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Saturday, October 31, 2009

## Bernard Herrmann's music for Fahrenheit 451

> "There is no such thing as a film music composer.
> There are only"
> Bernard Herrmann

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A few introductory considerations François Truffaut's two films, Fahrenheit 451 (1966) and La Mariée était en noir (1967), are often associated with each other. Firstly, because both seem to stand in stark contrast to the filmmaker's earlier references, notably the love trio (Jules et Jim, 1961) or the existential quest (Les 400 coups, 1959). Secondly, because Truffaut (re)visited the genre film with them, giving these films the rather facile label of "film noir". And finally, because Truffaut called on a number of writers and technicians, including composer Bernard Herrmann, who are to be found from one film to the next.

But there's no resemblance between these two titles. Their themes are radically different, as are their moods, aesthetics and atmosphere. It's also forgetting that Truffaut had already explored the genre with his second feature, Tirez sur le pianiste (1960), a "French crime thriller" not exempt from a few bends in the codes of the detective film, just as Fahrenheit 451 and La Mariée était en noir will, in turn, bend the codes of science fiction and film noir respectively.

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Moreover, the presence of these two titles in the shadows of Truffaut's filmography is so convenient as to obscure the fact that, in reality, these were two American films produced thanks to a delocalized base that the Universal studio had set up in England in the late 1960s, housed in the famous Pinewood studios, located near Heathrow airport, in the small town of Iver Heath, north of London. The company's strategy for penetrating the European market was based on the production of European films, directed by well-known filmmakers, but shot in English (as in the case of **Fahrenheit 451**). The films were then dubbed into the local language, thus abandoning the method of directly importing productions from the USA. The advantages were obvious. There were three main reasons for this: on the one hand, it eliminated European reticence towards films that would have been considered "imports" if they had been entirely financed and produced in the USA; on the other hand, it made it possible to generate substantial profit margins in Europe by limiting distribution costs; finally, it made it possible to offer for distribution in the USA English-language films that were immediately exploitable at a time of scarcity due to the closure of Hollywood studios and the fierce competition from television.

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For ten years, thanks to their subsidiary Vineyard Film Ltd., the Americans from Universal Columbia and Paramount helped make several hundred European films, including several French ones by Truffaut and De Broca. On this occasion, some of the details of the operation are quite comical. For example, in 1978, *Who is Killing The Great Chefs of Europe?* (La Grande cuisine), an amusing comedy about the world of French haute cuisine starring Philippe Noiret, Jean Rochefort and Jean-Pierre Cassel, was directed by... the director of *First Blood* (Rambo, 1982), Ted Kotcheff, for a completely French-language Warner production! Similarly, after *The Bride Wore Black*, Truffaut continued to co-produce his films for almost eleven years with the support of the American studios Artistes Associés, Columbia and then Warner, and found, as Laurence Alfonsi laconically pointed out in 2000, "*an enviable freedom*" (1). If we apply the usual criteria of a film's nationality (country of the production company's head office), **Fahrenheit 451** is an American film... in the same way as Pagnol's *Marius*, produced in 1931 by Paramount, and directed by American filmmaker Alexander Korda.

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These economic oddities aside, the recurrence of Anglo-Saxon references, whether literary (Bradbury for the original novel) or musical (Bernard Herrmann for the score), may go some way to explaining why these two François Truffaut films also remain among the filmmaker's most misunderstood, as they are too far removed from the traditional French-inspired culture of the former "Cahiers du cinéma" critic. The French press has never been outspoken in its praise of these films.

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of the films from Truffaut's "American" period, and La Nuit américaine, despite winning the 1973 Oscar for Best Foreign Film and ranking among the top 50 grossers of the same year in the USA, did not enjoy a better fate. Nonetheless, The Bride Was in Black and Fahrenheit 451 do reflect a Truffaldian universe that is coherent with the director's earlier output. The study of these films is therefore all the more relevant.

