Jack Sullivan: Hitchcock's Music

Jack Sullivan: Hitchcock’s Music.

New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006 [xix, 354 p. ISBN: 0300110502. $38.00] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, index.

TOM SCHNELLER

ack Sullivan’s ambitious but Doubt, or The Man Who Knew Too “scores or musical analysis.” It is disappointing new book, Much. In addition to interviewing directed to “those who want to JHitchcock’s Music, is a survey composers Maurice Jarre and John experience [Hitchcock’s] work of the music used in the director’s Williams, Sullivan cites documents from a different point of view—to more than 50 feature films, as such as Hitchcock’s music notes watch as well as listen” (p. xviii). well as his television shows Alfred or Selznick’s production memos, Since Sullivan has neither the goal Hitchcock Presents and The Alfred and reveals fascinating details nor, I assume, the ability to do Hitchcock Hour. The 25 chapters such as Hitchcock’s attempt to serious musical analysis, his only proceed largely in chronological hire Shostakovich to score Topaz. tool of engaging with his subject order, from Blackmail (1929) to The passages based on archival matter is impressionistic verbal Family Plot (1976), with the focus materials, and in particular the description. Of course this would squarely on Hitchcock’s American interview with Williams, which is not be a problem if the main focus period (there is little information excerpted in the chapter on Family of the book were biographical about Hitchcock’s collaboration Plot, are genuinely interesting and or historical research—there with the composers who scored his constitute a useful contribution to are many informative books on British films, like Louis Levy or Hal film music studies. film music that do not delve Dolphe). Sullivan devotes individual However, Hitchcock’s Music into specific musical issues. But chapters to the music and post- tends to go out of tune whenever Sullivan’s goal is more ambitious. production history of a number of Sullivan departs from primary His thesis is based on a highly films with particularly significant sources to engage in discussion problematic proposition, one that scores, including Rebecca, and interpretation of the music, is reflected in the very title of the Spellbound, Vertigo, and Psycho, which unfortunately occurs for book: namely, that to a significant while grouping others under single most of the book. Sullivan is not degree, Hitchcock himself shaped chapter headings (“Sounds of War,” a musicologist—he is Professor the musical language of film scores “Hitchcock’s Fifties Comedies” etc.). of English and the director written for him between 1929 and Sullivan’s premise that of American Studies at Rider 1976 by more than 20 different “one cannot fully understand University—and his grasp of composers on two continents in Hitchcock’s movies without facing musical terminology is tenuous, a manner specific and consistent his music” is a welcome corrective as I will discuss. There are no enough to constitute a distinct to the traditional approach to music examples apart from a “musical signature.” This auteurist film criticism, which too often few single-page reproductions of perspective reduces the composer tends to ignore the music. He conductor scores by Waxman, to a musical minion whose role demonstrates convincingly that Webb and Herrmann. The book’s consisted merely in connecting “many of Hitchcock’s most original title suggests that music will be the dots provided for him by the films make music a crucial part the topic, but in his introduction, director: “Using detailed music of the narrative—sometimes the Sullivan specifies that Hitchcock’s notes, Hitchcock plotted sounds, key to the mystery . . . ,” as in Music is neither a work “about effects, musical emotions, and Young and Innocent, Shadow of a movie composers,” nor is it about even technical devices, then let the 88 THE JOURNAL OF FILM MUSIC composer ‘figure it out for himself’” complex to permit all manner of and that’s who should be getting (p. xvii). sly variations, which Hitchcock the sole credit for the music. exploits to the maximum . . . By implying that Hitchcock (p. 133). But why quibble with such manipulated composers into details: while Sullivan concedes writing the exact kind of music that “movies are a collaborative he had in mind, Sullivan is able to And who would have guessed enterprise, of course,” and that it is construct an image of “Hitchcock that the Master of Suspense “difficult to pin down Hitchcock’s as maestro” (the title of the last excelled at orchestration? exact contribution and degree of chapter) who, in the end, gets Sullivan outlines the “distinctive control in the final musical mix” to take the bow for “his” music. Hitchcockian instrumental he concludes that it is “reasonable Sullivan’s prose repeatedly conveys touches: a demonic use of the to assume