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).