Thrilling the Ears: Sound in Hitchcock's cinema

Blackmail, silent version (Alfred Hitchcock, 1929)

Blackmail, sound version

Hitchcock's use of sound in Blackmail and Murder is important in three respects. As historical documents the two films overturn some accepted notions of what was technically possible in filming with immobilized cameras and uneditable sound systems. As personal documents they represent Hitchcock's first major experiments in combining sound and image in ways that would not subordinate pictures to dialogue. As films that extend Hitchcock's expressionistic interests into the sound era, they reveal Hitchcock's earliest efforts to use aural techniques to convey a character's feelings. In addition, Blackmail already establishes Hitchcock's predilection for integrating music and sound effects with plot and theme, and it introduces most of his favorite aural motifs. Both films are interesting historically, but Blackmail is the more successful work of art because its aural techniques and motifs are an integral part of a stylistic whole. [Elisabeth Weis, Chapter 2: "First Experiments with Sound: Blackmail and Murder", in The Silent Scream - Alfred Hitchcocks Soundtrack (Rutherford, Fairleigh: Dickinson University Press, 1982), p. 28]

A new academic year is upon us and Film Studies For Free's author is very happily gearing up to teach, inter alia, Alfred Hitchcock's film Blackmail for the umpteenth time.

It's a truly great teaching topic, one which usually takes off from the fact that Hitchcock converted his silent film to sound during its production. And it has very fruitfully inspired today's entry on scholarship about sound in Hitchcock's cinema.

There are some excellent, openly accessible resources linked to below, most notably Elisabeth Weis's wonderful book on this topic, now added to FSFF's permanent listing of online and freely accessible Film Studies e-books.

• Richard Allen, 'Hitchcock and Narrative Suspense Theory and Practice' in Allen, Richard, Malcolm Turvey (eds), Camera Obscura, Camera Lucida: Essays in Honor of Annette Michelson (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2004)

• Alan Andres, 'Telescope: A Talk with Hitchcock (1964)', The Bernard Herrmann Society, February 2000

• Giorgio Biancorosso, 'Beginning Credits and Beyond: Music and the Cinematic Imagination', Echo, Volume 3 Issue 1 (Spring 2001)

• David Butler, 'The Days Do Not End: Film Music, Time and Bernard Herrmann', Film Studies, Volume 9 (Winter 2006)

• Stephen Deutsch, 'Psycho and The Orchestration of Anxiety', The Soundtrack, 2010

• Nathan Fink, 'The Sound of Suspense: an analysis of music in Alfred Hitchcock films', 9th International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition, University of Bologna, 2006

• Kurt George Gjerde, 'Bernard Herrmann A Celebration of His Life and Music', The Bernard Herrmann Society, April 1999

• Catherine Grant, 'Framing Fascination: Studies of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window', Film Studies For Free, February 16, 2011

• Catherine Grant, 'Study of a Single Film: Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo', Film Studies For Free, November 22, 2010

• Stephen Husarik, 'Transformation of “The Psycho Theme” in Bernard’s Herrmann’s Music for Psycho', Interdisciplinary Humanities, 2009

• Amy Lawrence, 'Blackmail (1929)', in Echo and Narcissus: Women's Voices in Classical Hollywood Cinema (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991)

• Richard Littlefield, '[Review of] Steven C. Smith. A Heart at Fire’s Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann', The Journal of Film Music, 1.2/3, 2003 

• Gary McCarron, 'Undecided Stories: Alfred Hitchcock’s Blackmail and The Problem of Moral Agency', Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol 33 (2008) 65-80

• Stuart Y. McDougal, 'The Director Who Knew Too Much: Hitchcock Remakes Himself', in Horton, Andrew, Play it again, Sam: retakes on remakes. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998

• David George Menard, 'Form Inversion in Alfred Hitchcock, Part 1'' and 'Form Inversion in Alfred Hitchcock, Part 2', Offcreen Journal, Vol. 12, 2008

• Ellen J. Nasto, 'Bernard Herrmann: An Annotated Index of Materials', The Bernard Herrmann Society, 1999

• Stephen Rebello, 'Sound in Psycho', excerpt from Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho (London: St Martins Press (Trade); 1999)

• Nick Redfern, 'Hitchcock and shot scales', Research Into Film, November 18, 2010

• William H. Rosar, 'Bernard Herrmann: The Beethoven of Film Music?', The Journal of Film Music, 1.2/3, 2003 

• Tom Schneller, 'Unconscious Anchors: Bernard Herrmann's Music for Marnie', Popular Music History Vol.5, Number 1, (2010), pages 55-104 

• Tom Schneller, 'Death and Love: Bernard Herrmann's Score for Vertigo', Cuadernos de musica, artes visuales y artes escenicas, Vol. 1, Number 2 (April-September 2005), pages 189-200

• Tom Schneller, '[Review of ] Jack Sullivan: Hitchcock’s Music', The Journal of Film Music, 2.1, 2007

• Tom Schneller, '[Review of] David Cooper. Bernard Herrmann’s Vertigo: A Film Score Handbookand David Cooper. Bernard Herrmann’s The Ghost and Mrs. Muir', The Journal of Film Music, 2.1, 2007

• Jack Sullivan, 'Overture', Hitchcock's Music (Yale University Press, 2006) 

• Constantine Verevis, 'Remaking Film', Film Studies, Vol. 4, Summer 2004 (pp 87-103)

• Steve Vertlieb, 'Herrmann and Hitchcock: The Torn Curtain', The Bernard Herrmann Society, 2002

• Michael Walker, Hitchcock's Motifs (Amsterdam University Press, 2005)

• Elisabeth Weis, 'The Sound of One wing Flapping', Filmsound.org, [date unknown]

• Elisabeth Weis, 'Tati, Hitchcock, Antonioni: Three Approaches to Sonic Creativity', Offscreen Journal, Vol. 11, 2007

• Elisabeth Weis, The Silent Scream - Alfred Hitchcock's Soundtrack (Rutherford, Fairleigh: Dickinson University Press, 1982)

• 1. Introduction (p 13)
• 2. First Experiments with Sound: Blackmail and Murder (p 28)
• 3. Expressionism at Its Height: Secret Agent (p 63)
• 4. Consolidation of a Classical Style: The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) (p 77)
• 5. Music and Murder (p 87)
• 6. The Subjective Film: Rear Window (p 107)
• 7. Aural Intrusion and the Single-Set Films (p 125)
• 8. Beyond Subjectivity: The Birds (p 136)
• 9. Silence and Screams (p 148) Appendix filmography

• Brian Wise, 'Bernard Herrmann: Remembering an Original who Changed Film Music',WQXR, June 30, 2011

• Bill Wrobel, 'The Nature of Bernard Herrmann's Music', The Bernard Herrmann Society, 2008

• Slavoj Zizek, 'Why Hitchcock is still our contemporary?', Alternative Politics, Vol. 2, No. 2, 94-105, October 2010