**Preparing the film** context in which Fahrenheit 451 was created is somewhat unusual. In Great Britain, Bernard Herrmann had voluntarily moved to London in 1966, after a number of marital setbacks (a divorce, then a second marriage to his first wife's cousin (2)), as well as professional disappointments in a Hollywood milieu increasingly inclined towards "pop" soundtracks, including the famous "affair" of the rejected score Hitchcock's film, *Torn Curtain* (1966), which led to the abrupt end of his collaboration with the British-born director, will remain most memorable example.

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In France, François Truffaut also experienced a few reverses of fortune. Since 1961, on rue Robert Estienne, the director has run his own production company, "Les Films du Carrosse", in homage to Jean Renoir. As with the latter, the "family" spirit is favored, and filming in the provinces regularly takes on a "summer camp" atmosphere. Truffaut's team was made up of friends rather than collaborators, from assistant Suzanne Schiffman to director of photography Raoul Coutard and Nestor Almendros, well as lead actor Jean-Pierre Léaud, producer Marcel Berbert, script supervisor Christine Pellé, editors Claudine Bouché, Agnès Guillemot and Yann Dedet, and composer Georges Delerue.

However, Truffaut's last production, La Peau douce (1964), was heavily criticized: the first grievance seemed to be the 's return to more traditional subjects (the classic trio of adultery in a bourgeois milieu) characteristic of the French Quality cinema so decried by the former "Arts" pamphleteer. In short, the film was a commercial failure. Truffaut shook off his disappointment by already thinking about his next ambitious shoot. Haunted by Hitchcock, a filmmaker about whom he was preparing a book of interviews (the first edition of which came out in 1967), Truffaut intended to get Herrmann to work on a screen adaptation of a Ray Bradbury short story (published in the U.S. in 1953, and which producer Raoul Lévy had introduced the director to during a meal at Melville's home one evening in August 1960. After Truffaut bought the adaptation rights in the spring of 1962, some twenty actors and twelve producers were contacted, and four scripts were written by different writers, but without Ray Bradbury, who refused take part in the adventure. It wasn't until the summer of 1965 that New York producer Lewis Allen succeeded in putting the project together as a British production under the auspices of Universal's subsidiary Vineyard Film Ltd. It was also around this time that Allen came up with the idea of having the roles of Linda and Clarisse played by the same actress: Julie Christie. Truffaut was enthusiastic:

Employing Julie Christie to play both Linda and Clarisse," Truffaut wrote to her in a letter, "finally gives me the opportunity to solve this eternal problem of the thankless role and the prestigious role, of to show the two sides of the same woman, and also to prove visually that for most men, their wife and their mistress are the same thing" (3).

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NORTH BY NORTHWEST | 1959

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Once Upon a Time in the WestEcstasy and
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By this stage in the project's preparation, the first break with his favourite composer Georges Delerue had already taken place. The musician would later testify to this separation:

"Truffaut had initially spoken to me at length about Fahrenheit 451, but in the end I was a little annoyed because he wasn't saying anything to me and I didn't know where he. I sent him a letter to inform him that I was going to be busy with other projects, and to ask him if he still intended work with me on the film. In response, François wrote me a charmingly embarrassed letter. He didn't dare tell me that in London he had met Bernard Herrmann, for whom he had long had a great admiration, because of Hitchcock' films. He told me couldn't resist working with him, and that he hoped I wouldn't hold it against him. I think that's perfectly normal. Then he worked with Herrmann on The Bride Was in Black. I he may have been afraid of renewing his relationship with me. In any case, I didn't meet up with him again until The Two Englishwomen and the Continent (1971)" (4)

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**Role and character of music** The role of sound is particularly interesting. Fahrenheit 451 is a true success in terms of sound (5), long before the Dolby stereo revolution. It's a film made entirely

in mono sound. This an obvious aesthetic choice on the part of François Truffaut. Even though he drew inspiration from existing genres, the filmmaker bypassed them and drew inspiration from them. Nathalie Raut-Sieuzac underlines "*the thinness in volume of the ambiences linked to the setting*", concluding that the film "*counters the sound clichés conveyed by science-fiction productions of the time*". (6)

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Fahrenheit 451 isn't a film with a lot of dialogue, but that's not the case with the music: the contrary, it's very present, with no less than fifty minutes of recorded music, as well as the repetition of numerous themes in the editing.

