Movie †Psycho Essay

Psycho (1960) is a powerful complex psychological thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock. This horror movie is based on the novel written by Robert Bloch. Story-wise, though, I do not consider this movie to be an extraordinary but its brilliant excursion and its ingenious construction and above all its wonderful musical scores invented and innovated by Bernard Herrmann has made this movie all time great. Bernard Herrmann was born in New York in 1911. He studied music at Julliard School of Music and joined CBS radio in 1934. He quickly joined young Orson Welles to score his radio plays, including the notorious Wars of the World and within a very short span of time he established himself as a recognized film music scorer. Although remarkably versatile, Herrmann proved particularly adept at scoring dark psychological melodramas, such as Hangover Squire (1945) and On Dangerous Ground (1951), and it was perhaps inevitable that he would be teamed eventually with master of suspense and artist of â€Å"Psycho† Alfred Hitchcock. Their subsequent partnership resulted in a composer-director relationship unmatched in film history of creativity, flair and cinematic symbiosis. We find fantasy, romance, nostalgia, tenderness; all there in Herrmann but the unique scores of â€Å"Psycho†evidently suggest Herrmann’s departure from traditional compositional techniques. The most noticeable departure from film music custom is hat. Herrmann elected a daring and controversial orchestral combination: strings alone. Now such a combination imposes severe limitations on the range of available tone colors. This means a commensurate increase of composing problems, since generally important for composers to be able to call on the many resources of the symphonic ensemble- woodwinds, brass and percussion as well as strings- for variety and contrast in the treatment of musical material. But Herrmann’s selection of string alone deprived him of many tried-and-true musical formulas and effects normally employed in the scoring of horror and suspense films. Going by the established music theories, we find that music theory describes how sounds, which travel in waves, are notated, and how what is sounded, or played, is perceived by the listeners. Every object has a resonant frequency, which is determined by the object composition. Musical sounds are composed of pitch, duration and timbre. Pitch is determined by the sound’s frequency of vibration, whereas Rhythm is the arrangement of sound in time and Meter animates time in regular pulse groupings called measures. Melody is the unfolding in musical time of a principal single line of pitches. This line can be sounded alone, unaccompanied, known as monophony. It can also be accompanied by chords, known as homophony. Melody is often the most identifiable element in western music. Instrumentation is the study and practice of writing music for musical instruments. Writing for a specific instrument requires the ability to take into account the special properties of that instrument. Where as Diegetic Music, which is also called â€Å"source music† is produced by people or devices that are part of the story space of the film. Diegetic sounds are those pieces of sound that the characters in the movie should be able to hear, whether the sound source is visible or nor.   Coming back to â€Å"Psycho†, along with the strings, Herrmann has wonderfully used Diegetic Music also here. One does not have to be musician to notice a marked absence of tunes or melodies in the sense in which these terms are generally used. It is safe to say that in Psycho Herrmann was simply following his own customary practice in this respect but the result in this case is a special, disturbing quality, one which contributes greatly to the scores overall effectiveness. In an interview given in 1971, Herrmann explained that he had used only strings for Psycho because he felt that he could complement the black-and-white photography of the film by creating a black-and white sound. In most people mind the strings are associated first and foremost with romance. Nine times out of ten when a love a scene takes place on the screen the violins will soar in a big tune, the cellos throb in a passionate counter melody. But in Psycho, the level of score created by Herrmann with strings is mainly due to the fact that Strings span the longest effective gamut of notes; have an effective range of dynamics unmatched by the other group; and within the boundaries of their basic single tone colors they can command a great number and variety of special effects. And when the expressive range of string orchestra is compared to that of black-and-white photography, Herrmann analogy becomes perfectly clear. After watching the movie first scene that comes to my mind and the images that conjured are those of Janet Leigh being hacked to death in the shower and now I realize why even people who have not seen the movie are aware of it but Bernard Herrmann’s strident, discordant music, the â€Å"bird-shriek† and â€Å"distorted screaming bird-cries† appears to be one of the most horrifying cues ever composed, Herrmann brilliantly proved here that the view of the camera is very important aspect of film making but to enforce that view and to provide fluidity ,music is even more important. In conclusion this can be safely said that No film sound track library would be complete without â€Å"Psycho†.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  References    Movie : –   Psycho U.S. Release date : – June 1960 Running Length  Ã‚   : – 1:48 MPAA Classification : –   R (Violence) Cast : – Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, John Gavin, Martin Balsam, Janet Leigh Director and Producer   :- Alfred Hitchcock Screenplay : Joseph Stefano based on the novel by Robert Bloch Cinematography : John L Russell Music : Bernard Herrmann U.S. Distributer : Paramount Pictures.