Vertigo Poem by gershon hepner

Music can awaken
thoughts that are unspoken,
and what you can’t imagine is
transformed into vertiginous,
allowing the libido
to act with a bravado
it lacks without what’s basic
for lovers’ rhythm: music.

Moral:

Intensity Wagnerian
turns Jew into an Aryan.

Jack Sullivan, the author of Hitchcock’s music, writes about Bernard Herrmann’s score for Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo, ” which “is the closest movie comes to hypnosis, repealing forever the cliché that a movie score should stay discreetly in the background” (“The Dizzying Heights of Movie Music: Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’ Would Not Be the Same Without Bernard Herrmann’s Seductive Score, ” WSJ, May 17,2008) :

In Madeleine’s long dressing scene, Hitchcock took out all sound save for the score and told Herrmann: “We’ll just have the camera and you, ” allowing him 10 minutes of trembling lyricism unlike anything in cinema. From “Citizen Kane” to “Cape Fear” to Taxi Driver, ” Hermann dealt in romantic fantasy, loss and the treachery of nostalgia, but only with Hitchcock was he given latitude to develop these themes with such Wagnerian intensity.

5/19/08