Shattered lives This cue was

Shattered lives

This cue was known as The Knife in Herrmanns score. Marion screams and the strings accompany her blood-curdling screams. This music came across like a bolt of lightning because it was so unexpected and some in the audience actually jumped in their seats when the knife starts cutting up poor Marion Crane. Then something happened Ill never forget several women in the audience were screaming at the top of their lungs and holding their stomachs as if somebody punched them or maybe they were ready to throw up as they quickly ran out of the theater. These were adult women, not teenage kids like at todays scary films. Most of the audience was made up of older folks at least older than me so to hear them screaming was quite a shock to me and added more fear to the murder being shown so gruesomely on screen. It was total hysteria in that theater when this famous shower scene took place. Everyone who saw it then believed that Marion Crane was getting sliced up in that shower. And wasnt she Janet Leigh one of the films stars? I actually heard shattered lives of the women say to her freind sitting behind me, How could it be that a star gets killed like that? Well it did happen and Hitchcock deserves much credit for keeping it a secret until the film was released. Unfortunately, this scene has become so familiar that the thrill of surprise is no longer there but the music has remained just as effective in scaring the daylights out of many people. One of the most innovative and imitated scores was composed by Bernard Herrmann for Hitchcocks classic thriller, PSYCHO. The use of strings for what Fred Steiner called Herrmanns black and white music. It was unheard of at that time. Incredibly, Herrmanns score was not nominated for an Oscar. And which score did win the Oscar for Best Film Score? It was EXODUS, a good score, but hardly as trend-setting as Herrmanns memorable PSYCHO score, which is much more than just those shrieking strings in the murder scenes. The rest of the score using only strings is just as effective in setting the moods and raising the suspense levels of various scenes and the score fully deserved to win an Oscar, or at least be nominated. On this 50th anniversary of the film and score, what should be remembered is that when it was first shattered lives in theaters, the audiences experienced a tremendous thrill of surprise and shock. A great deal of credit Hitchcock said it at least a third of the success was due to Bernard Herrmanns thriller had a well written screenplay by Joseph Stefano Writers Guild Award, based on Robert Blochs 1959 novel of the same name which is more graphically gruesome and based on a real person, Ed Gein from Wisconsin, who murdered several women and attempted to dress like his dead mother. The film has excellent acting by all, but especially from Janet Leigh, Vera Miles Marions sister Lila Crane, Anthony Perkins his best ever film role and Martin Balsam playing the investigator, Milton Arbogast. But probably the best remembered things about this film are the three knife scenes planned so effectively by Alfred Hitchcock and the chilling film score by Bernard Herrmann with those shrieking strings. For me, watching this film the first time was like taking a wild roller coaster ride at an amusement park and going up those steep inclines and then down quickly with the wind blowing in your face like someone suddenly punched you. PSYCHO was full of shock em and sock em moments from two masters of movie suspense: Hitchcock and Herrmann. Love it or hate it, this is still the best movie thriller ever made. Because of the enormous appeal of this Hitchcock classic suspense thriller, there are many CDs with music from this film, either the complete soundtrack or a suite PSYCHO: A Narrative For Orchestra. Compilation Produced by Didier C. Deutsch and Dana G. Smart. Orchestras conducted by John Addison, Paul Bateman, Elmer Bernstein, Bernard Herrmann, Dimitri Tiomkin, Franz Waxman, Muir Mathieson, John Williams. Theme from Alfred Hitchcock Presents TV series The Wild Ride from NORTH BY NORTHWEST Bernard Herrmann PSYCHO A Narrative for Orchestra Bernard Herrmann Prelude from TORN CURTAIN Bernard Herrmann The Radiogram from TORN CURTAIN Bernard Herrmann A Portrait of Hitch from THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY Bernard Herrmann How appropriate that this CD compilation is now available for the centennial of Alfred Hitchcocks birth August 13, 1 The 100th anniversary of his birth was on Friday the 13th how appropriate!! This is a marvelous collection of great themes, 8 of theme previously unreleased, from some of the greatest film composers of the past 50 years.