Hitchcock and Herrmann: The Friendship and Film Scores That Changed Cinema
I recall discovering Alfred Hitchcock not as a director, but through his mystery magazines and the Three Investigators series. My understanding deepened through TV broadcasts of films like The Birds and The Wrong Man, revealing his complex partnership with composer Bernard Herrmann. Their collaboration, starting with The Trouble with Harry, defined Hitchcock's unique tone, blending macabre humor with intense emotion, even after their eventual professional rift.
Music on the 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.