30s Hitch: Hitchcock’s Theories of Music in Film and Waltzes from Vienna (1934)

This was a pleasant surprise that I was dreading. I have actively avoided watching Waltzes from Vienna because Hitchcock himself was so dismissive of it later in life(1) and pretty much hated the filming process. However, it turns out to be a fairly light entertainment and in terms of Hitchcock’s evolution, more significant than he would let on later in his life. 

Despite Hitchcock’s later dismissal of the film, it proved to be a pivotal work for him, at least in regards to the use of music in film. I’m going to quote extensively from an interview conducted in Cinema Quarterly, Winter 1933-1934 with Stephen Watts for two reasons. The first is to demonstrate that this film did have more importance to Hitch than he let on later (even if it might be for purely formal purposes) and also because his remarks on music in film are in themselves worth looking at for what music meant to Hitchcock specifically, but also, its place in early sound film history.

Hitchcock’s reflections on the coming of sound in film is fascinating and out of that he begins constructing his perspective on music.

“The arrival of talkies, as you know, temporarily killed action in pictures,” [Hitchcock] began, “but it did just as much damage to music. Producers and directors were obsessed by words. They forgot that one of the greatest emotional actors in the silent cinema was the musical accompaniment. They have gradually realized that action should still come first — that, talkies or not, they are still making motion pictures. But music as an artistic aspect of the film is still sadly neglected.” (2) Here’s a good moment to note that this is Hitchcock’s manifesto that he would carry on throughout his career; show, don’t tell; the action always comes first and film is primarily a visual medium. That said, what follows shows an early appreciation of what we have come to take for granted in film; that music provides aural clues to the characters’ inner lives, and of course, that in itself a musical score influences the audience response to the action on screen.

“..I have always believed that the coming of sound opened a great new opportunity. The accompanying music came at last entirely under control of the people who made the picture [NOTE: as opposed to the live accompaniment to silent films that Hitchcock alludes to in the previous paragraph]. That was surely an advance on having a separate score played by cinema orchestras. …Yet, when it became possible to blend from and music together in an artistic entity the opportunity was overlooked, or at least left undeveloped.”(3) By now, of course, Hitchcock had already experimented with voiceover and music as a soundtrack in Murder! (4), but three years later, a deeper approach is being articulated here.

“The result is that the only dramatic use of music in talkies — leaving out of account the ‘musicals’ which interpolate ‘numbers’ rather than employ music — is the crude instance of slow music for love scenes. Anything else has been an odd stunt and not a properly worked out scheme.

“But that conventional soft music is the basis of the right idea — expressing the mood of the scene.”(5)

I want to pause for a moment and consider a couple of aspects of music as a sonic element in film, particularly in regard to early sound films (let’s say up through 1933 or ’34). One of the sometimes disconcerting aspects in early sound films is how, when a film’s score has stopped, the silence and ambient sounds in subsequent scenes is more pronounced. This can be seen in almost any work, from a ‘B’ action picture or a movie serial to even a grade A film by Lubitsch or Vidor. Or look to how Lang used silence in M or how the Marx Brothers rarely used any kind of musical enhancement to their antics, but on the other hand, how - in other than musical numbers - the music that is there underscores or leads up to the next scene, setting the stage for whatever mayhem Groucho, Harpo and Chico were about to unleash. King Kong may have one of the most effective scores of any early sound film (but then, Max Steiner was a genius and you will never find me less than swept away by his work.)

Now what I find additionally interesting is Hitchcock’s belief that “every film should have a complete musical score before it goes into production”:

“Though by ‘complete’ I do not mean continuous. That would be monotonous. Silence is often very effective and its effect is. heightened by the proper handling of the music before and after.

“There is, somewhere, the correct musical accompaniment for almost any scene — music which will improve the scene. But none at all is better than the wrong music. (Emphasis mine: JB)” 

Hitchcock responds to the question of relating music and action and music’s “underlying use” as follows:

“Well, the first and obvious use is atmospheric. To create excitement. To heighten intensity. In a scene of action, for instance, when the aim is to build up to a physical climax, music adds excitement just as effectively as cutting… Music can also be a background to a scene in any mood and a commentary on the dialogue, but, frankly, I have not yet made up my mind about the function of music in relation to dialogue in general.” 

