Psycho history

Guardian Unlimited Film | Features | A stab in the dark

Here's something I didn't know about Hitchcock and the making of "Psycho":

With Psycho, Herrmann not only broke with Hollywood tradition by scoring it for strings alone (saying he wanted to find a sonic equivalent of black-and-white film), but also rescued the film. Having completed filming without a score, Hitchcock was in despair at what he felt had ended up as a mediocre pot-boiler, and was seriously considering cutting the film to an hour and selling it to TV. Herrmann persuaded him to let him score it before doing so, and despite the director's insistence that the first murder scene remain silent, defied him. The end result left Hitchcock no room for argument.

What a great example of how accidental a successful movie can be. Even great directors can't see the woods for the trees sometimes.