Customer Reviews

Music For The Movies: Bernard Herrmann

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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

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.

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.

If you have an interest in Bernard Herrmann or composing music for movies, this is an excellent biography centered primarily on Herrmann's music and music career.

Thanks -Great nephew of Bernard Herrmann

If you have an interest in Bernard Herrmann this is an excellant
and inexpensive video. The mini clips of comments and memories
of various people who knew him and worked with him was the basic approach to the project. I found the "Torn Curtain"
comparison segment of great interest and demonstrates what most
people say - Hitchcock made a mistake giving in to studio pressure, which led to him dropping Herrmann.

It's great to see more and more Herrmann related material become available, in the form of music re-releases and fresh recordings as well as the radio documentary and the DVD Telescope:A talk with Hitchcock [this includes a Herrmann interveiw] It is interesting in the Telescope interveiw to hear
Hitchcock talk about movie music - much of what he says that is not complaining are things that Herrmann has said, meaning that
Herrmann was a great influence on Hitch about HOW music in movies should be used. So get these 3 items if you can plus the great book Steven Smith's bio on Herrmann "A Fire At Heart's Center". Amazon.com carries all these items except the radio documentary and the Bernard Herrmann US postage stamp.

Nephew of Bernard Herrmann

For those who know Herrmann's life and work, this disc offers few surprises. Still, the production values of this musical documentary are very high, and print offers no substitute for the marriage of music and images provided by this DVD. Particularly valuable is the reproduction of Herrmann's original, and deplorably unused, cue for Gromek's death in Hitchcock's ill-fated "Torn Curtain" (1966). Alongside the critical essays of Fred Steiner and Royal Brown, and Steven Smith's impeccable "A Heart at Fire's Center," this is splendid disc to own and to replay, to study and to enjoy.