Like much of Herrmann's music, the score for Fahrenheit

451 has few melodic lines, but consists of a succession of rhythmic themes interpreted by a string ensemble to which are added a few percussion instruments (xylophone, carillon). The second half of the prelude is an excellent illustration of this, as it is a scherzo with a jerky rhythm, based on a motif comprising a succession of triplets. This is not traditional music for a science-fiction film. A genre for which

<figure><img src="image_16.png" /><figcaption>agony</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_17.png" /><figcaption>Psychosis</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_18.png" /><figcaption>Bernard 's music Herrmann for Fahrenheit 451</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_19.png" /><figcaption>Tim Burton-Danny Elfman: Freaks Show</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_20.png" /><figcaption>Hitchcock-Herrmann</figcaption></figure>

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<figure><img src="image_22.png" /><figcaption>Interview with Howard Shore part. 1</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_23.png" /><figcaption>Jason and the Argonauts (II)</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_24.png" /><figcaption>Jaws: Musica Dentata (I)</figcaption></figure>

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Bernard Herrmann had already worked shortly before on the famous *Twilight Zone* series (La Quatrième dimension 1959-1964) alongside Leonard Rosenman, Marius Constant, Jerry Goldsmith, Franz Waxman, as well as other lesser-known composers such as Lucien Moraweck, René Garriguenc, Leith Stevens and Nathan Van Cleave. For *Fahrenheit 451* Bernard Herrmann received very precise instructions from Truffaut. For Truffaut, the music had to facilitate the transition from the written word to the screen, without overemphasizing the film's futuristic character:

"Science-fiction things are very difficult to achieve and often run risk of being ridiculous. At one point, Bradbury writes: "The city was buzzing", well, it's very difficult to make a city buzz. city. I wanted to avoid any systematic disorientation. That's why I asked Bernard Herrmann to write a dramatic score of the traditional type, without any futuristic character." (7)

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The theme of the opening credits The opening credits are rather unusual in that they are spoken and accompanied by music. Truffaut follows in the footsteps of Orson Welles (The Magnificent Amberson, 1946) and Jean-Luc Godard (Le Mépris, 1963) in experimenting with this form of opening.

The title sequence opens with the Universal studio logo, while the score begins to set a calm, ethereal mood, supported by crystalline music, punctuated only by string chords relayed by a few harp arpeggios. The orchestration is quite similar to the theme "Aquarium", one of the pieces in Camille Saint-Saëns' famous Carnaval des Animaux, composed for chamber orchestra in 1886. Composer and musicologist Miguel d'Oliveira notes the influence of this work on other Herrmann scores, such as Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 196), in which he notes the use of glissandos in keys identical to those of other themes composed by Saint-Saëns for Le Carnaval des Animaux). (8)

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This similarity in orchestration is not all that surprising, given that Bernard Herrmann, towards the end of his career as a film composer, gave new impetus to his activity as a conductor, with numerous recordings of neo-classical and Impressionist music in particular. It seems clear that the simultaneous combination of these two activities as conductor and composer has given rise to reciprocal hybridizations.

Finally, those familiar with Herrmann's music will not fail to note the similarities between *Fahrenheit 451*'s theme tune and another that the composer had written a few years earlier for Robert Wise's science-fiction film *The Earth Stood Still* (1951).
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**A violent score** Apart from the apparent calm of the credits, the general character of the score composed for this film is its violent nature. A scherzo, whose basic motif is a succession of quintuple eighth notes, accompanies the fire engines during punitive expeditions against book owners.

