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.