The music in the film Vertigo is what made the movie a thriller. Without the music it would have been a very boring movie. There was very little action and nothing in particular made the movie suspenseful or dramatic except the music. Overall, the melodies throughout the film had a darker tone and they were dramatic because of an underlying rhythm. There was also a lot of sequencing which created a suspenseful atmosphere. To heighten the tension in the scenes there was a large range of pitch used which created a clashing effect. For example the melody when John was following "Carlotta" in the cemetery was very high pitched, but then all of a sudden a very low rhythm developed under the melody. The use of dissonant chords suddenly in a repetitive sequence also created tension and drama. Near the end of the movie there were also a lot of fast rhythms used as a base line that made all of the action seem more desperate. Hitchcock also used mostly strings in the music, but they were always sounding desperate not smooth and lyrical like you would expect them to sound.
The first thing that I noticed though with Vertigo that I didn't expect was the use of underscoring. After having heard about Hitchcock's dislike for underscoring in Lifeboat, I assumed that he used very little underscoring in all of his movies, but Vertigo was almost constant underscoring. There were a few instances of diagetic music, the first on being near the beginning when John is bothered by the music he hears in Midge's house. There were also a few scenes without music, mainly when John was talking to Midge, but in general the music was almost constantly heard.
Overall, I thought this was one of the best examples of what music can do for a movie because the film could have been very slow and anti-climatic, but with the constant music full of dramatic, frantic chords and rhythms the film was very intense and suspenseful.
2 comments:
I agree with you that the music really helped to bring this story to its full potential. I also noticed the amount of underscoring that took place in this film, which was pretty much throughout the entire film. I didn't think too much about how it increased the otherwise slow storyline, but that proves that the music really did its job because it masked the otherwise drab and boring chain of events in the film and made it interesting!
This film definitely could have been much less successful without the score. The music Hermann created emphasized the emotional underpinnings of the mental states of the characters and helped to build suspense and tension. What could have been a boring story was combined with a monumental score to create a combination that left viewers in awe of a great film instead of becoming bored at a slow plotline.
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