North by Northwest

Music by: Bernard Herrmann

While the music in this film is excellent, it also has an excellent example of the use of silence. For all those of you who have seen the movie, I'm sure you'll all remember the Crop Dusting scene. In this scene, Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) is being chased through a corn field by a crop dusting plane. During the entire scene, there is no dialogue, not music, and no sound other than running, and the engine of the of the plane. It helps to add to the confusion already established in the movie. There's no good guy/bad guy music, no one is established as a hero or villain, and no hint is given as to the motives of the mysterious individual flying the plane.



Bernard Herrmann scored most of Alfred Hitchcock's movies, including Psycho and Vertigo. In case you're wondering about the score for The Birds, there isn't one. There's no music in the movie whatsoever, only the sound of birds. He always believed that the music should augment the action, and never succumbed to the pressure of the studios to compose a film score simply for the aim of selling records. It eventually became his downfall.

The opening theme is an excellent example of this. It has a very rhythmic pulse to it, a very fast tempo and an excellent use of hemiola. This makes it very intense for the movie, but not very interesting to listen to outside of the movie.