Product Details

• Actors: Bernard Herrmann
• Directors: Joshua Waletzky
• Format: Classical, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: KULTUR VIDEO
• DVD Release Date: September 25, 2007
• Run Time: 58 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000TJ0SB8
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #107,765 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Music For The Movies: Bernard Herrmann explores the work of a composer who created music for over 50 films, collaborating with such diverse directors as Orson Welles, Nicholas Ray, and Martin Scorsese. Best remembered for his twelve-year collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock in such classics as Vertigo, North By Northwest ,and the unforgettable Psycho, Herrmann pioneered many fundamental techniques of film scoring in the course of his 35-year career.

Music For The Movies: Bernard Herrmann takes audiences behind the scenes in Hollywood to the mixing rooms and dubbing stages where music is put to picture. We follow Herrmann's relationship with Hitchcock, examining the bitter breakup of one of the richest collaborations in Hollywood history over the score for the 1966 film Torn Curtain. We see Torn Curtain as it has never been seen before ­ accompanied by Herrmann's brilliant score.

Including clips from: Citizen Kane, Sisters, North By Northwest, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, On Dangerous Ground, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Psycho, Torn Curtain, The Bride Wore Black, and Taxi Driver.

Featuring interviews with directors Martin Scorsese and Claude Chabrol, composers David Raksin and Elmer Bernstein, film scholar Royal S. Brown, Herrmann's first wife, musicians, film editors and sound mixers, as well as home movies, archival photos and interviews with Herrmann himself.

Music For The Movies is an exciting documentary series chronicling the influence music has had on the making of movies. These four programs ­Bernard Herrmann, Toru Takemitsu, Georges Delerue, and The Hollywood Sound ­explore the complex relationship between image and music in cinema, taking audiences behind the scenes to bring the story of movie music to life.

Executive Producers: Richard Copans,Yves Jeanneau, Margaret Smilow
Produced By: Margaret Smilow and Roma Baran
Narrator: Philip Bosco
Directed and Edited By: Joshua Waletzky

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent documentary about an excellent composer, May 1, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Music for the Movies: Bernard Herrmann [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Bernard Herrmann was an uncompromising composer of not only film music but also music for radio, concert hall, theatre and television. He was also a very respected conductor. This documentary focuses on his film music from the early 1940s to his death in 1975.

While most music documentaries only focus on the subject's private life, this film successfully blends the art and the artist. You are shown leading musicians at the piano giving instruction in how Herrmann's pieces were built - eg. his use of parallel thirds, slight motifs, the 'Hitchcock' chord (a minor triad with major 7th), etc.

The result is a very entertaining and informative documentary that relies on archival footage and interviews with Herrmann's friends and professional associates. There are also some very funny anacdotes, like Herrmann's fight with his violin teacher when a boy, his reaction to the music for Murder On The Orient Express, etc.

Anyone with a true love for what music can be - an experimental, creative, emotional artform - will be very pleased with this documentary. It is extremely watchable and incidently contains a great soundtrack (of course).

With high hopes,
M. Kenneth Gear END

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Bio, January 16, 2008

By 

Tracy Hurzeler (Utah) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Music For The Movies: Bernard Herrmann (DVD)

This is a great biography of the Composer/Conductor Bernard Herrmann. He was one of those inovators particularly in the Hollywood Film Music scene and you hear about him from many of his contemporaries. What a character he was. Herrmann's known chiefly as the composer of choice for Hitchcock in the 50's and early 60's, but he did much more, starting in radio, segueing into film while working on serval substansive pieces of concert music.

I was given the VHS as a gift years ago and now that it's out on DVD I will cherish this version as well.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A treat for the movie music fan, June 28, 2009

By 

K. Russell (United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Music For The Movies: Bernard Herrmann (DVD)

For years I've been wishing for a DVD edition of this irreplaceable documentary--one of the few VHS tapes I kept after I gave away most of my VHS collection. Now the DVD, recently ordered from Amazon, has arrived--and after playing it straight through once, I had to go to the chapter selections and watch my favorite parts again.

This 1992 documentary is a treat not only for Bernard Herrmann fans, but for all fans of movie music, because it shows so well how music works with movies. Interviews with directors, composers, musicians, editors, sound mixers, and film scholars, as well as with Herrmann himself and his first wife, shed light on music itself and its relationship to movies, while also illuminating Herrmann's contribution.

Of course, the soundtrack of this documentary is full of Herrmann's music, sometimes serving as background, sometimes accompanying the film clips from ten of the numerous movies Herrmann scored--including the first, CITIZEN KANE, and the last, TAXI DRIVER. The documentary also offers a biographical sketch of Herrmann, and serves as a fine complement to the written biography by Steven C. Smith.

Personally, I can never tire of watching composer Elmer Bernstein and film scholar Royal S. Brown play piano transcriptions of familiar passages from CAPE FEAR, THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, VERTIGO, and PSYCHO, explaining why these passages haunt us long after we've seen the movies.