that he controlled a the impression that, in addition (normally) celestial harp, creepy great deal” since “the Hitchcock to his talents as a filmmaker, organ sonorities, disappearing musical universe, using a variety Hitchcock was a composer whose brass fanfares, and distant of composers and songwriters over music evolved through distinct timpani to announce a death,” five decades, has a compelling stylistic periods: (p. 2-3) and later informs us that unity” (p. 3). What exactly does “throughout his career, Hitchcock this compelling unity consist of? favored bell-like keyboard and Just as Hitchcock learned the percussion . . .” (p. 133). But art of visuals from German Hitchcock’s musical signatures expressionists in the 1920s, Hitchcock’s instrumental palette were present from the beginning, he picked up musical traits was not, it seems, restricted merely including general devices such as from the same aesthetic: . . . to the orchestra; he was also a counterpoint and specific effects discordant harmonies, astringent pioneer of electronic music: “The such as chimes, lonely bass and orchestration, nervous silences, timpani solos, ambiguous bitonal sudden dynamic contrasts, bass vibrations” of the score for chords, and sudden silences, but minimalist chord repetitions, Notorious “. . . are so intense that we they are not reducible to a single spectral pizzicato. . . . Only when suspect Hitchcock is experimenting pattern. Indeed, they bristle with he began working for Gaumont with electronic instruments, as he tensions and oppositions: music in the mid-1930s did Hitchcock, can be a consolation or treachery, with Louis Levy as his musical did with Spellbound . . .” (p. 135). a force of healing or destruction, director, begin using a more Never mind that it was Miklós revelation or obfuscation, truth British musical language, with Rózsa who proposed the use of or evasion, innocence or guilt firmer harmonies and Elgarian (p. 320). rhetoric (p. 2). an electronic instrument for the Spellbound score. As the composer recalled, “Hitchcock and Selznick One is reminded of Mark Reading Sullivan, one might hadn’t heard of the theremin, and Rutland’s memorable phrase from think that the director was a gifted weren’t quite sure whether you Marnie: “Let’s back up and see if melodist . . . ate it or took it for headaches, but you can turn that Mount Everest they agreed to try it out” (p. 108). of manure into a few facts.” But Hitchcock’s characteristic love Although Sullivan quotes this facts are in short supply here. themes [are] at once lyrical and understated, full of sentiment but remark, its import seems to have Beyond vague observations such slightly cool. Elegant woodwinds escaped him: it wasn’t Hitchcock as “creepy organ sonorities” or sing the tune, as they do in the who experimented with electronic the preponderance of “elegant love theme for the Hollywood instruments in Spellbound, it was woodwinds” in love themes, which variation of The 39 Steps, North by Northwest. Hitchcock used these Rózsa, just as the credit for the are so general as to be meaningless, romance themes only sparingly sophisticated motivic development Sullivan produces no hard evidence . . . (p. 41-42). in Notorious belongs not to for his notion that Hitchcock Hitchcock but to Roy Webb, and imparted specific characteristics to . . . or that Hitchcock was the “elegant woodwinds” of North the music written for his films. skillful in developing motivic by Northwest that supposedly It might be useful to determine material: epitomize the Hitchcockian love which aspects of sound and music theme were chosen by Bernard actually can be demonstrated Herrmann and nobody else. The to have been micromanaged by The main title [of Notorious] is an ingenious chromatic paragraph, only person to compose a score for Hitchcock. The director’s detailed easily recognizable yet sufficiently a Hitchcock film was the composer, sound notes indicate beyond doubt SCHNELLER 89 that he “composed” sounds in present at most a bare framework. a few general guidelines regarding the same meticulous way that he They range from simple spotting character and timbre; but to envisioned images or controlled (“Start music on cut to Norman deduce from this that Hitchcock the “jigsaw cutting” of his films, as in Interior of Police Station jail. was a “maestro” who imparted is evident from his dubbing notes Continue as camera dollies in and “compelling unity” to the scores he to Family Plot: “Outside Blanche’s covers last speech. Music ends commissioned betrays a remarkable house just a faint car or two passing on fade end title”) to general ignorance of what it takes to by, maybe a barking dog in the expressive indications (“Dear Mr. create a musical work. Among the distance, just some sounds to give Musician—Please do not make composers hired by Hitchcock us the atmosphere of the suburbs the error that this is a heavy to score his films