Sight and Sound (2012) - Working with Hitch
Details
- article: Working with Hitch
- author(s): Neil Brand
- journal: Sight and Sound (01/Jul/2012)
- issue: volume 22, issue 7, page 34
- journal ISSN: 0037-4806
- publisher: Tower Publishing Services
- keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, Anny Ondra, Authorship, Bernard Herrmann, Blackmail (1929), Donald Calthrop, Filmmakers, Franz Waxman, John Longden, Marnie (1964), Miklós Rózsa, Motion picture music, Motion pictures and music, Neil Brand, North by Northwest (1959), Practice, Psycho (1960), Rear Window (1954), Rebecca (1940), Scotland Yard, Silent films, Spellbound (1945), Vertigo (1958), Waltzes from Vienna (1934)
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Abstract
It's an obvious point to make, but in scoring silent films the music is all the sound there is--an enormous luxury for a film composer used to competing dialogue and effects tracks. The score will speed up action, slow it down, point up elements of the drama, draw people into the action and make its own statements at the same time as Alfred Hitchcock's silent films, but with subtle differences. Here, writing a score for the restored version of Alfred Hitchcock's last silent film, 1929's 'Blackmail', gave composer Neil Brand new insight into the master's techniques
Article
"Working with Hitch": Neil Brand on scoring Blackmail
Writing a score for the restored version of Alfred Hitchcock’s last silent film, 1929’s Blackmail, gave composer Neil Brand new insight into the master’s techniques.
There’s a moment halfway through Alfred Hitchcock’s 1929 film Blackmail (in its silent version) when the heroine Alice (Anny Ondra), still dishevelled from her all-night walk home after murdering a would-be rapist, sits on her bed and racks her weary brains for a way out of the nightmare. We see her looking at herself, expressionless in the dressing-table mirror, then looking up at the wall behind it – and seeing the photograph of her boyfriend Frank (John Longden). We know Frank is a detective (although in the photo he’s a uniformed constable – their relationship goes back a long way) and we also saw them part on bad terms. But from the dawning light in her eyes, we understand that Frank is the only person she can trust to help her.
Alice throws on her clothes as fast as possible, turning before our eyes from night-time diva into daytime dutiful daughter (the second time in 15 minutes that Hitchcock has let us watch her undress). But in solving the immediate problem of where to get help, Alice has also given herself further obstacles to overcome in getting to Frank without her parents getting wind of what has happened. In creating an opportunity for escape, she has let herself in for more suspenseful action.
It’s a beautifully handled sequence, no more than 40 seconds in total, solving so many narrative problems with a couple of looks and a photograph while drawing us seamlessly into the second act of the drama. But it so desperately needs music to help it make its impact. Watching the sequence in silence we will certainly understand the train of thought it evokes, but we will still be ...
