Bernard Herrmann

The Trouble with Harry

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Little Arnie, with his toy gun, finds the body

A wag rather than a humourist, Alfred Hitchcock generally ran into trouble when he tried to make a funny film. Case in point: The Trouble with Harry, an arch confection notable for two things: it was the first time Hitchcock worked with composer Bernard Herrmann; and was also Shirley MacLaine’s screen debut. There are two conceits at work in this movie. Number one is the body that won’t stay buried. Number two is the nonchalance of the citizens of a white-picket American town who stumble across it, one way or another. That starts with Arnie, a boy roaming the countryside near his home who hears a commotion and a shot and then discovers … Read more

Hangover Square

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George and Netta

The film that killed its star, Hangover Square is an adaptation of Patrick Wilson’s most popular novel, a moody noir set in gaslit, foggy London and with a psychoanalytical element that marks it out as a beast lumbering out of the 1940s. There’s a lot to like here but the first thing to grab the attention is the score by Bernard Herrmann, which sets the mood with its jangling tangle of unresolved chords, followed by a giddy, swooping camera swinging us straight into the action – a man being killed done from the killer’s point of view. The killer is George Harvey Bone (Laird Cregar), a classical composer with dissociative identity disorder (multiple … Read more