were several of of a city . . .” (p. 315).1 Sullivan’s dramatic scene of escape—it is a Hollywood’s most idiosyncratic view of Hitchcock as maestro comic one yet a daring one”) to artistic personalities, and they works for The Birds, since here the the occasional specifically musical signed their scores with their own director did not have to deal with suggestion (“[music] continues distinct “musical signatures.”3 musical notes but only with pure through cell scene getting louder Sullivan’s idea of Hitchcock as noise, which he could arrange (with and gradually losing instruments musical ventriloquist is directly Bernard Herrmann’s assistance) one by one until double bass is only contradicted by the testimony of into meticulously choreographed instrument playing . . .”). It should these composers. Herrmann put it soundscapes. be emphasized that of the music most succinctly: The choice of specific pieces of notes cited by Sullivan, the last source music, and the consistent category is the distinct exception Hitchcock is very sensitive: he role of music as a plot device, can (and only assumes importance leaves me alone! (Fortunately, also be credited to Hitchcock. in the case of Frenzy, for which because if Hitchcock were left to his own devices, he would play Sullivan perceptively traces the Hitchcock provided a number of “In a Monastery Garden” behind director’s recurring use of waltzes, timbral suggestions).2 all his pictures!).4 carnival music, and jazz, which are Sullivan’s argument loses often used to heighten suspense or credibility as soon as he blurs the Rózsa recalls in his memoirs to create a stark ironic contrast to distinction between Hitchcock’s that while working on Spellbound he grim events, and demonstrates that control over sound design and saw Hitchcock “only twice during in many Hitchcock films, music is a source music on the one hand and the whole job,” and describes the “crucial part of the narrative” (most his control over scoring on the director’s “precise requirements: a spectacularly in the Albert Hall other. It is indisputable that the big sweeping love theme for Ingrid sequences from the two versions of director was in complete control Bergman and Gregory Peck, and The Man Who Knew Too Much). of the former, and it makes sense a “new sound” for the paranoia But in regard to original to look for consistent patterns— which formed the subject of the scoring, the case is more an auteurial thumbprint—in picture.”5 Rather broad guidelines. complicated. This was the one these areas, as Sullivan does John Addison played his cues for aspect of his films that Hitchcock convincingly. But sound design and could not control directly. The the selection of source music are hieroglyphics of musical notation, in a separate category from music 3 Even in regard to his screenplays, the writing of which Hitchcock carefully supervised, the the intricate syntax of harmony, composed specifically to fit the auteurist image of the director as sole mastermind the complex palette of orchestral film. Hitchcock may have indicated is an exaggeration, as the following quote by screenwriter John Michael Hayes indicates: “The timbres presented the director precisely where such music should stamp of Hitchcock’s genius is on every frame of with a “language barrier” that occur, and from time to time given the finished film, but the impression that he did every bit of it alone is utter nonsense. I did what he could not circumvent and every other writer did for him—I wrote! But to which forced him to rely on the 2 Sullivan claims that Hitchcock’s music notes read Hitchcock’s interviews, it’s possible to get for Frenzy prove that it’s a “myth” that Hitchcock the impression that he wrote the script, developed composer’s initiative. Hitchcock’s “simply stayed out of the way of composers. the characters, provided the motivation.” (cited music notes, to which Sullivan [Composer Ron] Goodwin was clearly directed, in Donald Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius: The Life having been given specifications of mood, color, of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: Ballantine Books, ascribes such extraordinary weight, and even a bit of orchestration.” But even in 1983), p. 370. this case, Hitchcock’s musical suggestions are 4 Evan William Cameron, ed. Sound and the restricted to generalities on the level of “the music Cinema: The Coming of Sound to American Film (New 1 See also Dan Auiler, Hitchcock’s Notebooks: An should continue with a tremolo,” or “[the music] York, Redgrave Publishing Company, 1980), Authorized and Illustrated Look Inside the Creative rises to a sharp chord”—instructions that could 121-22. Mind of Alfred Hitchcock (New York: HarperCollins, be realized in very different ways by different 5 Miklós Rózsa, Double Life (New York: Wynwood 2001), 495-505. composers (Sullivan, 301-302). Press, 1982), 146. 90 THE JOURNAL OF FILM MUSIC

