Partners in suspense [antikvár]

IntroductionK. J. Donnelly and Steven RawleFor a decade from 1955, Alfred Hitchcock worked almost exclusively with one composer: Bernard Herrmann. From The Trouble with Harry (1955) to the bitter spat surrounding Torn Curtain (1966), the partnership gave us some of cinema's most memorable musical moments, taught us to stay out of the shower, away from heights and never to spend time in corn fields. Consequently, fascination with their work and relationship endures fifty years later. This book brings together new work and new perspectives on the relationship between Hitchcock and Herrmann. Featuring chapters by leading scholars of Hitchcock's work, the volume examines the working relationship between the two and the contribution that Herrmann's work brings to Hitchcock's idiom, as well as expanding our understanding of how music fits into that body of work. The goal of these analyses is to explore approaches to sound, music, collaborative authorship and the distinctive contribution that Herrmann brought to Hitchcock's films. Consequently, the book examines these key works, with particular focus on what Elisabeth Weis (1982: 136) called 'the extrasubjective films' - Vertigo (1958), Psycho (1960), The Birds (1963) - and explores Herrmann's palpable role in shaping the sonic and musical landscape of Hitchcock's work, which, the volume argues, has a considerable transformative effect on how we understand Hitchcock's authorship.The collection examines the significance, meanings, histories and enduring legacies of one of film history's most important partnerships. By engaging with the collaborative work of Hitchcock and Herrmann, the chapters in the collection examine the ways in which film directors and composers collaborate, and how this collaboration is experienced in the films themselves. In addition, the collection addresses the continued hiérarchisation of vision over sound in the conceptualisation of cinema and readdresses this balance through the exploration of the work of these two significant figures and their work together during the 1950s and 1960s.'From his first sound films', Weis remarked, 'Hitchcock has treated sound as a new dimension to cinematic expression (1982: 14). Music is ofl:en fundamental to how we consider Hitchcock's authorship, and he forged a number of partnerships with composers over his career, including Miklós Rózsa, Dimitri Tiomkin, but most notably Herrmann. lack Sullivan suggests:A supremely calculating technician often accused of coldness, Hitchcock needed music more than most movie-makers. Music tapped into the Romanticism beneath