Bernard Herrmann's score for Alfred Hitchcock's game-changing 1960 classic frightener Psycho couldn't be further from the lush orchestration of his 7th Voyage of Sinbad. Herrmann's strings-centric music hardly needs any introduction, so famous is his composition accompanying the iconic, much parodied murder of luckless Marion Crane. Psycho's score is one of the great pleasures of cinema; it is pared down and propulsive, driving the film fowards at a terrific whip. Like the film itself, Herrmann's music is 'black and white' - a monochrome of strings.
The Psycho Suite
I'll always maintain that Peeping Tom was and is a better film than Psycho.
ReplyDeleteI still admire it of course and I suppose it has the iconic moments, but Peeping Tom was FAR more daring, sexual, complex, sustained and controversial than Psycho ever was. It was released before too!
Psycho had the benefit of not utterly destroying it's directors career and the 20-25 years Peeping Tom spent in obscurity as a result.
Ah yes! Peeping Tom is a great movie, and just like Psycho, is the darling of dissertations. I'm not tribal about it though - i.e 'better/worse' - though I'd argue that Tony Perkins' performance as Norman is a thing of extraordinary nuance and ambivalence, so he's the nutter I prefer. I also have a soft spot for Janet Leigh as Marion - and those properly sultry sexy opening scenes with beefcake Sam. Peeping Tom is a much clammier film - and very enjoyable for it too. But Herrmann's score is a triumph inarguably - but, ironically, perhaps it is the moment when the music stops - when Marion first sees the Bates Motel sign - that the film's soundtrack truly 'pops' - just the silence, the sound of the rain...
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