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It has to be Vertigo. Not for anything obvious, but more for it's subtleties and it's ability to leap it's emotion off the screen at a level that his other scores come close to, but simply can't compete.

However, either tied with that, or quite possibly upon examination exceeding the obvious Vertigo, is CITIZEN KANE.

I don't think people realize how complex and incredible both the score to that film is, and the film is itself. It is still the undeniable masterpiece of cinema. And a top of all the cinematic wizardry, it has an incredible story that still is effective today.

Now the score is a masterpiece too. First of all on top of writing the tonal range of emotions and catching the action and transitions, Herrmann was also writing in 3 time periods, during which he correctly used non time specific music and time specific music. The best example of how ground breaking his score is, is during a flashback to when Kane meets the blonde in the street in the rain. His cue is suddenly extremely serious, and if you are really engrossed in the film, this shift would be tremendous. Fo r he has setup most of the flashbacks technically (ie: period music). But suddenly here we have this scene in flashback which is completely dramatic. Not to mention that the cue employs a harp ostinato and melodic structure that is the basis of scores like Stargate and Attack Of The Clones. HUGELY INFLUENTIAL cue.

Then there is the truly first use of Cinematic Narrative. Of course, Welles was the first to use the camera as Narrative, but Herrmann and him as team really hit it over the head. At the end, (for those of you who haven't seen it I will not give it away), the camera pushes in to the "focus object", thereby pulling the audience with it (cinematic narrative), but the music ties the narrative all together by illustrating what the audience should be feeling NOT what music goes with picture or the action. It was the first most powerful use of music and camera from the audience perspective. It was as if the audience was on a tour, guided by Orson Welles, and when he showed you what he showed you, Benny handed out tissues. The frailty of life, the meaning of life, dreams, aspirations, love, tenderness, death, birth, sacrifice, greed, honesty, deception, grief, all rolled into one intense moment which is still unparalleled. And then we close with this even more important statement, again via the cinematic narrative provided by Welles and Herrmann, that in society such simple circumstances which are now existing in modern times, is what can create an empire of despair. Money and greed are taking away people's lives and dreams, and cares. And Herrmann only barely touches on a major chord at the very end, which in case you didn't know, was VERY serious for it's time. Studios did not want to leave an audience in a bad mood. His use of the major chord is minimal and detached and only for function.

Evan Evans

John A - I agree absolutely on that particularly "directionless" section. The very fact it has that quality musically subliminally supports the image of meandering through the streets, and through the psychological situation the character finds himself in - "wandering."

I probably agree with Paul that Psycho is the single best piece of rawly manipulative film scoring ever done. It accomplishes more - as pure film music divorced from its musical quality which is brilliant in itself - than any other score I know of.

I disagree that Welles was the first to use camera narrative - that originated and reached a peak in the silent era - but he was the first in the sound era to resume doing so on that level and took it farther than it has gone - perhaps even to this day. But this is a fascinating, insightful post by Evan that brings out some subtle points. On both Kane and Vertigo Herrmann was supplying things that were not mere duplication or reinforcement of the screen image, but another distinct element in the audio visual montage. It is almost frightening to think that Kane was Herrmann's first film score [[:|]]

BTW the brass chords at the beginning of the end cue were a subtle incorporation of the Dies Irae we were discussing on the other thread - by way of Rachmaninoff's Isle of the Dead which was a big influence on Herrmann.

After watching a little of Citizen Kane the other day (I've seen it many times including in David Raksin's class at USC) it really is an astonishing work from the young composer. It's no mistake that many landmark films are scored by the giant. His insight into the nature of cinema is otherly. He wrote with the kind of power you find only in Beethoven. The opera sequence in Kane, the main title of Day The Earth Stood Still. Amazing stuff. I recently listened to the score to Psycho (inadvertently as it was on a tape with The Boys From Brazil) and didn't realize how absolutely beautiful the music is. Gorgeous string writing. It's sad we don't have the consistently brilliant work from the likes of him these days.

Dave Connor

"It's sad we don't have the consistently brilliant work from the likes of him these days." - Dave Connor


I wonder how much of that is due to film itself. In other words, what films are now being made that even remotely compare to Citizen Kane or the string of Hitchcock masterpieces? Once in a blue moon there is something really ambitious like Lord of the Rings (actually very few things like that) but film to me has devolved alarmingly. And I believe a composer is utterly dependent upon the quality of the film he is scoring. He may try to rise above it, but ultimately his music is tied to it, whether it is a great soaring balloon, or a piece of crap sinking into the sewer.

[...

Psycho is famous for being a film which made the audience nervous about what it was going to experience as a result of some very short violent scenes, but very long suspense scenes. It is perhaps the ultimate example of Hitchcock's well-known explanation of suspense vs. shock:

Two men talking for five minutes. Suddenly a bomb goes off. A ten second shock after five minutes of boredom.

