Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines one of the decade’s most popular actors, Montgomery Clift, and the theorises how the music with which an actor is scored connects with the actor’s body as it is written on and written by cinema. It explores the musical features of this collaboration and its offshoots. The book looks at acting and music through one of the most important composer/director collaborations in the film history, that of Bernard Herrmann and Alfred Hitchcock. It compares their very different relationships to music and considers the role of the film studios to which they were under contract in creating these musical personas, Day at Warner Bros. The book focuses the member of the ‘Method’ triumvirate, along with Clift and Brando, was James Dean.