Screen Education (2013) - Spiral Music: Listening to Uncanny Influence In 'Vertigo'
Details
- magazine article: Spiral Music: Listening to Uncanny Influence In 'Vertigo'
- author(s): Daniel Golding
- journal: Screen Education (2013)
- issue: issue 69, pages 128-135
- journal ISSN: 1449-857X
- keywords: Academy Awards, Alfred Hitchcock, Bernard Herrmann, Composition (Music), Ernie's Restaurant, San Francisco, California, Instruction and study, Jack Sullivan, James Stewart, Joseph Stefano, Kim Novak, Motion picture music, Motion picture producers and directors, North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), Sacha Gervasi, San Francisco, California, Saul Bass, Steven C. Smith, The Trouble with Harry (1955), Torn Curtain (1966), Vertigo (1958)
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Abstract
It is a self-consciously Hollywood moment. A man, having spent his dignity and exhausted his resolve, plans to take his own life. His love, though they've had their share of problems, is the only one who knows or cares, and is desperately searching for him, hoping to mend their troubles and salvage a life together. The music that plays over these scenes has an unplaceable melancholia about it; it imbues the film with something else, something beyond the drama and romance we're being shown on screen. It is a haunting of sorts, a visit from elsewhere. This feeling - this music - is not from this film. It has not grown with these images on screen, but is rather placed against them. Our hero, at the lowest ebb of his life, does not even have a melody to call his own.