<figure><img src="image_29.png" /><figcaption>Figure 2: excerpt from the basic firefighting motif</figcaption></figure>

There's evidence to suggest that the music's role was to bring out the inner violence of the main character, fireman Montag, played by Oskar Werner. We know that right from the start of filming in London, there were differing views on this character between the actor playing him and Truffaut. Werner wanted to play a more determined hero, while Truffaut saw in him "*a weak man, withdrawn, shy, with an inner violence, an introvert*". Although Werner gave in by taking on the role written by Truffaut, the director, in the editing process, used music to counterbalance Montag's reclusiveness. The actor's apparent shyness contrasts with the color and character of the music, bringing out the inner violence of firefighter Montag. This violence is mitigated by Clarisse's gentleness, and violent pieces are alternated with more lyrical passages such as the slow waltz theme, reminiscent of the nostalgic themes Herrmann also knew how to compose when a film's dramaturgy called for it.

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Finally, the violence of the score also contrasts with many of the characters, whose character traits are similar to those of Hitchcock's films: both attractive and repulsive. The antagonists in the master of suspense's films are often as endearing as the protagonists. Similarly, in *Fahrenheit 451*, the character of the Captain, played by Cyril Cuzak, is imbued a certain sensitivity when we consider his sympathy for Montag. His relationship with books even appears ambiguous, as in the scene preceding the burning of the library hidden in the old lady's house. Montag's role, for half the film, is also ambiguous. Truffaut bears witness to this difficulty:

"When the script presented construction difficulties, we would say to ourselves, "This is a story about the Resistance, Montag is part of the Gestapo, Clarisse is in hiding." In this way, we sought to make progress while avoiding Fahrenheit lending itself to political use or looking like an American left-wing film. With Montag, I'm showing a 'positive hero for the first time, but I didn't want him to look like a movie hero either."

*American*" (9)
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**A hectic rhythm** The second characteristic of this score is its anguished character, brought about by the instrumental color (small ensemble) and the particular phrasing of the string instruments (glissandos, pizzicatos), staccatos), but also tempo.

The 6/8 tempo adopted in the second part of Montag's motif (3'10) lends instability to the theme, and thus ambivalence to the relationship between music and images. This hectic character is also rather unpleasant over the duration of the film, and creates a certain discomfort for the viewer, which is only relieved in the final third of the story, when Montag manages to reach the land of the book-men.

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**Conclusion** Fahrenheit 451 is not a very original score in formal terms. In fact, it's rather basic in its duration, form and use on screen. Its originality lies in the way it suggests another interpretation of the narrative discourse, different from the interpretation based on the image alone, which is deliberately incomplete (particularly the actors' faces, on which the viewer has difficulty identifying emotions). It's a score that, over the course of the film as a whole, provides emotional identification with the icy - and emotionless - world in which the action is supposed to take place. Nonetheless, the combination of atmosphere, dialogue and music is a real sonic success, and places Fahrenheit 451 in the tradition of the post-synchronized films that experimented with new processes in the mid-60s, when television was constantly innovating, inviting cinema, in spite of itself, to profoundly question the usual codes of sound and music in order to resist this competition.

Frédéric Gimello-Mesplomb
Senior lecturer, University of Metz (France)

<footnote>(1) Laurence Alfonsi, "L'aventure américaine de l'œuvre de François Truffaut" Paris: L'harmattan, 2001, page 68.</footnote>

<footnote>(2) Cf. *Music from the movies: Bernard Herrmann*, documentary by Joshua Waletzky (1992).</footnote>

<footnote>(3) François Truffaut, Correspondance, letters collected by Gilles Jacob and Claude de Givray, Flammarion, 1988.</footnote>

<footnote>(4) Interview with Georges Delerue by members of the AGD (Association Georges Delerue), Soundtrack n° 27.</footnote>

<footnote>(5) Nathalie Raut-Sieuzac, "Image and Sound in Fahrenheit 451", *cine-studies*, Spring 2004.</footnote>

<footnote>(6) Nathalie Raut-Sieuzac, op. cit.</footnote>

<footnote>(7) Interview with François Truffaut by Pierre Billard, Christiane Collange and Claude Veillot. *L'Express*, n° 883, May 20-26, 1968.</footnote>

<footnote>(8) Miguel d'Oliveira, *Psycho: a brief analysis on the score approach*, research note, 2003</footnote>