Why hasn’t some YouTube hotshot mixed Bernard Herrmann‘s discarded Torn Curtain score onto the film’s soundtrack, just for experimentation’s sake?
“The supreme high point of collaboration between Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann was on Psycho, but it laid the seeds for the disaster that would happen six years later in March of 1966 when Hitchcock went to hear the score for Torn Curtain.
“You couldn’t really hear a film score in those days before it was recorded, if it was written for an orchestra. Hitchcock showed up to the session wanting a miracle for this movie that he knew wasn’t particularly good. He heard that Herrmann had written a heavy, dark, sometimes lugubrious score that Benny thought would convey the sense of the Soviet Union…the Iron Curtain that the heroes are trapped behind. Benny thought Hitchcock would love that.
“I was able to hear the recording of the session, and you can tell that Benny has no idea what’s coming. He’s in a great mood, so he was absolutely stunned when Hitchcock listened to two cues and fired him on the spot and canceled the session.” — “Hitchcock & Herrmann” author Steven C. Smith in a discussion wityh Variety‘s Chris Willman.
For what it’s worth, I like Dimitri Tiomkin‘s scores for Strangers on a Train, I Confess and Dial M for Murder as much as Herrmann’s Hitch scores. Well, almost as much.