"I can remember soundtracks that you just can't separate from the film - It's just so intertwined, so important. Like the Hitchcock ones where they kind of inform each other and become this larger thing as a result"
About this Quote
Greenwood is making a case against treating film music as tasteful wallpaper. He’s pointing to the rare soundtrack that becomes inseparable from the movie’s nervous system, where melody and image lock together so tightly that you can’t replay one in your head without summoning the other. The Hitchcock reference is telling: it’s not just name-dropping “classic cinema,” it’s invoking a whole tradition (think Bernard Herrmann’s shrieking strings, those obsessive motifs) where the score doesn’t merely underscore emotion, it engineers it.
The intent here is both aesthetic and political, in a small-p kind of way. Greenwood’s arguing for composers as co-authors of meaning, not technicians hired to “support” a director’s vision. His phrasing - “inform each other” - suggests a two-way feedback loop: the film shapes the music’s choices, and the music reshapes how the film is perceived, even how it’s edited, paced, and remembered. That’s the subtextual flex: the best scores don’t follow the image, they negotiate with it, sometimes even contradict it to create tension.
Context matters because Greenwood comes from a band culture where music is the main event, then steps into cinema where music is often treated as secondary. He’s staking out a philosophy aligned with his own work: dissonance, unease, and texture as storytelling tools. “Become this larger thing” is the punchline - the film-plus-score hybrid that lives in cultural memory longer than plot points ever do.
The intent here is both aesthetic and political, in a small-p kind of way. Greenwood’s arguing for composers as co-authors of meaning, not technicians hired to “support” a director’s vision. His phrasing - “inform each other” - suggests a two-way feedback loop: the film shapes the music’s choices, and the music reshapes how the film is perceived, even how it’s edited, paced, and remembered. That’s the subtextual flex: the best scores don’t follow the image, they negotiate with it, sometimes even contradict it to create tension.
Context matters because Greenwood comes from a band culture where music is the main event, then steps into cinema where music is often treated as secondary. He’s staking out a philosophy aligned with his own work: dissonance, unease, and texture as storytelling tools. “Become this larger thing” is the punchline - the film-plus-score hybrid that lives in cultural memory longer than plot points ever do.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
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