New Statesman (2006) - The sound of music
Details
- article: The sound of music
- author(s): Christopher Bray
- journal: New Statesman (10/Jul/2006)
- issue: volume 135, issue 4800, page 42
- journal ISSN: 1364-7431
- publisher: New Statesman Ltd
- keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, Bernard Herrmann, Christopher Bray, Composers, Documentary: The Man on Lincoln's Nose, Doris Day, Film & stage music, François Truffaut, James Stewart, Marnie (1964), Martin Scorsese, Motion picture directors & producers, Motion pictures, North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), The Birds (1963), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), The Trouble with Harry (1955), Torn Curtain (1966), Vertigo (1958)
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Abstract
No film-maker knew that better than [Alfred Hitchcock]. When MGM studio bosses told him they'd hired Sammy Cahn to pen a "hit theme", "The Man on Lincoln's Nose", for North by Northwest (1959), the master of suspense grew distinctly sniffy. For the past few years Hitchcock's pictures had all been scored by the same man, and despite MGM's pleadings for a more "Gershwinesque" sound, he intended to stick with him.
Article
Bernard Herrmann's soundtracks proved too good for Alfred Hitchcock, writes Christopher Bray
"As usual, the music does most of the acting, with the customary distribution of parts: horns for moments of grandeur, skittish woodwinds for interludes of domestic lyricism, sweeping violins to enliven transitional bits in which nothing much is going to happen, and unresolved chords on any combination of instruments to indicate menace," observed Kenneth Tynan of The Heroes of Telemark (1965), a Second World War action film starring Kirk Douglas venturing behind enemy lines. Given that Douglas could make drinking a cup of coffee look fraught with repressed histrionics, you have to wonder quite how much acting Malcolm Arnold's music was doing, but Tynan's point still stands. A good soundtrack can redeem a bad picture, and it can make a good picture great.
No film-maker knew that better than Alfred Hitchcock. When MGM studio bosses told him they'd hired Sammy Cahn to pen a "hit theme", "The Man on Lincoln's Nose", for North by Northwest (1959), the master of suspense grew distinctly sniffy. For the past few years Hitchcock's pictures had all been scored by the same man, and despite MGM's pleadings for a more "Gershwinesque" sound, he intended to stick with him. This man's music had, after all, blackened and blurred the comedy in what would otherwise have been the too-sunny-by-half The Trouble With Harry (1955). It had exposed the fractures in the seemingly contented marriage of Doris Day and James Stewart in The Man Who Knew Too Much (19...