Now what I find additionally interesting is Stephen’s question there is an issue “that an audience cannot listen to and appreciate both words and the musical background at the same time.” I cannot recall ever encountering this question before, but I wonder if he is being obtuse or if this was a genuine concern at the time. I cannot help but assume that people in the 1930s were perfectly capable of holding conversations in real life as music played in the background, and by 1934, musical scores were plentiful in sound films and they actually did play while people were talking. In any case, it provides a lead-in to Hitchcock discussing the film at hand.

“The problem goes deeper than that. Music with certain types of dialogue might be made to achieve a great deal, and here I can give you an apt illustration from Waltzes from Vienna.

“There is a dialogue scene between a young man and a woman. It is a quiet, tender scene. But the woman’s husband is on his way. The obvious way to get suspense is to cut every now and then to glimpses of the husband traveling towards the house. In the silent days, when the villain was coming, you always had the orchestra playing quickening music. You felt the menace. Well, you can still have that and have the sense of talk-scene going as well. And the result is that you don’t need to insist pictorially on the husband’s approach.

“I think I used about six feet of film out of three hundred feet used in the sequence to flash to the husband. The feeling of approaching climax can be suggested by the music.

“It is in the psychological use of music, which, you will observe, they knew something about before talkies, that the great possibilities lie.”

It has been pointed out over the years that Hitchcock did not spend a lot of time theorizing or intellectually constructing an aesthetic or critical theory of film, but it is apparent that he gave considerable thought to the mechanics of cinematic structure and the various elements that provided the nuts and bolts of film language.

About the use of music in films, he continues:

“It makes it possible to express the unspoken. For instance two people may be saying one thing and thinking something very different. Their looks match their words, not their thoughts. They may be talking politely and quietly, but there may be a storm coming. You cannot express the mood of that situation by word and photograph. But I think you could get at the underlying idea with the right background music. It may sound far-fetched to compare a dramatic talkies with opera, but there is something in common. In opera quite frequently the music echoes the words that have just been spoken. That is one way music with dialogue can be used.

“Waltzes from Vienna gave me many opportunities for working out ideas in the relation of film and music. Naturally every cut. In the film was worked out on the script before shooting began. But more. Than that, the musical cuts were worked out too.”(7)

At this point, Hitchcock reminds Watts that Waltzes is about Richard Strauss the younger’s composing of The Blue Danube and cites the debut of the piece’s performance in public. As Hitchcock says, it is difficult to describe in words, and posting stills will not convey what he’s getting at, but Hitchcock emphasizes that in this instance, it is not about action inspiring or generating the music, but the reverse: he has to show how “the music had to inspire the action.”(8)

Here, Hitchcock clarifies and gives an example of what he had said earlier about how “music adds excitement just as effectively as editing”:

“All the camera work has to worth is the orchestra, the conductor, and the audience. The human angle is the conductor — the younger Strauss — and the people of the story who are listening. So I arranged the cutting to match the rhythm of the music. ..You must visualize the film moving in time to with the music (emphasis mine - JB). In the slow passages the cutting is slow, when the music quickens the mood of the melody is followed by the quick cutting.”(9)

He cites another example in the scene where Strauss is in a bakery where the editing cuts along to the beats of the Danube’s opening theme to activity in the bakery; dough being kneaded, rolls falling into baskets and so on, in time to the music.

“Film music and cutting have a great deal in common. The purpose of both is to create a tempo and mood of the the scene. And, jut as the ideal cutting is the kind you don’t notice as cutting, so it is with music.”(10)

Interestingly, Hitchcock alludes to the limitations of editing where it is effective for its use in violent subjects (he refers to the Russians and “their effective use of [cutting]”. One assumes he has the Odessa Steps sequence in mind. “But have you noticed that since they started to make quieter subjects, concerned with agriculture, etc., their montage has not been so noticeable or effective? If I am sitting here with you discussing the Five-Year Plan, no amount of cutting can make a film of us dramatic because the scene is not dramatic. You cannot achieve quiet, restrained effects that way. But you might express the mood and tone of our conversation with music that would illuminate or even subtly comment on it.”(11)

