I saw Hitchock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much yesterday, it’s been a couple of years since I saw this one last, and I try to see every movie Bernard Herrmann has scored once or more, as this man was a genius at scoring film music. Now, to be fair, he didn’t score all the music in this music, not even the thing I will talk about next, the use of Arthur Benjamin’s Cantata which he just re-orchestrated.
Anyway, in the last one fifth of the movie there’s this famous scene where a states person is about to be murdered during a concert in Albert Hall, where Herrmann is actually the conductor.
I don’t want to write any spoilers for anyone who has not seen this movie (if not, you should really watch it, just the movie scoring is amazing). Anyway, the cymbals play an important role. The whole scenario of music leading up to this point, with the leading actress Doris Day having an angst if she will tell about what will happen or not, with the music pushing her emotions up one level after another, is one of those magical movie scenarios worth watching. There’s actually no dialog for many minutes, just music, Doris Day with her emotions, and the scenes leading up to the murder attempt.
Herrmann then did the most famous film violin music done ever, the murder part in Psycho, and did the scores for what some say the most influential movie ever, Citizen Kane, but that’s another story.