic piece for the struggle in a London taxidermist's shop. All together it was the least amount of music he had written for any film. This explains why the full score has never surfaced on disc. The Prelude was recorded by the Los Angeles Philharmonic for the Sony Film Scores CD (SK 62700) and the Benjamin Cantata is a curious inclusion on Elmer Bernstein's Bernard Herrmann Film Score Tribute (Milan 71000-2).
In fact, the most recorded piece of music from the film was not by Herrmann, but by the songwriting duo Jay Livingston and Ray Evans. Although it was not written to order for the film, "Whatever Will be, Will Be (Que Sera Sera)" won the Oscar for Best Song in 1956 and quickly became a popular standard. Surprisingly, given his later antipathy to the practice of shoe-horning songs into movies to sell records, Herrmann defended its inclusion in the picture. "It was not a predmeditated attempt at song-plugging," he said. "All pop hits are accidental. Like gold, it's where you find it."
Friday, June 24, 2011
The Kentuckian
Herrmann's score for his second Western differed quite substantially from the one he provided for his first. Whereas the music for Garden of Evil was harsh and unforgiving, The Kentuckian was warm and lyrical. In a sense the scores reflect the movies' two different landscapes: one, the dry desert and rock of Michoacan in southern Mexico; the other, the green wilderness of Kentucky. For Burt Lancaster's first picture as director Herrmann chose a recognisably American idiom to write in, one that is reminiscent of Aaron Copland's Rodeo music. Some of the cues ("The Stagecoach", "The Steamboat", "Welcome Aboard" and "Scherzo") have a toe-tapping barn dance energy to them that makes you want to throw a Stetson into the air and shout "Yeehaw!"
For many years all I had of the music was on a Preamble disc (PRCD 1777). The CD was called The Kentuckian, but it had only nineteen minutes of the score arranged in a symphonic suite that favoured the Coplandesque cues. The full score was re-recorded by Morgan/Stromberg in 2007 on their new Tribute Film Classic label (TFC-1004), and it revealed that the do-si-do hoedown numbers - pleasing though they are - are just a small part of the overall work. There are moments of nerve-shredding tension ("The Rope", "The Kill") and brooding suspense ("Anger"), and shimmering string interludes ("Nocturne"). Sometimes single tracks manage to encompass all three ("The Boy and his Dog"). There's even some authetic bar room source music ("Saloon Piano", "The Gamblers"). The forty eight cues (some as short as seventeen seconds) are woven together to form a rich quilt of Americana.
For many years all I had of the music was on a Preamble disc (PRCD 1777). The CD was called The Kentuckian, but it had only nineteen minutes of the score arranged in a symphonic suite that favoured the Coplandesque cues. The full score was re-recorded by Morgan/Stromberg in 2007 on their new Tribute Film Classic label (TFC-1004), and it revealed that the do-si-do hoedown numbers - pleasing though they are - are just a small part of the overall work. There are moments of nerve-shredding tension ("The Rope", "The Kill") and brooding suspense ("Anger"), and shimmering string interludes ("Nocturne"). Sometimes single tracks manage to encompass all three ("The Boy and his Dog"). There's even some authetic bar room source music ("Saloon Piano", "The Gamblers"). The forty eight cues (some as short as seventeen seconds) are woven together to form a rich quilt of Americana.
The Trouble With Harry
In the history of film and of film music the names of Bernard Herrmann and Alfred Hitchcock are inextricably bound together. Their eleven years of collaboration happily occured when both artists were at the height of their powers and it produced an unprecedented run of masterpieces from Vertigo to Marnie (yes, I'm one of those people who think Marnie is a masterpiece).
It all started with The Trouble with Harry, a whimsically macabre comedy of a body that refuses to stay buried. It's not laugh-out-loud funny like Some Like It Hot and it probably has fewer jokes than North by Northwest, but the story appealed to Hitchcock's droll sense of humour. By the mid Fifties (with Dial M for Murder, Rear Window and To Catch a Thief under his belt) Hitchcock could have convinced any studio to let him film the telephone book.
Hitchcock had already worked with a number of top rank Hollywood composers (Franz Waxman on Rebecca, Suspicion, The Paradine Case and Rear Window, Miklos Rozsa on Spellbound, Dimitri Tiomkin on Strangers on a Train and Dial M for Murder), but - with the possible exception of Spellbound - none of them had produced any stand-out musical moments. Hitchcock was quick to realise that by giving Herrmann free rein he could dispense with dialogue and exposition and tell the story purely through visual and aural means.
On their first feature, however, the music played an incidental role. The opening credit sequence - drawn by artist Saul Steinberg - establishes the mood along with Herrmann's impish music. In tone it is not dissimilar to his arrangement of Gounod's Funeral March of a Marionette that was to become Hitchock's signature tune. Indeed, when Herrmann arranged and recorded a suite of the music from The Trouble with Harry in the Sixties, he titled it "A Portrait of Hitch". At that time he described the music as "gay, macabre, tender, and with an abundance of [...] sardonic wit" - a description that would fit the film's director equally well.
Unencumbered by the dark obsessions of Hitchcock's later work, The Trouble with Harry gave Herrmann the opportunity to show his lighter side. The jaunty rhythms of his score accompany the characters as they crisscross the autumnal New England countryside, and, though there are some sombre tones woven into the musical patterns, there is more light than shade in the score.
For years the music was only available in the suite that Herrmann arranged for his Decca album The Great Hitchcock Movie Thrillers (B000004261). In the Nineties Varese Sarabande produced a series of Hitchcock/Herrmann scores conducted by Joel McNeely, and The Trouble with Harry was one of them (VSD-5971).
It all started with The Trouble with Harry, a whimsically macabre comedy of a body that refuses to stay buried. It's not laugh-out-loud funny like Some Like It Hot and it probably has fewer jokes than North by Northwest, but the story appealed to Hitchcock's droll sense of humour. By the mid Fifties (with Dial M for Murder, Rear Window and To Catch a Thief under his belt) Hitchcock could have convinced any studio to let him film the telephone book.
Hitchcock had already worked with a number of top rank Hollywood composers (Franz Waxman on Rebecca, Suspicion, The Paradine Case and Rear Window, Miklos Rozsa on Spellbound, Dimitri Tiomkin on Strangers on a Train and Dial M for Murder), but - with the possible exception of Spellbound - none of them had produced any stand-out musical moments. Hitchcock was quick to realise that by giving Herrmann free rein he could dispense with dialogue and exposition and tell the story purely through visual and aural means.
On their first feature, however, the music played an incidental role. The opening credit sequence - drawn by artist Saul Steinberg - establishes the mood along with Herrmann's impish music. In tone it is not dissimilar to his arrangement of Gounod's Funeral March of a Marionette that was to become Hitchock's signature tune. Indeed, when Herrmann arranged and recorded a suite of the music from The Trouble with Harry in the Sixties, he titled it "A Portrait of Hitch". At that time he described the music as "gay, macabre, tender, and with an abundance of [...] sardonic wit" - a description that would fit the film's director equally well.
Unencumbered by the dark obsessions of Hitchcock's later work, The Trouble with Harry gave Herrmann the opportunity to show his lighter side. The jaunty rhythms of his score accompany the characters as they crisscross the autumnal New England countryside, and, though there are some sombre tones woven into the musical patterns, there is more light than shade in the score.
For years the music was only available in the suite that Herrmann arranged for his Decca album The Great Hitchcock Movie Thrillers (B000004261). In the Nineties Varese Sarabande produced a series of Hitchcock/Herrmann scores conducted by Joel McNeely, and The Trouble with Harry was one of them (VSD-5971).
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