"With Hitchcock I had little relationship. I was called to replace Bernard Herrmann, his favorite composer, in Torn Curtain, after the bitter fight between them"
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It lands like a shrug, but it’s really a small act of career triage. Maurice Jarre frames his Hitchcock experience not as collaboration but as substitution: he wasn’t chosen so much as installed, “called to replace” Bernard Herrmann after a “bitter fight.” The wording is doing quiet damage control. Jarre doesn’t grandstand, doesn’t gossip, doesn’t even pretend there was artistic chemistry. “Little relationship” is both a personal admission and a protective boundary, signaling: whatever happened in that room wasn’t about me.
The subtext is a portrait of power in auteur-era Hollywood. Hitchcock’s reputation as a meticulous controller meets Herrmann’s equally forceful musical identity; the clash became legend because it exposed something people prefer to keep romantic: film scoring is often less muse-and-artist than management and leverage. Jarre, stepping into Torn Curtain midstream, is positioned as the professional solution to an emotional problem. He’s the steady hand hired after the beloved, volatile one is shown the door.
Context matters: Herrmann had shaped Hitchcock’s sound-world (Vertigo, Psycho), and his dismissal read like a divorce. Jarre’s quote acknowledges that inheritance while refusing it. He implies the job came with an atmosphere already poisoned by loyalty and resentment, making intimacy impossible. The intent isn’t to rewrite history; it’s to clarify the terms of his involvement: not a meeting of minds, but a vacancy filled. That frankness is its own critique of the mythology that every great film is born from harmonious collaboration. Sometimes it’s born from fallout.
The subtext is a portrait of power in auteur-era Hollywood. Hitchcock’s reputation as a meticulous controller meets Herrmann’s equally forceful musical identity; the clash became legend because it exposed something people prefer to keep romantic: film scoring is often less muse-and-artist than management and leverage. Jarre, stepping into Torn Curtain midstream, is positioned as the professional solution to an emotional problem. He’s the steady hand hired after the beloved, volatile one is shown the door.
Context matters: Herrmann had shaped Hitchcock’s sound-world (Vertigo, Psycho), and his dismissal read like a divorce. Jarre’s quote acknowledges that inheritance while refusing it. He implies the job came with an atmosphere already poisoned by loyalty and resentment, making intimacy impossible. The intent isn’t to rewrite history; it’s to clarify the terms of his involvement: not a meeting of minds, but a vacancy filled. That frankness is its own critique of the mythology that every great film is born from harmonious collaboration. Sometimes it’s born from fallout.
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