Torn Curtain to Hitchcock on the It is perhaps no coincidence that that simultaneously employs major piano over the telephone. The the skewed thesis of “Hitchcock’s and minor intervals” (p. 285). director’s reaction? “Most of the Music” is the work of an author Musical terms beginning with time [Hitchcock] would just say whose specialty is not music. The “counter” seem to confuse him, ‘Right.’”6 Maurice Jarre recalls the fact that Sullivan does not have as is evident in his discussion of complete freedom he enjoyed on to deal with actual notes allows Arthur Benjamin’s main title to Topaz: Hitchcock told him that “he him to escape into the realm of the original Man Who Knew Too wouldn’t tell a composer he hired the purely rhetorical, where he Much: “The motto is followed how to compose any more than he is free to construct the image of by a lush countermelody for would tell Cary Grant how to act” Hitchcock the maestro without strings, a straight-ahead, heroic (p. 292). Sullivan does not ignore being encumbered by empirically theme rather than the droopy such accounts; he simply sidesteps verifiable details. His book adds to and morose countersubject the obvious conclusion by implying the body of academic writing about in Bernard Herrmann’s main that Hitchcock’s instructions were film music by scholars of Literature title for the remake” (p. 33). A somehow so richly informative that or Film Studies who are, in some countermelody is a counterpoint all the composer had to do was cases, simply not equipped to to the main melody, not a separate “figure it out for himself.” seriously discuss musical matters. theme, which is what Sullivan In a 1964 interview with The following quote from Sullivan’s is describing. It is also not a the Canadian Broadcasting discussion of Waxman’s music for synonym for a countersubject, a Corporation, Hitchcock himself Suspicion gives a fair idea of the term specific to fugue. Not content conceded, with evident frustration, level of his musical exegesis: with the terminological havoc he how little control he had over his has wreaked, Sullivan coins a new composers—this from a director “Car Ride” begins with silken term, “counterscore,” in the next who usually claimed credit for the strings as the lovers exchange paragraph, in which Herrmann is labor of his collaborators: endearments, degenerates into credited with writing a “noirish ugly discords when Lina reveals Johnnie’s job termination, then counterscore to the Benjamin Markle: How do you and Mr. lurches back to romance when cantata” for the 1956 remake. Herrmann go about examining the Johnnie turns on the charm. To provide impressive-sounding contribution of music in a film? As he declares his intention to stuffing for his sentences, Sullivan develop a spectacular sea vista, a horn plays a lyrical but anxious resorts to any musical term that Hitchcock: I don’t know. As far solo (p. 88). comes to mind, whether it makes as I’m concerned he does as he sense or not, as in the following likes . . . I’ve always found with description of a cue from Dial M musicians you’re in their hands Page after page of this type for Murder: “For the most part, anyway. What can you do? So of bland, descriptive rambling, very often I’ve been asked—not The Plan plays, like a ritornello, studded with adjectives like “fizzy,” necessarily by Mr. Herrmann, at a constant volume, providing but by other musicians—they “shuddery,” or “goose-pimply,” somber counterpoint” (p. 166). say, “Come down, I want to know make long stretches of the book Leaving aside the enigmatic what you think of this.” You go a monotonous read that is only down and you say, “I don’t care reference to ritornello, there is occasionally relieved by flashes of for it.” [And they say,] “Well you ambiguity here (and elsewhere can’t change it; it’s all scored.” interest—usually when the author in the book) as to how Sullivan So the next time you take care steps aside and lets the primary intends the term counterpoint: and you say, “Can you play me sources speak for themselves by some and let me hear some does he mean musical counterpoint citing Hitchcock’s music notes, before you go to the expense of or counterpoint as an aesthetic an orchestra?” [And they say,] Selznick