Five Fingers

"REAL AS THE STREETS OF ANKARA AND ISTANBUL - WHERE IT ALL HAPPENED! TRUE AS THE INTRIGUES OF A MASTER SPY - GUILTY OF EVERY SIN THAT HAD A NAME!" Thus screamed the movie poster tag lines for Five Fingers, an espionage drama set in wartime Turkey. The five fingers of the title - as the poster tried to explain - were those of an amoral spy codenamed Cicero, who was intent on selling the secrets of the Normandy invasion plans to the highest bidder. Although filmed mostly on the Fox backlot, director Joseph Mankiewicz took a camera crew to Istanbul to shoot background footage.

Herrmann did not feel obliged -as he had on Anna and the King of Siam - to provide "musical scenery" this time and included only one cue ("The Old Street") which had a Turkish flavour to it. Not wanting to squander his talents he went on to recycle this cue for The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, and other suspense cues from the score found themselves being pressed into service again in Psycho and in Vertigo. Self-borrowing is not plagiarism and is common among artists. For Herrmann, though, it was a sensitive topic. When in a 1971 interview writers Greg Rose and Leslie Zador alluded to this musical cross-pollenation in his work, Herrmann went ballistic. "THAT'S BECAUSE IT HAPPENS TO BE ME! I WAS THE COMPOSER OF BOTH! I SOUND LIKE MYSELF!"

Hitchcock also drew Herrmann's attention to the similarity between the scores of Marnie and Joy in the Morning. In a lengthy cable to the composer he wrote:  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. (Hitchcock wasn't shouting - it's just that cables were always written out in capitals). Actually, this was a case of the pot calling the kettle black as Hitchcock had ripped himself off in Marnie, stealing the famous sweeping crane shot from Notorious for the scene where Strutt arrives at the Rutland party. Still, there was no arguing with Hitchcock. And there was always arguing with Herrmann. Not surprisingly, their working relationship did not last much longer.

The recording of Five Fingers I've been listening to while typing the above is on the Marco Polo label twinned with The Snows of Kilimanjaro (8.225168). Though it's one of Herrmann's lesser known scores, I find myself playing it quite regularly, and I think "The Pursuit" cue can rival any of John Powell's Bourne scores for tension and excitement. The score was restored by John Morgan and conducted by William Stromberg, two men who have served Herrmann's legacy well.