Hitchcock ends with noting that he is “not laying down laws on this subject” but that he is simply experimenting in theory with what he practiced in Waltzes from Vienna. While the movie itself is a trifle — and a pleasant one, at that — we can reasonably conclude that whatever reservations Hitchcock later claimed to have had about the film and whatever issues he had during the filming, including losing interest in it, he worked out something quite substantial with it in using music as a kind of aural editing tool. We will see more of this in the six suspense films coming up and certainly in his later work, likely culminating in Bernard Hermann’s score for Psycho (or North by Northwest, Vertigo, etc.)

What about the film itself?

Charles Barr notes that “Though it doesn’t merit rehabilitation as a major achievement, it is neither aa negligible film nor a an aberrant one, and, like Number seventeen it sees Hitchcock take on board a significant new element that will become. Integral to his mature practice.”(12) Barr also notes that while Hitchcock had employed nuanced and effective uses of scoring in earlier films, it is here “that music becomes a serious structural element.”(13)

As I have alluded to, it’s a trifle, but significant. It makes perfect sense that Hitchcock would choose the musical genre to explore the use of music more thoroughly, if not necessarily, deeply. 

The plot is paper thin: the great Johann Strauss’s son, Johann Strauss the Second aka Schani is in the prime of life, in love, and starting a career in music. His father belittles him, his fiancee doesn’t really understand his devotion to music, and when he finds a patron, she grows jealous. All of this sorts itself out it in the end, but there is little more to say. Edmund Gwenn steals scenes as the elder Strauss, Esmond Knight as the younger Strauss is okay, Fay Compton as the Countess who has designs on Shani as well as supporting his composition is perhaps the strongest actor onboard. Jessie Matthews as Resi, Schani’s betrothed is by turns adequate or grating. 

As a Hitchcock film, it may not be “aberrant”, but it is something of an outlier. His earlier dalliance with the “musical adjacent” variety flick Elstree Calling should have sufficed as a warning that maybe Hitch might not want to essay a musical. Nevertheless, he chose this as his next project, following the drubbing he took for Number Seventeen and referred to the period as his “lowest ebb”(14) I find it odd that neither Rohmer and Chabrol or Truffaut made any effort to give the film its due. 

"Was Hitchcock looking for greater freedom? This is by no means certain. In any case, his only attempt at independent production ended in a real disaster. He agreed (one wonders why, and he himself has no idea) to adapt Waltzes from Vienna (1933), the Johann Strauss operetta, for the independent producer Tom Arnold. By the second week of shooting, the waltz had ceased to interest him. Perfectly aware that the film was dreadful, and having no intention of making it better, Hitchcock called together the actors, the technical crew, and the thousands of extras who had been assembled for the ball scene. Pointing to his director's chair, he announced: "I hate this film, I hate this kind of film, and I have no feeling for it. What I need is a drama, adventures!" The film was bad, and this time the execrable reviews were fully justified.”(15)

Yes, yes, Hitchcock grew frustrated with the cast and they with him. Knight was famously cowed by Hitchcock’s manner and penchant for practical jokes, Compton — one of the great comediennes from the UK — apparently lost her sense of humor, and tension on the set is well-attested. However, the film is neither bad, and while the film underperformed at the box office, I’ve not been able to find any contemporary reviews that could be called “execrable.” Variety from March 6, 1934: “How close all this is to the real life history of these famous characters is not known, but it is an artistic production that will appeal to all music lovers and make interesting entertainment for class audiences.(16) 

While I found Matthew’s performance annoying, I have to agree with Yacowar that Resi and Compton’s Countess — are well-developed women characters, given both the times and genre.(17) Visually, Glen MacWilliams, in his first collaboration with Hitchcock, sets up shots with no small degree of classical framing for the long shots and when he’s in tight, sets up both the more overtly comic bits and gives us a God’s eye view of Schani directing his public debut of “The Blue Danube” in a frankly, perfect montage from Hitchcock and editor Charles Frend in his first (of four) collaboration with Hitch. We’ll encounter more of his work in The Secret Agent, Sabotage, and Young and Innocent.