memos, or the composers category of film music, in which the “Oh no, no. You can’t play it on a who worked with Hitchcock. music plays “against” the image? piano. It’s not possible.” So there Sullivan’s ignorance of basic is no way to find out. So you are Considering that the book 7 terminology hampers his ability in the hands of a musician. was not written for specialists— to discuss music meaningfully. He Sullivan “pitched [Hitchcock’s Music] 6 Steven Smith, A Heart at Fire’s Center (Berkeley defines suspensions as “chords that and Los Angeles: University of California Press, to all who love Hitchcock, whether 1991), 273. droop down rather than resolve,” general readers and moviegoers 7 Telescope: A Talk With Hitchcock, CBC (p. 50) and refers vaguely to “an Television, 1964, http://bernardherrmann. or academics” (p. xviii) —does it org/articles/transcripts/telescope/ (accessed anxious Herrmann dissonance August 31, 2007). matter that his terminology is a SCHNELLER 91 bit fuzzy? Perhaps not, although it the moon,” a mental wasteland checking spelling and basic musical is doubtful that the general reader the music captures with spectral terminology. organ music called “The Parting” will find much value in references (precursor of the graveyard organ Sullivan’s readings of Hitchcock to countersubjects and ritornelli. in Vertigo) as Manny takes her films are often contrived and However, Sullivan’s attempt at to the asylum. Beginning with sometimes inconsistent. Note, for impersonating a musicologist is Secret Agent, continuing with the example, the flexible—or rather, novachord in the Rebecca era, problematic in that it allows him and culminating in the avant- protean—symbolic significance of to drape the cloak of academic garde sonorities in Herrmann the main character of Rebecca. On respectability over observations and Williams, Hitchcock used page 61, we learn that that would otherwise perish in the king of instruments to cue psychological states, in this case the cold. Statements such as “This crushing depression. (p. 213). “Rebecca’s story line also fit the is a modern symphony of dread, émigré pattern. Like Hitchcock repression, and final release based and Waxman, its nameless heroine is an orphan, a stranger on color and wandering harmony”8 The problem with this grandiloquent generalization is in a bizarre, glamorous new (p. 79) have a sonorous ring, world. Manderley is a stand-in but they offer little—to either that “Hitchcock” did not use an for Hollywood, a wondrous but academics or the general reader. organ at all in “The Parting.” artificial place full of seductive wealth and great peril.” While Sullivan projects an Herrmann scored it for oboe, four image of confident expertise, his clarinets, and bass clarinet, as book is riddled with careless errors. Sullivan could have easily verified, By page 75, Sullivan seems For example, he nonchalantly if not by ear, then by consulting to have forgotten his original throws Waxman, Rózsa, and the score in the Herrmann archive interpretation, and now the Tiomkin into the same pot as “Jews at University of California at Santa heroine is supposed to represent fleeing the Nazis” (p. 61). But Barbara. Similar inaccuracies the youthful whiff of America, Tiomkin was not fleeing the Nazis; mar Sullivan’s recollection of film instead of the bewildered European he had settled in Hollywood in scenes, as in his description of a refugee: 1929, four years before Hitler came scene from Foreign Correspondent: to power. Sullivan attributes the “Like a character in an opera, “The interaction among Selznick, climactic cue of Rebecca (“The Fire”) Johnny sings his theme in the Hitchcock, and Waxman, the to Franz Waxman when it was bathroom just before his balcony New World and the Old, full of escape. . . . ” (p. 100). The analogy tension yet often complementary, in fact written by Robert Russell parallels the Rebecca story line. Bennett.9 His frequent sloppiness to opera misfires completely, since The unnamed heroine played by 10 results in odd mistakes: “As with Johnny doesn’t sing; he whistles. Joan Fontaine—young, naïve, and his use of Walter Benjamin [sic], In addition to these and other clumsy, yet brave and spunky— mistakes, there are a number of is a stand-in