Take the exact same conversation but put a shot of the bomb ticking before it. The whole time the audience is thinking "they better stop talking or they're dead" etc. So you have five minutes of suspense.

Psycho fulfills this in a complex way by showing the audience the narrative-destroying potential (killing off the famous starlet) right at the beginning - just after they started to empathize with her. It is an approach far more radical and diabolical than any other filmmaker had tried previously. So the slow pace is essential to the suspense.

Just as the stupidest, most assinine "horror" films ever made are the ones being made right now, by idiots who want a "roller coaster ride" every second. A horror film MUST be slow paced, or it is no longer a horror film. It becomes a moronic action film with phony "vampires" (i.e. that wretched Tarantino travesty or John Carpenter's stupidest production) but utterly negates the entire aesthetic principle behind the horror film in its elemental form.

This is related to the music as well, because it is crucial to the development of these suspense scenes, and must also be very slow paced or even non-rhythmic. That is why rock music is so horrifically bad in a horror film. It cannot be fast paced or driving. It must be meandering things like irritating violin tremolos, soft flute solos, irrelevant percussion tappings and bumps, static choir harmonies, etc. - the usual stuff of horror scores but completely appropriate to the psychology of the form.

Herrmann's music in Psycho of course is the ultimate - the apotheosis of the horror film score. The atonal, bitonal, tritonal but deliberately "colorless" strings create a straightjacket of static madness punctuated by fits of hysteria around the entire film. Exactly as Herrmann stated he wished to do in his general approach to film scoring - to envelope the entire film in a single, unifying structure of sound. Only in this work of brutal genius, there is no escape from that structure.

No doubt about the quality of the films themselves being everything. Hitchcock's mastery of ambience is why we are fascinated at what is really void of action but charged with anxious suspense (the characters point of view.) When Leigh drives away from the cop, we are fully identified with her fear and the cop's suspicion. Not from our independent point of view but Hitchcock's. He unites his audience by his command of the visual image.

Hand over that level of filmmaking to Bernard Herrmann (the fact that he may indeed be the best ever says everything: he was the best for Hitchcock) and you get the visual image and all it's attendant psychology perfectly heightened and presented. Look how the actors flourished under Hitchcock. Were any of them better in following roles?

A good example of good film engendering good music is the Coen Brothers and Carter Burwell in Fargo. As William said, it's all to rare these days.

Dave Connor

By the way you guys are talking about "the score" to Psycho it makes me believe that I know something you don't about that "score".

I'll give you a hint.

The "score" to Psycho, is not really a score.

[;)]

Evan Evans

[...

Yes, the score is a rewrite of his early Sinfonietta for strings.

I agree on the heavy duty bra however Hitchcock stated he thought it was very unfair that John Gavin was barechested but not Janet Leigh. You know Hitch though. He and Marnie had some trouble along those lines... but this is a PG rated site, correct? Though occasionally R for Language, Harsh Thoughts and Extreme Neurosis.

[...

I agree on the strong romantic element in Hitchcock. However how much of that is due to the Hollywood-mandated story requirements of the time?

One thing that is certain is that Herrmann responded in an extreme way to any romantic element in the story. He was as much or more capable of intense emotionalism in his scores as he was of impressionistic description.

One aspect of Vertigo however that always strikes me is that the music is constructed in a formal way that reflects the storyline, for example in using the unresolved bitonal and augmented chords to accompany the lack of resolution in the Stewart character's situation all throughout the film, and then - only at the climax of the "theme d'amour" and at the end - having a huge major chord resolution, not of triumph, but of a pathetic illusion in the first case, and of deadly finality in the second.

[..

@evanevans said:

By the way you guys are talking about "the score" to Psycho it makes me believe that I know something you don't about that "score".

I'll give you a hint.

The "score" to Psycho, is not really a score.

[;)]

Evan Evans

[:D] This is now the third time, right?

Yeah probably is. But some either give the writing too much credit or don't give enough credit to how ingenius Herrmann was particularly on that "score".

Evan Evans

It doesn't bother me he did that. It is perfect however it was gestated. The reverse of what Vaughn Williams did with Sinfonia Antarctica. On that he took his score for "Scott of the Antarctic" and turned it into a symphony.

Actually, Vertigo is generally considered in polls of critics throughout the world to be one of the ten greatest films ever made. Robin Wood in his Hitchcock study which established all Hitchcock studies now current said it was "one of the four or five films most profound and beautiful films the cinema has yet given us." The "flawed masterpiece" is usually identified as Marnie, established as that by Truffaut who admired it greatly but recognized the difficulties in it, caused partly by Hitchcock's obsessions. A polite word one might use.

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While I would agree that Vertigo is Herrmann's best score, my favorite is his lesser known but equally awesom Fahrenheit 451. Some beautiful string/percussion/harp writing in that score. The final cue is sublime.