Truth be told, the Hitchcock visual touches are all there: tracking shots, tight montages that sell either a gag or build to a point. The scene where Schani is in a bakery and here’s the rhythm of what will become “The Blue Danube” is an early example of how (musical, though very often dramatic) themes develop in Hitchcock’s oeuvre. There is even a moment of suspense the Countess’s husband is en route to mete out justice to his wife whom he suspects of having an affair with the young Strauss. The cross cutting is as assured as anything in his suspense films and again, works with the music set-up. 

There’s more to be said about Hitchcock’s use of music in these early sound films and by the time he leaves for the United States, he will have already set precedents for how music can be used in cinema as a psychological element as well as a narrative guide.

Miscellaneous:

Waltzes from Vienna was in wide release in 1934, although producer Tom Arnold had taken it on the road and shown it in select venues in 1933.

Jessie Matthews character is sometimes spelled “R-a-s-i”; however, I hear “Resi” in the film and I have seen that spelling just as frequently.

Lastly, there are some great set-ups and gags in the film, almost from the outset when a fireman asks a character “where’s the fire?”, even as they are on the way. Or when the servants of the Countess and her husband are having a tryst and each is asked to relay messages onto the other. The performances really are good (yes, even Matthews; she was one of Britain’s best actresses and headlined the production, but maybe it isn’t her; it’s her character I find grating). Possibly my favorite exchange:

Resi’s father to her: Your mother didn’t let me kiss her until we were married for six months.

Resi: That explains why I wasn’t born until you were 50.

There really is more to discuss about the film and perhaps I will at another time. As different as it is from the rest of his work, Waltzes still explores his usual themes and has proven itself worthy of rediscovery.

Gallery

A couple of examples of MacWilliams’ wide shots:

A more characteristic Hitchcock shot, one might think.

Edmund Gwenn as Johann Strauss the elder in a mid shot reminiscent of other sequences where the central figure is surrounded by a mob out for justice or mockery. 

Jessie Matthews, Edmond Knight, and Hitchcock in a casual moment. Staged? Possibly?

Notes

1. Truffaut, pp. 85-86.
2. Watts in Gottlieb, p. 242
3. Ibid.
4. Barrett.
5. Watts in Gottlieb, p.242
6. Watts in Gottlieb, pp. 242-243
7. Watts in Gottlieb, p. 244.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. Watts in Gottlieb, p. 245.
12. Barr, p. 128.
13. ibid.
14. Truffaut, p. 85.
15. Rohmer and Chabrol, p. 37
16. Variety, p. 27.
17. “Hitchcock gives the women will and intelligence. The men are all lapdogs.” Yacowar, p. 133.

Bibliography

Amy Chabassier. Film no Longer Telling a Story; Film itself as the Story: Reflexive Constructions in Alfred Hitchcock and Jean-Luc Godard (Senior Project Submitted to The Division of Art of Bard College). Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. May 2017

Barr, Charles. English Hitchcock. Cameron and Hollis. Dumfrieshire, Scotland. 1999.

Gottlieb, Sidney (editor). Hitchcock on Hitchcock: Selected Writings and Interviews. University of California Press. Berkeley. 1995.

Ness, Richard R “Family Plots: Hitchcock and Melodrama.” A Companion to Alfred Hitchcock. Thomas Leitch and Leland Poague, editors. Blackwell Publishing Group. Malden, Massachusetts, US and Oxford, UK. 2010.

McGilligan, Patrick. Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light. Itbooks/HarperCollns Publishers, Inc. New York. 2004.

Rohmer, Eric and Chabrol, Claude. Hitchcock - The First Forty-Four Films. Frederick Ungar Publishing. New York. 1979.

Schroeder, David. Hitchcock’s Ear: Music and the Director’s Art. The Continuum International Public Group. New York. 2012.

Truffaut, Francois with Scott, Helen G.. Hitchcock-Truffaut. Simon and Shuster Touchstone. New York. 1985.

 

Variety. Capsule review of Waltzes from Vienna. Variety. Volume 113, Issue 12. March 6, 1934.

Yacowar, Maurice. Hitchcock’s British Films. Second edition. Wayne State University Press. Detroit Michigan. 2010.

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