for America, Johann Strauss, and Cole Porter, though not identified as an Hitchcock veered toward classical spelling errors (Marnie’s horse American, a breath of freshness composers who based their art on is Forio, not Florio, the German and innocence, her identity popular motifs” (p. 144) Sullivan cabaretist is Spoliansky, not unformed; her lover, Max, played Spolliansky, the “astute critic of by Laurence Olivier—brooding, must have meant Arthur Benjamin, burned out, given to sudden the composer, not the philosopher; cinema soundtracks” is Gorbman, rages, obsessed by a dead but in any case, neither Strauss nor not Gorban, and David Raksin is past—is a European with lots of Porter were “classical” composers. consistently misspelled as Raskin). baggage, the Old World aristocrat It does no credit to Yale University reinvigorated and saved by Plain factual mistakes cause several the New.” of Sullivan’s conceptual soufflés to Press that Sullivan’s editor collapse, as in the following passage evidently devoted little attention to pertaining to The Wrong Man: In addition to blatantly contradicting himself, Sullivan’s flowery prose scales new summits Rose’s psychiatrist describes her 10 Sullivan’s carelessness in this detail causes him to miss the subtle timbral pun set up by of banality. The clichés about the as trapped in a “maze of terror” Hitchcock: as Johnny climbs onto the balustrade and existing on “the dark side of of the hotel, we hear the distant sound of a police “aristocratic,” “brooding” “Old whistle. This mocking echo of Johnny’s insouciant World” rejuvenated by the fresh whistling in the bathroom reflects the contrast 8 This is in reference to Waxman’s Rebecca. between the fresh-faced naivity of the intrepid breath of the naive but spunky 9 Thanks to William H. Rosar for pointing out to war reporter and the sinister circumstances in “New World” would be more at me that it was Bennett who composed “The Fire.” which he finds himself. 92 THE JOURNAL OF FILM MUSIC home in a Harlequin Romance than an ostensible work of scholarship. Nonetheless, Sullivan delights in pulling out these withered chestnuts at every opportunity, as when he pontificates about emigré composers like Waxman and Tiomkin who “learned to combine European formalism [?] with Hollywood glamour,” which provided the perfect counterpart to “Hitchcock’s mixture of European sophistication and American brashness,” (p. 61) or when he opines that “Hitchcock’s Old World sophistication needed Herrmann’s New York brashness and iconoclasm” (p. 251). As is evident from the above discussion, Sullivan is not a reliable guide through the musical world of Hitchcock’s films. His attempt to cast Hitchcock as musical maestro is propped up largely by grandiose generalizations rather than specific evidence, and his book is rife with errors and contradictions. Nonetheless, Hitchcock’s Music has received favorable reactions. Edward Rothstein wrote a glowing review in the The New York Times,11 and the back cover of Hitchcock’s Music lists rhapsodies of praise from a number of experts (none of them musicologists), including Camille Paglia (“a richly evocative study . . . sparkling sensibility . . . vividly documents Hitchcock’s restless eclecticism and bold interweaving of musical styles”), Sidney Gottlieb (“a wonderfully coherent, comprehensive, groundbreaking and thoroughly engaging study”), Michael Wood (“lovingly researched”) and David Sterritt (“a milestone in Hitchcock criticism”). One can only hope that these scholars do not apply the generous standards by which they judge a book on film music to their own fields of expertise.

11 Edward Rothstein, “Hitchcock, Thrilling the Ears as Well as the Eyes,” The New York Times, January 12, 2007. SCHNELLER 93

References

Auiler, Dan. 2001. Hitchcock’s notebooks: An authorized and illustrated look inside the creative mind of Alfred Hitchcock. New York: HarperCollins.

Cameron, Evan William, ed. 1980. Sound and the cinema: The coming of sound to American film. New York: Redgrave Publishing Company.

Rózsa, Miklós. 1982. A double life. New York: Wynwood Press.

Smith, Steven. 1991. A heart at fire’s center: The life and music of Bernard Herrmann. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.