Bernard Herrmann helped change the face of film music from that of the popular classical Hollywood film score style of the thirties and forties, to a type of music which encompassed the psychological infrastructure of the film, placed importance on the transference of the inner thoughts and psychological compulsions of characters. The pastiche and scene-painting style of the composers that dominated the classical Hollywood film model of the thirties and forties tended to be one that “explicates, underscores, imitates, emphasizes narrative actions and moods wherever possible” [1]. Such composers drew on a well-established repertoire of emotive musical signifiers, the scope of which rarely involved elaborating on the human psyche. Despite music expressing “inner thoughts” existing in the world of concert music and opera many years earlier, it wasn’t until the beginning of the second half of the twentieth century that film music explored similar territory.
During this time in North America, social and technological advances were changing the film industry and these factors played a role in instigating this new type of film and film music. Television was gigantically popular and the ensuing war between television and the big screen provided an incentive for innovation in cinema. Film production technology advanced at a rapid pace and soundtracks became more advanced due to improvements in microphone and recording technology. Problems such as the one described by Hitchcock in the Truffaut/Hitchcock interview where he talks about recording a 30 piece orchestra behind a bathroom set for the 1930 film Murder as it was not possible to add the music in the post production stage[2], no longer were an issue.
Not only was film changing but audiences too. The evolution of cinema has always had a close relationship with psychology, the phenomenon of film projection itself encompasses the cognitive psychological concepts of Roget’s 1824 Persistence of Vision[3] theory, and Wertheimer’s gestalt theorizing on stroboscopic effects[4] . The Twentieth century was a time of increasing awareness of the human condition and a time of intense developments in the study of psychology. The connection between film and it’s audiences were being examined. Interest in the psychological and philosophical effects on viewers of film was reaching a peak with theorists and critics realising that film represented an uneasy reflection of human psychosis.
It was during this time that Herrmann began working with Alfred Hitchcock, a collaboration that spanned eleven years and nine films. Psychology and psychiatry were featured subjects in the work of Hitchcock. Many of Hitchcock’s films feature psychiatrists, from Spellbound and The Wrong Man to Vertigo and Psycho, and Hitchcock films often deal with the theories of psychoanalysis. Subjects ranging from repressed memory (Norman Bates’ relationship with his mother in Psycho and Marnie’s repression of childhood events in Marnie); Oedipal complex (again Psycho); dream analysis (Vertigo and Spellbound); split personality (Psycho).
Even the “MacGuffin”, a device favoured by Hitchcock can be associated to Freud. Freud stated in his text Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious, that for a “tendentious joke” to be effective, there may first be the need to create a receptive mood in the listener through the use of non-tendentious “sub” jokes.
The presence of numerous inhibited instincts, whose suppression has retained a certain degree of instability, will provide the most favourable disposition for the production of tendentious jokes[5].
In an interview with the New York Times, Herrmann espoused what could be labeled a credo, revealing why Herrmann was so especially suited to work with Hitchcock:
I feel that music on screen can seek out and intensify the inner thoughts of the characters. It can invest a scene with terror, grandeur, gaiety or misery. It can propel narrative swiftly forward, or slow it down. It often lifts mere dialogue into the realm of poetry. Finally, it is the communicating link between the screen and the audience, reaching out and enveloping all into one single experience[6].
This commitment to transfer the inner thoughts of a character to the viewer in a single experience matches Hitchcock’s own commitment to make his films emotionally relevant. As revealed in several interviews, Hitchcock injected himself totally into his films[7], from his personal views and feelings, to his fleeting appearances, so it is not surprising he had definite views on how music can be useful.
It is in the psychological use of music, which you will observe, they knew something about before talkies, that the great possibilities lie. It makes it possible to express the unspoken. For instance, two people may be saying one thing and thinking something very different. Their looks match their words, not their thoughts. They may be talking politely and quietly, but there may be a storm coming. You cannot express the mood of the situation by word and photograph. But I think you could get at the underlying idea with the right background music… The basis of cinema’s appeal is emotional. Music’s appeal is to a great extent emotional, too… Words and incidental noises and ‘song numbers’ are surely not all the sound track was invented for?[8]
Hitchcock’s interest in the human psyche combined with Herrmann’s insistence on avoiding scoring the obvious created fertile ground for the composing of music that would transfer the inner thoughts of characters. It could be said that with this type of film music scoring, Herrmann peaks with Psycho (1960), perhaps proven by the fact we hear a marked difference in the quantity and type of music following Marion’s death from that which precedes it. As music was so integral to maintaining the tension and anxiety of the lead character, once she is killed off, the role that the score plays is greatly diminished.
Preceding Psycho in the Hitchcock/Herrmann output, separated only by North by Northwest, is Vertigo (1958). Vertigo is a masterpiece examination of what could be summed up as obsession. In fact this film doesn’t merely investigate obsession, but produces obsession and uses it intrinsically throughout. Scottie Ferguson, the once ambitious now forcibly-retired acrophobic detective and his obsession with the Kim Novak character represents a spiraling psychotic state based on different levels of perceived realities. The Novak character is a tabula rasa, a blank canvas on which Scottie paints his fevered art – his own Carlota Valdez, the pursuit of which will deliver him from his haunting past. From Scottie’s first gaze upon Madeleine in Ernie’s restaurant he is infected with an obsession that until the final plummet to reality from the bell tower, he cannot explain.
Judy: Cause I remind you of her, and not even that very much.
Scottie: No, no Judy it’s you too, there’s something in you… The colour of your hair…
With Vertigo, Herrmann has nearly completed his transition into a composer that locks in on the psyche of the characters in the film. In Psycho, the tension is maintained primarily by the music, however in Vertigo, Herrmann’s music works in conjunction with swirling camera work, Saul Bass’s geometric patterns, the editing and mise-en-scène. How Herrmann handled this interaction makes Vertigo a film worth analysing. Representing a point on a continuum that progresses on to Psycho, Vertigo is a major indication of Herrmann’s ability to hone in on the inner thoughts of a film’s character. Showing a development from the likes of Hangover Square with its abundant music diegetised as the product of a character’s psyche, the emotional angst of On Dangerous Ground and the strange atmospheres of The Man Who Knew Too Much, for Vertigo Herrmann composed an economical and modern sounding score.
[1] Gorbman, Claudia. Unheard Melodies, p. 7
[2] Truffaut, Francois. The Definitive Study of Alfred Hitchcock, p. 75
[3] Roget, Peter Mark. Explanation of an optical deception in the appearance of the spokes of a wheel seen through vertical apertures
[4] Wertheimer, Max. Drei Abhandlungen zur Gestaltstheorie
[5] Freud, Sigmund. Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious
[6] Christopher Palmer, The Composer in Hollywood, p. 253
[7] Truffaut, Francois. The Definitive Study of Alfred Hitchcock, p. 346
[8] Sidney Gottlieb (ed), Hitchcock on Hitchcock: Selected Writings and Interviews, p. 243
